Jordan Walker’s 2026 season ended with a little more clarity than it had at the plate in September.
The St. Louis Cardinals outfielder spent the year turning himself into one of the biggest stories in baseball, then faded late with a stretch that raised fresh questions.
On Monday, Cardinals president of baseball operations Chaim Bloom explained why Walker wasn’t quite himself down the stretch, confirming that he was dealing with hip pain and limitations in the final weeks of the season, according to Derrick Goold and Daniel Guerrero of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
"Jordan Walker was playing through hip pain, discomfort, and some limitations as a result in the closing weeks of the season, Bloom confirmed," Goold and Guerrero wrote. "Some of that was from the workload the right fielder had and also the adjustments he made in spring training and the more movements he made in the batter’s box. He has been prescribed rest."
That detail changes the way Walker’s final month looks. He had been one of the Cardinals’ most electric hitters early on, the kind of player fans couldn’t stop talking about after a rocky 2025 and a spring that left some people wondering if he belonged in St.
Louis at all. Instead, he answered with a massive leap in 2026: a .269/.327/.466 line, 29 home runs, 102 RBIs, 22 stolen bases, 33 doubles and 97 runs scored in 158 games.
He made his first All-Star team and won the Home Run Derby along the way.
Then came the slowdown. Walker hit just .172/.232/.287 over his final 24 games and finished with only two home runs in that stretch. With the hip issue now on the record, that slump makes a lot more sense.
It also gives the Cardinals a more hopeful finish line heading into 2027. Walker missed only four games all season, so the workload clearly piled up.
Bloom’s update suggests rest is the answer for now, not anything more serious. After a year like this one, that matters.
What looked for a while like a late-season regression now reads more like a player grinding through pain to get to the finish. And even with the rough closing stretch, Walker’s season still stands as the kind that changes the conversation. He broke out, proved it wasn’t a fluke, and now gets the offseason to get his hip right before trying to build on it.
In Other News...
Oli Marmol Revisited The Early Goldschmidt Lesson That Changed Him
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The memory appears to trace back to a 2023 road trip, though the exact timing and some of the names around the conversation are a little hazy now. Even so, the takeaway is clear for a manager whose edge was never in question: the challenge was not just getting players to meet a standard, but making sure they could hear it without feeling shut out. For the Cardinals, that kind of evolution matters because it says as much about the tone in the room as it does about the results on the field. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals May Have An Expensive Answer To Their Third Base Problem
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One name to watch is Teruaki Sato, the 27-year-old third baseman and reigning MVP from Nippon Professional Baseball, who profiles as one of the top free agents available. He could offer an immediate answer at the hot corner, but the fit is not without questions, from his defensive home to the strikeout concerns that follow him, and on top of all that comes the price tag tied to bringing him over through the posting system. [Read more 🡒]
Cardinals Face 3 Offseason Questions That Will Define This Rebuild
The Cardinals spent much of this season looking like a club caught between eras, which is exactly what makes the winter ahead so important. Even after trading away top players and officially leaning into a rebuild, St. Louis hung around the playoff race for most of the year before finishing with a losing record, and there were real signs of progress along the way. Jordan Walker, Alec Burleson and JJ Wetherholt all gave the organization reasons to believe the next wave might be close enough to matter.
Still, the offseason questions are the kind that can shape whether this rebuild moves forward or stalls out. The bullpen needs help, the rotation needs a front-end starter, and third base remains unsettled after Oliver Marmol called the competition there wide open with several players in the mix. For a team trying to thread the needle between development and contention, those are the decisions that will tell the story of what comes next in St. Louis. [Read more 🡒]