By Rob Rains
As the three friends made their daily walk to Renfroe Middle School, Jordan Walker thought he knew how important Jaxson Sprull and Jane Wells were in his life. They made each other smile; they made each other laugh – a lot. When they were together, life was good.
Their friendship grew as the three carefree kids moved on to Decatur High School in the suburbs of Atlanta, where Walker and Sprull were on the baseball team and Wells was the team manager.
Even as they graduated from high school and began to follow separate paths, the three remained close – and it’s only now, years later, that Walker can truly appreciate and understand how much their friendship means to him.
It’s not a secret that the last two seasons were difficult ones for Walker, the Cardinals’ top pick in the 2020 draft when he was a senior in high school. Walker found himself making his major-league debut just three years later, after playing only 201 games in the minor leagues. Even though there were some good days in the early years of his career, there also were many that didn’t go well.
It always seemed like when Walker needed it, his friends were there.
“I’m glad they’ve always been in my corner,” Walker said. “To have them to talk to is unbelievable. It’s truly special and I am blessed to have it … It means the world to me.”
Walker thought about his friends during a recent interview – because the way this season has begun – it has reminded him of what his life was like when the three were together in high school.
“The first part of this season in all honesty has been the most fun I have had playing baseball,” Walker said. “The only thing that rivals it is playing with my high school teammates. That was really fun, enjoyable, like a family.”
There were smiles. There were laughs. Life was good.
It’s finally that way again now for Walker.
A veteran scout who has followed Walker for years can visualize players in high school when he is watching Walker.
“He is totally free now,” the scout said. “He is confident. When you are smiling when you are walking on the field, it’s a good day because that’s what you did when you were a kid, when you got into the game, because there was no place you’d rather be than playing.”
As the Cardinals’ 2025 season ended, Sprull and Wells were with Walker in Chicago. Another hitless day with two strikeouts officially ended his season, and a combined two years in which Walker hit 11 homers and compiled a .211 average over 162 games.
It was the end of two frustrating years, and it could have eaten up many young players. Walker’s dad believes at least part of the reason it didn’t do that to his son was because of his relationship with his childhood friends.
“They have provided the unconditional support that has been vital in a sport where failure is constant and highly visible,” Derek Walker said. “Jaxson and Jane, as well as a few other close friends, allow him to ‘let his hair down,’ get comfortable and be himself, which lets him diffuse the pressure keg that he no doubt has to carry around with him as a young player finding his way.”
As last season ended and the three friends discussed their plans for the winter, Walker told them the first thing he was going to do, and vowed that he would learn and grow from his struggles the past two seasons.
“I never thought I couldn’t do it,” Walker said. “I just wasn’t doing it.”
It was time to change that.
“I feel terrible; this is what it looks like”
Only a few hours after the end of the dismal season, Walker was on a plane, flying from Chicago to Phoenix. He was headed to the Driveline Arizona facility, where he would spend the first two days of his off-season.
“I threw a bat and batting gloves in my suitcase,” Walker said. “Pretty much what I did was say, ‘I feel terrible. This is what it looks like. What do you guys have for me?’”
The instructors came up with a plan for Walker to follow in the off-season, not only hitting-wise but what he needed to do with his body. He took the plan with him to Florida, where he turned it over to the instructors at Cressey Sports Performance in Palm Beach Gardens, where Walker spends much of the winter.
Walker was looking forward, not backward.
“They were two years that I wasn’t happy with, but that’s behind me,” was his attitude. “I always thought I could hit. One thing I am doing now which I wasn’t doing as much before, was driving the ball the other way. That’s a strength. I need to incorporate in my game.”
Walker admits that part of his struggles the last two seasons were caused by him getting away from a “hit-first” attitude in search of more power. He knows now that was a mistake.
“I thought that one big swing was going to change it all,” Walker said. “Then I started swinging for the fences and it caused me to spiral more downhill. Being hit-first is what I need to do, and I am really learning that from Alec Burleson, who is one of the best pure hitters I’ve seen. I watch him and know, ‘That’s what it looks like.’
