Is Jordan Walker the Next Driveline Baseball Fueled Breakout?

It’s no secret that Jordan Walker has been a disappointment offensively since a solid debut back in 2023. He was formerly ranked as the Cardinals best prospect and the 11th best prospect in the game just a couple of years ago. With 55/80 Game Power and 70/80 Raw Power grades, he was an intriguing future fantasy contributor. Unfortunately, his performance has gone South, wayyyyyy South, since that rookie campaign. Acknowledging that something needed to be done to return to his former top prospect path, he visited Driveline Baseball back in October in order to overhaul his swing mechanics. We’ve seen a number of Driveline Baseball success stories. Will Walker be the next?

Walker debuted in 2023 and finished with a .341 wOBA. That was driven by near league average walk and strikeout rates and ISO, along with a .331 BABIP, which was well above the league average. Perhaps we had hoped for more power output, but the overall results were perfectly acceptable for a 21-year-old and hinted at a bright future ahead.

Sadly, that bright future stalled, as his offense crashed during his sophomore follow-up. In fact, it was bad enough along with poor defense, that he was demoted to Triple-A, where he spent most of the season, accruing 377 PAs. Walker posted just a .268 wOBA with the Cardinals, as his walk and strikeout rates moved in the wrong direction, and his BABIP plummeted. Then this past season, his wOBA fell even further to just .260, as hard as that is to believe. While his walk rate partially rebounded, his strikeout rate surged above 30% and his power completely evaporated while also missing time to injury and appendicitis.

Let’s discuss the Pros and Cons of Walker’s current skill set to determine if it’s theoretically possible for Driveline Baseball to make the fixes necessary to revive his career.

Pros

• Walker’s underlying power skills and Statcast metrics are strong to elite. He has posted HardHit% marks of at least 42.5% each season, including a career best 50% mark in 2025. That ranked 31st out of 242 hitters with at least 350 PAs this season, which is quite good. He has also always posted big maxEV marks, and those have increased each year, maxing out at 117.9 MPH this season, good for ninth among all batters. His Barrel% has also been on the rise, increasing each year, and finally getting into double digits this season. This mark is nowhere near as impressive as his other Statcast metrics, but would normally would drive a HR/FB rate and ISO significantly higher than he posted this year. It’s very clear that he owns some pretty serious raw power.

Cons

• His flyball Pull% is too low and trending in the wrong direction. Pulled fly balls have the highest HR/FB rate…by far. It therefore follows that a higher Pull% on flyballs will lead to a higher HR/FB rate, all else being equal. Walker’s flyball Pull% has been well below league average each season and has trended downward. He ranked just 269th out of 292 qualified hitters in flyball Pull% in 2025. Perhaps even nuttier is that he posted the highest flyball Cent% among that group this season. That’s the highest percentage of his flyballs going to the deepest part of the park! That makes it a challenge to deliver serious power.
• He swings and misses a lot. His SwStk% ranked sixth highest among the same group of hitters with 350+ PA mentioned in the Pros above. He swung and missed a lot as a rookie, too, but his strikeout rate finally caught up with his whiffs the last two years. While he’s worse than league average at making contact with pitches inside the strike zone, it’s really the O-Contact% dragging him down, as he was second worst in baseball at contacting balls outside the zone. Compounding the issue is that he swings at pitches outside the zone more than average, so it’s really hampering his ability to put the ball in play.
• He rarely hits line drives, which have the highest BABIP of any batted ball type. This has been an ongoing issue for Walker, who posted a microscopic 6.9% mark in 2024, and an improved 13.9% mark this season, but that still ranked as the lowest in baseball. One wonders how he could have possibly still managed an above average BABIP hitting such a low rate of line drives! The batted ball profile suggests a real issue with his swing.

Only one Pro to three Cons?! Yeah, that certainly explains why Walker has been so disappointing at the plate over his short career so far. Let’s summarize what we’ve learned.

First, it’s undeniable that Walker really does possess big power, as evidenced by his HardHit% and maxEV. His problem has been an inability to optimize his swing to actually take advantage of that power. He could hit balls as hard as he wants, but if they are traveling toward center field at a higher rate than every other hitter in baseball, his power output is going to suffer.

From the Rotoworld blurb summarizing the [$$] St. Louis Post-Dispatch article…

Walker’s offseason swing evaluation at Driveline revealed that his back hip was collapsing, causing him to drift forward and sap his power production last season. He said he’s feeling more optimistic after working through a series of drills designed to keep his hips back and allow him to drive the baseball again.

This seems like a good start. As noted earlier, his ISO plunged, finishing at just .091, versus between .160 and .170 his first two seasons. So perhaps this adjustment could fuel an ISO rebound back to that level. However, that still wouldn’t be very thrilling. I’m not smart enough to figure out if this back hip issue was also causing him to pull such a low rate of his fly balls, but I bet it’s not considering he posted low rate during his previous two seasons as well.

What’s really fascinating here is that his HardHit%, maxEV, and Barrel% were all at career bests, so solely looking at those marks, you would believe his power production surged. Instead, we hear that a mechanical issue sapped his power production, which is true based on the ultimate results — the ISO and HR/FB rate. So how did he manage such strong Statcast metrics, but also managed to enjoy so little production? It might truly be as simple as his horizontal batted ball direction and hitting it to the largest part of the ballpark, but I can’t be sure if other factors are at play. I think getting that direction at least close to league average should be a priority or he’s unlikely to ever reach his power potential.

Next is the strikeouts. Did the back hip collapsing play a role in his increased SwStk% and elevated strikeout rate this season? Maybe. In the minors and at Triple-A in 2023 and 2024 in particular, his SwStk% and strikeout rates weren’t anything to be concerned about. But both marks have jumped in the Majors and it’s seemingly all because of a huge drop in O-Contact% the last two seasons. He’s still young enough to get that fixed, beginning with learning to lay off the pitches in the first place, though that’s obviously easier said than done.

Last, let’s talk about his batted ball profile, namely his extreme lack of line drives. Incredibly, he posted an LD% of at least 20% at every single minor league stop in which he recorded at least 100 ABs. Yet, he hasn’t even reached an 18% LD% in the Majors yet. It feels like something just went wrong and for whatever reason, it hasn’t been corrected yet. A swing adjustment definitely sounds like at least part of what’s needed. Once that batted ball profile corrects, it’ll likely lead to improved power results regardless of any other changes, and also legitimize his BABIP, which looks like it’s being held up by smoke and mirrors.

So is Jordan Walker the next Driveline Baseball fueled breakout? My crystal ball is on vacation at the moment, but man, there are quite a few issues here that need to be addressed. It would be silly to believe that a visit to Driveline to fix his mechanics will be all that’s needed to return to the path originally expected of him. However, it could be enough to forget about what happened this season and at least return him to his 2023 level of production.

Right now, expectations are low and our Roster Resource page projects him to only serve in a short-side platoon role. His defense has also been poor, meaning he should really be DHing, limiting the ways he should be getting into the lineup. On the bright side, he’s still just 23 years old and already has clear-cut power. That kind of profile seems like the perfect dollar days or cheap speculation in NL-Only leagues.

I actually think he should be a prime trade candidate if the Cardinals aren’t willing to give him one more chance as a starter. It doesn’t make sense to give up on him already and turn him into a platoon player at this age, so perhaps we see him in a new uniform by the beginning of next season. If his path to playing time looks more secure, he becomes that much more interesting as an end-game dart throw in deep leagues.