Welcome to Sliders, a weekly in-season MLB column that focuses on both the timely and timeless elements of the game.The visiting team gets the batting cage for an hour and a half before games at Whataburger Field in Corpus Christi, Texas. That’s not much time for a coach to work with all the prospects trying to make their way to the St. Louis Cardinals. And it leaves no time to help a fallen prodigy with the talent to reignite a franchise.That is where Jordan Walker found himself a year ago this month, as he built back strength with the Double-A Springfield (Mo.) Cardinals after appendicitis. Corpus Christi staffers would let him in at 9:30 a.m. — nine hours before first pitch — to work with coach Casey Chenoweth.“He was there early, he was on time, he was willing to do all the work, everything that went into it,” Chenoweth said at Citi Field on Wednesday, before Walker slammed his 17th homer and drove in four runs against the New York Mets. “I got the best version of Jordan, I’d like to say. And I haven’t really seen anything different since.”
— St. Louis Cardinals (@Cardinals) June 11, 2026Chenoweth, 32, was promoted to the majors this season for the first time, serving as an assistant, with Brandon Allen, to hitting coach Brant Brown. Walker, still just 24 years old, has been on the scene much longer.Twice, Gatorade named Walker the high school player of the year in Georgia. Drafted in the first round in 2020, he homered on the first professional pitch he saw in 2021. Two years later, Walker became the first 20-year-old position player in a century to appear for the Cardinals on Opening Day. He hit safely in his first dozen games.Baseball should not be so easy, and when tough times found Walker, they lasted a while. Of the 301 players with at least 162 games across the 2024 and 2025 seasons, Walker ranked 292nd in OPS at .595, between Orlando Arcia and Johan Rojas.“I don’t think I ever really struggled for that long, so it definitely was a shock and it didn’t feel very good at all,” Walker said. “It was a grind, and I think what I underestimated about this game is how mentally tough you have to be. And I feel like every day I was just learning how to be better at that.”The physical tools have always been there for Walker, who is 6-foot-6 and 250 pounds and ranked among the best in the majors last season in exit velocity (91st percentile) and bat speed (99th percentile). But his weaknesses were just as profound as his strengths.Last season, Walker ranked in the second percentile at squaring up pitches and the fifth percentile in making contact on the sweet spot with the ideal launch angle. That’s a mouthful, but it’s essential to what a hitter wants to do — and in 2026, Walker is 10 times better in both areas.He’s in the 25th percentile at squaring balls up and the 53rd percentile in launch-angle sweet spot. His production has risen accordingly: through Thursday, Walker was hitting .302, with a .919 OPS that ranks sixth in the National League. Only Matt Olson of the Atlanta Braves has more total bases than Walker’s 143.Walker said he “went into the offseason with a mission,” and worked on his swing at Driveline Baseball and Cressey Sports Performance, hoping to take a better path to the ball and train his muscle memory to make those adjustments. The whole idea, he said, was to stop dwelling on mechanics.“I didn’t really think much about my swing before, but the big leagues will do that to you,” he said. “I mean, these pitchers are so good, they’re going to have you learn a lot more about yourself. And so the past two years, I’ve thought about my swing a whole lot.“I’m doing things like I used to do before, but there’s a lot of new things that are incorporated as well: my body placement, stepping more towards the plate, things like that put me in a better position. But I don’t really think that. I’m like, ‘Let me be athletic and let me go to the ball.’”This spring training, Walker took a three-day break from exhibition games to work with Chenoweth in the cage, reinforcing lessons from last summer. They had grown close through raw, frank conversations about Walker’s frustration in trying to reach his extraordinary potential.Chenoweth dug deep for clues, combing through film from Walker’s younger days.“When he was uncoached, what did he do?” Chenoweth said. “So, like, pre-influence — look back at his high school, pre-professional swings and moves, and then you find the most common similarities of what he did then, what he did coming up through the system and when he had a little bit of success in 2023 when he made his debut, and then kind of piece it all together.“You have to find a relatability piece, what they know and what they’re comfortable with. … You go back to when baseball was fun and try to make it as fun again as you possibly can.”With as hard as Walker swings, Chenoweth thought, if he could delay his rotation in the box just long enough, he’d have a better chance to lash some pitches to right while still turning on others. And with his athleticism, Chenoweth said, Walker’s body could “self-organize” once he had the proper path to the ball.Walker understands all the concepts but blocks them out on the field. He’ll analyze his swing after games, he said, but not during them. That never helps, he has found, and sometimes he will naturally revert to his good swing.
