Happy Wednesday,
Post-Dispatch sports columnist Ben Frederickson here. This week's questions will be answered below. Thanks, and please don't be shy about sending in any questions or comments you want to see tackled. Have a great rest of your week!Â
Got a question? Email me here (bfrederickson@post-dispatch.com) or find me on X (formerly known as Twitter) at and hashtag your question with #BF5.
Happy Wednesday, folks. Before diving into your questions, here are my latest Cardinals columns, in case you missed them . . .Â
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This week's spotlight goes to . . . Rob, via email. Like a lot of you, he wanted to talk about Jordan Walker. Hard to blame him. Glad he asked.
Q: Can someone please make the way the Cardinals have jerked around Jordan Walker make sense? Please?Â
µþ±ð²Ô¹ó°ù±ð»å:ÌýGood luck finding someone who can make it seem like it was handled appropriately. Even the explainers who cash checks from the Cardinals are having a hard time connecting the dots without prompting confusion or worse. It's not how you should handle a talented young player who you hope is a key to future seasons. Heck, it's not how you should handle any young player, period. Walker struggled this season and got sent down. Fine. It seemed like the Cardinals were a) not interested in trading him because they still highly value his career and b) committed to having him finish the season in Class-AAA Memphis because that was viewed as what was best for his long-term development. The Cardinals bringing on Tommy Pham, a corner outfielder, at the trade deadline only seemed to double down on that plan. But then Walker started hitting and sustaining success. And this is good news! But somehow the Cardinals turned it into a headache, one that could have long-term scar tissue with a talented player. It's simple. Either the Cardinals should have left Walker alone in Memphis, or committed to playing him once they called him up, at least until he proved he didn't bring his hot bat with him from Memphis. How many times have guys gotten that promotion and then gone on a tear? A lot. INCLUDING Walker, who did it last season. Lars Nootbaar and Nolan Gorman have been mostly bad this season. It didn't even have to be Walker over Pham. Remember, Brendan Donovan can play almost anywhere. If Walker shifted into a platoon role after some bad games upon his promotion, none of this would have been an issue. But there are plenty of examples of guys riding a just-promoted bump into some big games. The Cardinals didn't even try to hit on it. Weird. I figured that's why he was called up in the first place. To call him up and not play him much was a massive miscommunication, I think, between the manager and the front office. Because if Walker wasn't going to get starts, Luken Baker should have been called up instead. And now Baker is up, and Walker is, probably in his mind, punished for something he had no control over in the first place. It was bad, and the make-up move of redoing the promotion just makes it more absurd. Because when the Cardinals admit their fading hope of making the postseason is dead, which should happen any day now, they are going to need to bring Walker BACK and play him every day. Because that's how you take advantage of a shot season. None of it makes very much sense and the mixed messages reminds me of the dysfunction of the 2023 last-place disaster, whether it was the Tyler O'Neill saga or the temporary and ridiculous idea of playing Willson Contreras in the outfield the same season he signed on to catch. There have been too many reminders of 2023 lately, haven't there?