He’s looking back on his swing in the past to help him.
Nobody was particularly happy with how Jordan Walker’s 2024 went. He made some progress on defense, though not necessarily in a way that made you excited about his defense. But his offense arguably took a step back.
“I made changes last season that just weren’t for the better,” Walker said.
The challenge of the offseason then became what went wrong and how to fix that. The Cardinals hired a new hitting coach, Brant Brown, who seemed to already know his swing before they met.
“First day I met him, he came in with video,” Walker said. “He told me exactly what he saw, he asked me how I felt. I thought that was super special.”
A key part of why that was special was because Brown asked how he felt about his swing. Walker thinks feeling good is the most important thing about hitting. If you don’t feel good, you won’t hit. It went unsaid, but it seemed clear that Walker didn’t feel very confident in his swing last season.
So priority number one became to go back to the basics. First things first, get his swing back to a place where he can feel good about his swing. So Brown and Walker went back and looked at video from the 2022 AFL season and the 2023 season when Walker felt good about his swing. Then compared it to what his swing looked like last season. They found differences.
“Hand placement is really the biggest thing,” Walker said. “My hands were too far back to start. When I was hitting homers, when I was driving the ball back in the Fall League in 2022, we looked at video of that. My hands were actually closer to my body. I think that was really the key on how I made more contact. We started with that, we started with the hands. He let me know when I was creeping back, getting back to my old habits in 2024.”
He actually later expressed that he wished he had video to show the differences. Luckily, this is a format where we can look at video to confirm what he’s saying. Even though he specified the AFL, at other times, he lumped that swing with his 2023 swing, so I think we can simply look at video from the 2023 season, which is just easier to post and has a better angle to judge. Here’s a flyout to deep center from Walker late in the 2023 season.
In the interest of fairness, I found a clip where he also hit it to deep centerfield from the 2024 season.
You can definitely see his hands are farther apart from his body in the second clip. That wasn’t the only observation they made together. Now this one is harder to confirm, because it’s not as easy as just noticing hands are farther.
“The second part of that was getting into my lower half,” Walker said. “He said that I didn’t get into my lower half as consistently. I would stop myself from getting all the way in there then I would come out of it quicker. I think he said that was muscle memory for how fast I get out of my back side. In 2022, in the fall league, I was getting more from my lower half.”
Those don’t look terribly different. He looks more stiff in the second image in a way I can’t really explain. Let’s try at the moment of contact and see if we can notice a difference. Keep in mind, I am not a scout, so somebody in the comments may very well notice something that I don’t.
I personally am struggling to see anything to point to. It’s not that there aren’t subtle differences, but the pitch locations are a little different – one is more down the middle, the other is at the low end of the zone. My screen shots are probably not at the exact same time either. It’s very possible though that Walker specified the AFL for a reason and he would agree he’s not using enough of his lower body in either of these clips. My amateur opinion is that it looks like he’s hardly using it at all, but judging how much a person uses lower body strength in a swing isn’t exactly easy. Also these were successful results, so he might have used it in these clips, he just didn’t do it consistently.
The details are less important than just getting it right at the end of the day.
“Really we worked on getting what feels the best for me and that’s really what hitting’s about,” Walker said.
While the Cardinals aim to be competitive this year, part of the advantage of this season is just letting Walker or Nolan Gorman take plate appearances without them worrying about getting sent down.
“There has to be some patience to it, because if it doesn’t click immediately for him, that’s okay,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “It’s not a light switch, but I feel like we’re heading in a really good direction with Jordan. And he’s excited about it. You can just tell in his overall demeanor and energy.”
Bench coach Dan Descalso simplified the problem for both Walker and Gorman. He says Walker needs to hit more line drives and Gorman needs to make more contact.
“They’ve both been in this league with several hundred plate appearances now,” Desclaso said. “There’s a book out on them on how to approach them, but those guys are very talented. If they can tap into that talent with a good approach, swing at the right pitches, those guys can get hot. The talent is there, they just need to be more consistent and that’s the name of this game.
He has worked on the outfield with Jon Jay, learning new drills with Victor Scott, but at the end of the day, his focus is currently on his offense. He knows in order for him to be successful, he needs to hit. And part of hitting is making adjustments.
“These pitchers are smart,” Walker said. “As soon as you make an adjustment and you feel good, they’ll start figuring something else out. Keeping up with them. Learning their tendencies, learning what they do well, and kind of learn how they want to attack you. I think that’s definitely something I can work on more.”
It’s clear work ethic will not be an issue with Walker. Pedro Pages, who has been his teammate in the minors, says something he likes about Walker is that he likes to work.
“This offseason, I’ve worked with him a couple times in Florida and the way he’s going about his business, the way he’s putting in the work he needs to do for his swing-wise and defense-wise, I think it’s there and I think it’s going to help him out this year,” Pages said.
Getting his swing back to a good place is just the first step. He’ll take some lessons from 2024 and try to find a consistent way for him to hit. If Walker is really correct that the most important thing about a swing is feeling good about it, then he seems like he’s a good place to hit this upcoming season.
“I think it’ll be fun to see him get back to minor league Jordan Walker,” Masyn Winn said. “That dude was to this day was probably the best player I’ve ever seen in person throughout the minor leagues and it’s only a matter of time until that translates to the big leagues.”