“I can’t overdo it. When I try to hit homers I can’t actually do it. I just have to try to get a hit. If I hit the ball hard and it goes over the fence, it goes over the fence.”
That’s the way he hit for Double A Springfield in 2022, just his second season in pro ball, when Walker was establishing himself as one of the best prospects in the game.
“I remember every ball he hit was hit hard,” said pitcher Kyle Leahy, Walker’s teammate then and now. “If it was on the ground he was running fast and he was beating out balls on the infield. I think people were surprised a little bit by how well he moves.
“The more he hit the ball he made everything into a hit if that makes sense.”
Pedro Pages was Walker’s teammate that season as well.
“He always was an impressive guy,” Pages said. “His potential in this game is without a doubt one of the best I’ve seen. He’s very strong, he can hit the ball very hard and very far.”
Another scout who has watched Walker over the years is glad he has got his swing path back to where it used to be.
“He’s that guy now again,” the scout said. “He can hit when he wants to hit and let it go when he wants to let it go. He will occasionally get in that old habit of flying open, or yanking to the left side, but he gets back to square pretty quickly. Probably the proudest moment for him is that he caught himself and put himself back where he needs to be.
“You could just see the weight fall off his shoulders. Now it’s fun again. It’s been awesome to see. I’m really happy for the kid.”
In his first 68 games this year, through Sunday, Walker has hit 18 homers and driven in 56 runs, both career highs. He has a .294 average with 18 doubles and 10 stolen bases.
Walker is tied for the NL lead in RBIs, he ranks fifth in home runs, seventh in OPS and is tied for the fourth-most extra base hits in the league. There is a reason he is smiling more.
Teammates who came up through the farm system with Walker all remember seeing him smiling. And they smile, too, when they talk about the results of this season, especially knowing what Walker has gone through.
“You could never tell if he was going through it or not, and I give him a lot of credit,” Pages said. “In this game it’s hard and very easy to get eaten up by the moment and struggle and go down that rabbit hole. He’s done a good job of keeping working at it. It’s easier to smile when you see the results out there.”
After going through his work in the off-season, Walker was looking forward to seeing that work translate into immediate results during spring training. That didn’t happen, reaching the point where the Cardinals pulled him out of games for three days, having him work in their new hitting lab with Casey Chenoweth, the new assistant hitting coach.
It was Chenoweth who spent several days with Walker last season during a rehab assignment with Springfield. At the time the hitting coach for the Double A affiliate, it was really the first time he had worked extensively with Walker.
He came away impressed. When he and Walker started working together again this spring, Chenoweth had the same opinion, thinking back to what he saw Walker go through last July when they were together.
“He was there for a few days before the team went to Corpus Christi, and we had to use the opposing team’s cages,” Chenoweth said. “Navigating those time slots meant sometimes we had to come in at 9:30 in the morning for a 7 p.m. game. He showed up early every single time. He was willing to do body maintenance, physical prep work, that was going to help him with his swing before we ever swung a bat.
“He showed up, he was a super hard worker and he was diligent and focused. He asked me a ton of questions. We were able to have good dialogue and conversations. That was the only Jordan I had really ever seen.”
He saw that side of Walker again this spring, during their hours-long sessions in the hitting lab.
“Everybody was out there playing games getting their work in, and we hit the pause button (with Walker),” Chenoweth said. “It can be a little confidence letdown. But we tried to just highlight what he was really good at, what he was capable of doing, and what he can do. It was confirming what he already knew.”
One of the things they talked about was the lessons that Walker could take and apply to his game, and his life, even on days when the box score might show that he did not get a hit.
“So much of this game is failure based,” Chenoweth said. “You can fail over and over again. Learning how to flip the switch in the brain a little bit, and be like, ‘There was definitely good things I can do and build off so that tomorrow can be a better day.’
