‘5-hit days are sick’: What Cardinals Jordan Walker takes from landmark game at Yankee Stadium (2024)

NEW YORK — In the ninth inning, as the Cardinals put the finishing strokes on a rock-’em, sock-’em rout in the Bronx, Kyle Gibson and a few other Cardinals tried to get the attention of the host Yankees’ bat boy on the other side of the field.

The baseball that had just come his way was the same one Jordan Walker roped to right field for his fifth hit of his day. The Cardinals wanted to be sure they got the souvenir for their young outfielder, and with the real baseball safely delivered, Gibson, the wily vet, palmed another ball from a nearby bucket and did a switcheroo. On the unremarkable ball, he wrote:

“J-Walk” and five hits.

“Sept. 2, 2024.”

“@ Citi Field.”

“Messed up everything I could, except his name,” Gibson said, grinning.

In Walker’s locker after the game, that scribbled-upon baseball sat beside the real one Walker hit for a home run Sunday — the baseballs providing a nice, knowing wink to an afternoon he and the Cardinals needed. The baseball that had everything wrong came from a win when almost everything went right. The Cardinals riddled the Yankees with a season-high 21 hits, had 10 RBIs with two outs and shattered a tie game with a late burst of offense for a 14-7 victory at Yankee Stadium.

Lars Nootbaar delivered the decisive, bases-clearing double in the seventh and added a two-run homer in the ninth. Paul Goldschmidt was one of three Cardinals with three hits, Luken Baker homered and four Cardinals had at least two RBIs.

In the midst of every rally the Cardinals had was Walker running. He became the first Cardinal with five hits since Matt Carpenter in July 2018 at Wrigley Field. At 22 years old, Walker is the youngest Cardinal with a five-hit game since 20-year-old Rogers Hornsby had one in June 1916.

That whippersnapper Hornsby probably echoed Walker’s sentiment.

“I think five-hit days are sick,” Walker said.

He could not remember ever having one.

The culmination of offense the Cardinals spent all summer searching for arrived in time to win a regular-season series for the first time at any version of Yankee Stadium. The Cardinals have not lost any of their previous four series — all of them against contending teams — and reach Milwaukee for an afternoon appointment Monday with four wins in their past five games. The three-day visit against the first-place Brewers is their last stand against the division rival and their next chance to claw back into contention with at least three teams to climb over.

To borrow from Walker: This September surge better be sick.

“They’re not going to give in,” manager Oliver Marmol said. “This was an important series, no different than the last one we just played, no different than the last one, the last one and the one we’re about to play. They’re going to show up every day with one thing on their mind. It’s: How do we win today? And if it goes our way, great. And if it doesn’t, we show up the next day. How do we win today? And we’re going to do that all the way to the end.

“When you look at the style of play right now, it’s a good one.”

What cost the Cardinals on Friday night against the Yankees and what’s stymied them all season is a lack of production — real, genuine thump — with runners in scoring position.

In August, the Cardinals hit .195 as a team with runners in scoring position. They had 12 extra-base hits all month with runners in scoring position. They nearly matched that on the first day of September. The Cardinals went 8 for 18 on Sunday with runners in scoring position, and five of those hits were for extra bases.

When the Yankees pounced on a fielding error in the fifth inning and a play not made in the seventh to erase the Cardinals’ five-run lead and tie the game, 7-7, the Cardinals answered immediately with a five-run seventh inning.

All five runs scored with two outs.

Four scored on extra-base hits.

Three on Nootbaar’s pivotal double.

“I loved our answer back,” Marmol said.

He adored who was a part of it.

If there are two hitters the Cardinals need to assist in this last-month dash, it’s right fielder Walker from the right side and left fielder Nootbaar from the left side. Both have struggled this season. Both have been relentlessly working on swing adjustments in the batting cage. Nootbaar has been trying to correct an angle in his bat so that he can restore the line-drive lift and get away from so many grounders. Walker’s adjustments have been more long-term and involved two trips to the minors this season where he could work on them. The prized prospect has been trying to unlock more long-range power by adjusting his stance at the plate and developing more loft on his naturally percussive swing.

Promoted in time to face the Yankees and promised everyday playing time, Walker struck out five times in the first two games, including three times Saturday. Every day, he would go through a batting-tee progression. As he saw the way the Yankees pitched him, he moved the tee around to simulate those pitch locations.

“They’re throwing up and in, low and away, up and away, way out all week,” Walker said. “I tried to get that ball (on the tee) pretty much anywhere.”

An inning after Victor Scott II’s running, leaping catch in the right-center gap turned what could have been a crooked number into a sacrifice fly that merely tied the game, the seventh began with Nolan Arenado’s walk. By the time the inning reached Walker, the Yankees had two outs and reliever Tommy Kahnle in. The right-hander challenged Walker with a fastball, and the young outfielder had seen that pitch in that location before.

He’d literally put it on a tee.

Different from the home run he launched to 422 feet to center in the fifth inning, Walker drilled the fastball to opposite way for a base hit toward right field. Arenado was unable to score on the hit, leaving the bases loaded for Nootbaar.

His turn to put the work from the cage into the box score.

“I was thinking about the swing too much before,” Nootbaar said.

Kahnle threw Nootbaar five consecutive change-ups to level the count 2-2 and then came back with another change-up. Nootbaar laced it to right field and over Juan Soto’s reach. Three teammates scored. Nootbaar looked to the dugout to celebrate. The Cardinals never looked back.

Walker added his fifth hit of the game with a single in the ninth and stole second to make Nootbaar’s two-run homer just another hit with runners in scoring position.

There were times the game was tipsy with flaws. Miles Mikolas committed his first error since 2018, and he faced five Yankees in the fifth inning but did not retire one. A few base-running mistakes cost the teams runs; a few fielding mistakes led to runs. But there were also moments of essential excellence.

Scott stole runs from the Yankees with his catch in the sixth. Lefty John King minimized the ruckus the Yankees caused in the fifth by coaxing a double play that allowed him to veer around Aaron Judge and get the third out from someone else. The Cardinals held Judge hitless in the game and 1 for 12 with seven strikeouts in the series.

“Nothing but positives,” Nootbaar said. “This game is so tough. When you feel something click or you start to feel momentum shift in your way, you can ride with that. For (Walker) to get five hits — they don’t come along very often. Right now, he’s got a blueprint of what he did today and how he can carry that on.”

And he’s got a baseball with all of the wrong information on it to prove it.

The real baseball from Walker’s fifth hit, Gibson assured the Post-Dispatch on Sunday evening, was safely with a team trainer. His ornate writing will be correct when he writes the events of the day on a memento that will go to Walker’s parents. That doesn’t mean the error baseball doesn’t have its place.

If anything, it’s an even better reminder.

“Wrong date,” Walker said, laughing and turning the faux souvenir over in his hand. “It’s super-sick though. Close enough for sure. (Reminds me) how fun this game is, and playing it brings me joy. Sometimes it’s hard, it’s hard to find. But in the end, I do enjoy playing the game. Stuff like this helps me remember that.”