As the season closes, the award chatter around baseball usually gets crowded fast. MVP, Silver Slugger, Gold Glove and Rookie of the Year soak up most of the oxygen, but the Comeback Player of the Year Award often ends up telling one of the best stories on the board.
In the National League, St. Louis Cardinals outfielder Jordan Walker has built a case that ought to be impossible to ignore.
The award goes to one player in each league and is meant for someone who has “reemerged on the baseball field during a given season.” Walker has done exactly that in 2026 after stumbling through 2024 and 2025. Even so, Oddspedia doesn’t have him among the five players with the best odds to take home the NL honor.
At the top of that list is Miami Marlins starter Sandy Alcantara, the former Cardinal whose 2024 season disappeared because of Tommy John surgery. The effects lingered into 2025, when he posted a 5.36 ERA. This season has been a different animal entirely: he leads the majors in games started and innings pitched and owns a 3.78 ERA.
Behind him sits Atlanta Braves outfielder Michael Harris II, who hit .249 with a .678 OPS in 2025 before bouncing back to his 2022 Rookie of the Year level in 2026 with a .291 average and an .808 OPS. Oddspedia’s “sleeper pick” is Pittsburgh Pirates outfielder Oneil Cruz.
Walker’s absence from that group stands out. Among the players being weighed here, he has made the biggest leap in slugging percentage at .182, the biggest jump in isolated power at .116, and the second-biggest rise in batting average at .066, trailing only Cruz. He also has the largest OPS+ increase of the bunch, climbing 65 points compared with 43 for Cruz and 33 for Harris.
The pitcher-hitter comparison is never clean, and Alcantara’s case is helped by the fact that he’s a pitcher while Walker is an everyday bat. Still, Alcantara’s ERA+ improvement is only 25 points.
So what’s keeping Walker from getting more traction?
Part of it may come down to how the award is defined. That “re-” in reemerged matters. In the eyes of some voters and oddsmakers, Walker may not have been established enough before this season for his surge to feel like a true comeback.
That argument has some holes in it. Walker put together a strong rookie year, hitting .276 with a .787 OPS and a 113 OPS+, then turned into one of the worst hitters in the majors over the next two seasons. For a lot of fans, though, he was only a name in the background until he broke through in a bigger way, including his win in the 2026 Home Run Derby.
There’s also the reality that Walker’s turnaround hasn’t come with the kind of medical comeback story that often defines this award. Several winners have returned from Tommy John surgery, while others have overcome even tougher battles. Trey Mancini won after beating colon cancer, and Carlos Carrasco and Liam Hendriks were honored after coming back from leukemia and lymphoma diagnoses.
Walker has not dealt with anything on that scale, and he hasn’t had a major surgery in his short career. He has, though, talked about his mental health while the Cardinals kept adjusting his swing during his struggles. Whether that will matter to the writers who decide the award is another question.
No one in baseball has matched Walker’s transformation this year. If the Comeback Player of the Year Award is supposed to reward exactly that kind of rise, he belongs in the conversation. But because he wasn’t a major name before 2026 and didn’t overcome the kind of physical setback that has helped define so many past winners, he may not get the attention his season has earned.
In Other News...
Cardinals Could Finally Have A Shot At The Frontline Arm They Need
Spencer Strider has become the kind of name that naturally pops up when teams start searching for a rotation lift. The Braves right-hander has been slowed by injuries in recent seasons, which has changed the conversation around him from frontline ace to possible buy-low trade target, and that alone makes him one of the more intriguing arms on the offseason market for a club like the Cardinals.
St. Louis has spent plenty of time looking for the kind of pitcher who can change the shape of a staff, and Striders availability would fit that search. Atlanta reportedly explored moving him to Texas for Jacob deGrom at the trade deadline before deGrom used his no-trade clause to stop it, which only adds to the sense that Strider could be in play if the Braves are willing to listen. For the Cardinals, the appeal is obvious, even if the real question is whether they can put together the kind of deal that gets them into the conversation. [Read more 🡒]
Leo Bernal Is Making One Cardinals Regret Feel Even Bigger
Leo Bernals first few weeks in the big leagues have done more than introduce the Cardinals to a promising young catcher. Since his promotion on Sept. 1, he has given St. Louis immediate production on both sides of the ball, looking far more settled than a player making his first leap to the majors. The early returns have been strong enough to turn his arrival into one of the more encouraging developments of the late season, and his impact has already shown up in the record book.
For the Cardinals, the more interesting part is what might have been if Bernal had arrived sooner. The clubs playoff chase could have looked different with that kind of energy behind the plate and in the lineup earlier in the stretch run, especially given how quickly he has translated his tools to the majors. Even now, the larger question hangs over the organization: not whether Bernal belongs, but how much more value he could have provided if the call had come before September. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Rotation Has One Rising Surprise And One Growing Concern
With 11 games left and a Wild Card chase that has all but slipped away, the Cardinals are spending the final stretch looking at the rotation with a colder eye than they did a month ago. The group has produced one rising surprise in the mix, but it has also left a growing concern that has shaped the way St. Louis has evaluated the rest of this season and the months ahead.
That backdrop makes the trade of Dustin May and JoJo Romero to the Milwaukee Brewers even more telling, because the return brought back two prospects the organization sees as worth tracking: Alexander Frias and Josiah Ragsdale. Both players fit the kind of long-view thinking that takes over when the standings get grim, and their arrival adds a little intrigue to a system that is trying to balance short-term uncertainty with long-term hope. [Read more 🡒]