“The hardest part was everybody knew what he was capable of and everybody wanted him to succeed. Everybody wanted a piece of Jordan Walker. It really just came down to him; ‘How can I quiet the noise? How can I filter a lot of this stuff? Who can be in the situation to help me simplify things to the max?’, where he can just go out and feel free and play.
“He knows what he can do, what he is supposed to do, and his ability to commit and stick to his approach this year has been elite.”
What helped Walker get to this point, as he tried to quiet the noise and find the positives he could take out of even a bad day, were his conversations with his friends, Sprull and Wells.
“You are going to see the other side of the tunnel”
The friends don’t go very many days in a row without a phone call or at least an exchange of text messages. For Sprull, who works as a videographer in Atlanta, he views his role in their relationship as being someone who can help Walker get away from his struggles and think about something other than baseball.
“The hardest part (of the last two years) was the fact that people had their opinions on what he was doing or wasn’t doing, or how he was going about the game,” Sprull said. “I wouldn’t say he let it carry over too much into his personal life, and he was able to focus on what needed to be done.
“I played two years in college and have been a travel ball coach, but I can’t tell him, ‘You need to do this versus that.’ If he needs to talk about it, we can talk about it. I will listen. We can go hit, or throw, if needed. But I think it’s more helpful that I am able to talk to him about everything else, that we are friends more than just baseball related.”
Wells, who works for the MLS team in Atlanta, feels the same way about her friendship with Walker.
“He takes the time to still see how his friends are doing,” Wells said. “He’s not having this super fame take over and forgetting about us. He definitely is not one of those people. Honestly, I don’t see anything that has changed. We still see him like we were in middle school.
“At the end of last season in Chicago, obviously there were some ups and downs to the season for him but we laughed and he said he was really glad we were there. We just told him, ‘Hey you are going to see the other side of the tunnel. It might be a little bumpy right now. Your work ethic got you here for a reason.’
“I’m excited to see what the future holds for him. It’s so fun to see what each year has to bring.”
So far, this season has everybody around Walker smiling – a lot.
“One of the things I am most proud of as his dad is how he has handled everything,” Derek Walker said. “He had a high profile, and everyone is looking at you and seeing what I would call your ‘development growth’ in real time in front of millions of people. Most people don’t have that. They go to work, they have a bad day, they have a bad week, and no one knows that but them. He is out in front.
“To be somewhat the same person is great. It does weigh on him at times, because he’s human. I’m phenomenally proud of that; I’m not sure how many people, myself included, would handle it that way.”
Derek Walker knows what his role needs to be – he isn’t Walker’s coach anymore, he’s his father, and that sets the tone for all of their conversations.
“I know a lot of people come to me and say, ‘Hey can you tell Jordan this or that,’ Derek Walker said. “I say, ‘He appreciates it and wants you to continue to love him and root for him, but he has people he’s working with’ … He’s had a lot of voices (in his head) the last couple of years, and I think he’s been like, which ones do I take in and which ones do I not? Finding trusted voices is a large part of the journey as well.”
“Stay true to myself, what makes me good”
Walker had to spend what should have been his first season in pro ball at the Cardinals’ alternate site camp because Covid cancelled the 2020 minor-league season. He had only played a handful of games that spring during his senior year of high school before Decatur’s season, like those of teams all over the country, was canceled because of Covid.
When Walker, a third baseman back then, made his professional debut on May 4, 2021 for the Palm Beach Cardinals, he was nervous and excited. He knew he was a top prospect, he knew there were high expectations for him, but he thought he was ready.
Then, in his first at bat, he hit a home run.
It turned out the game wasn’t that simple; that all of his at-bats would not be like that over the next five years.
“The worst thing we do in this game, and we can’t help ourselves, is we pronounce guys stars before they even get here,” said a veteran scout. “Everybody struggles. You have to learn those lessons. The good ones figure it out.”
Walker’s quick rise through the farm system saw him promoted to the major leagues before opening day of the 2023 season and he started that day in right field – after only playing 31 games as an outfielder in his life.
Sprull and Wells were there for the March 30 game against Toronto at Busch Stadium, two months before Walker’s 21st birthday. They all went to dinner with Walker’s family after the game.
“It was a weird experience,” Sprull said. “We went back to his hotel room after dinner and hung out because we couldn’t go anywhere else because we were only 20 years old. When we left, I had to fly back home and go to class.”
Because it seems as if Walker has been around so long, it is easy to forget how young he was then – and how young he still is now – a month past his 24th birthday.
A couple of facts help put Walker’s age, and how much experience he already has, in perspective.
When Walker made his debut, he was only the 31st player in the Cardinals’ modern-day history, since 1945, to play his first game in the majors at the age of 20 or younger, the first to do so since Rick Ankiel in 1999. Over those last 81 years, there have been 2,192 players who have appeared in at least one game for the Cardinals.
There is also this: When Walker celebrated his 24th birthday, he had played in 329 games in the majors, accumulating 1,139 major-league at-bats. One of the players regarded as one of the best hitters in the game right now, Aaron Judge, did not play his first game in the majors until 3 ½ months after he turned 24.
“He could have been in the minors, getting more development, but he got major-league at-bats even while struggling and I thank the Cardinals for that,” Derek Walker said. “Triple A and the majors are not the same. To me, this is the payoff for that. The mental taxation of that, everybody can’t handle that, and I think you can crush a person if they clearly are not ready for it.
“I hope, and expect, that those years of development at the major-league level will pay great dividends going forward.”
Chenoweth believes that too.
“Regardless of the success or failure, he now has thousands and thousands of reps of pitches he has seen and the brain stores that information,” Chenoweth said. “Now he’s able to bridge that gap a little bit from everything he has learned, from everything he has seen before. All the failure, all the small successes, he can go back to that.”
The question that no one can answer is this: Would Walker be having the success he is having this season had the last two seasons not been so rough?
“You definitely do learn a lot going through it for sure,” Walker said. “The mental aspect of this game is so tough, and I underplayed it coming up through the minor leagues. Now I realize how much impact it has. It’s something you just kind of have to experience. You can never experience the big-league level until you get here … The problem with being in it (the struggles) is that you never really see the light at the end of the tunnel.
“Something I need to do is just stay true to myself; what makes me good. I have to keep the noise down as much as possible. I have to stay quiet in my own head. I can be pretty noisy in my own thoughts as well.”
He also needs to keep talking with Sprull, Wells and his close friends on the team.
“I’ve always known what kind of player he is,” Masyn Winn said. “He scuffled a little bit the last couple of years, but to see him doing what he’s doing now, nobody is happier for him than I am. It’s just fun to see him show up at the park in a good mood every day. I always reiterate to him that he’s the best we’ve got. He’s the best we’ve always had and it’s showing this year.”
Sprull watches Walker now, and he can’t help but remember their life together in middle school and high school.
“The most impressive thing to me about him is that he hasn’t changed at all from the time we were in middle school messing around until now,” Sprull said. “He’s the same person. When we hang out, you wouldn’t have a clue that he is a professional baseball player. He’s just a cool guy, hanging out.
“Being somebody that he could talk to was hopefully helpful. I always felt like my job as his friend was not to worry him about baseball. I don’t really know how I’ve helped him versus how he has helped me. He has always been there to help me. He might have helped me more than he knows. I’m grateful for it.
“There are times when you have stuff going on, and you might get a call from a friend. Even a couple of laughs will change your outlook on everything.”
If Walker had a chance to go back in time, before he played that first game in Palm Beach, and tell his younger self what the next five years were going to be like, what would he have said?
“There’s a tough road ahead,” Walker said he would have told his younger self. “This game is tough. You are going to have to find the positives in it. I don’t think anyone’s gone through a full season without going through some stuff.
“But these past two seasons, it was a little more than that. Try to make the game as simple as you can. This game is a lot harder than I ever imagined it would be.”
Follow Rob Rains on X @RobRains
Photos courtesy of Jaxson Sprull and Jane Wells and by The Associated Press
