“My hope is I can answer this question every day,” Marmol said. “I have no problem with that.”
It’s a good thing Marmol felt that way, because the questions came his way again after Sunday’s game.
In his first plate appearance on Sunday afternoon against the Red Sox at Busch Stadium, Walker sent another bolt into the St. Louis sky — demolishing a Brayan Bello cutter a Statcast-projected 432 feet over the wall in left-center field.
It was Walker’s seventh home run of the season, pulling him into sole possession of the Major League home run lead. It also extended his hitting streak to eight games, as the Cardinals fell to the Red Sox, 9-3.
Walker became the fourth Cardinals player in franchise history to hit at least seven homers in the team’s first 15 games, joining Mark McGwire (1998), Scott Rolen (2004) and Albert Pujols (2006).
As this hot stretch unfolds, Walker’s manager continues to praise his progress in compartmentalizing the difference between his preparation versus flipping the switch to game mode when the time comes.
“I think he’s in a really good spot when it comes to being able to separate those two,” Marmol said. “There’s a lot of work being put in. A lot of thought and intentionality to the cage work and the stuff on the field. But then, when the game starts, just being able to compete and be free with what you’re doing out there is the key to this.”
The effort to avoid overthinking in the batter’s box is a process that Walker contends still isn’t a finished product for him, despite the positive strides he’s made in this regard.
“It takes a lot,” Walker said. “And it still takes a lot. I don’t honestly think I’m there yet when it comes to completely shutting my mind off. It’s still difficult. It’s hard to do every at-bat. But I think … on the right track.”
After Walker’s torrid start initially saw him primarily punishing opposing left-handed pitching, his home run in Sunday’s second inning marked his fourth of 2026 against right-handed pitchers.
The splits leveling out isn’t an especially surprising development, given Walker’s balanced profile against lefties and righties throughout his big league career. But it’s noteworthy to see Walker fill a potential hole that one could look to poke through his current streak to deem it as unsustainable.
Whether he can keep it up remains to be seen, but there’s nothing complicated about his present approach. More than anything, Walker continues to attack hittable pitches in the zone with authority.
During Walker’s second-inning at-bat, Bello opened up with a sinker over the plate to get ahead, 0-1. Boston catcher Connor Wong appeared to want the next pitch to find the outside corner, but Bello’s cutter backed up into the middle of the zone — a mistake you simply can’t make to Walker right now with the way he’s seeing the baseball.
Walker expected another hard sinker — like the one Bello threw him to open the at-bat. But he credited, again, his preparation as the reason he was ready to make the necessary adjustment in a split moment when he saw the cutter in a good location to do damage.
“With the work I’ve been putting in with [assistant hitting coach] Casey [Chenoweth] in the cage,” Walker said. “Just being able to react to something I’m not sitting on if it’s a good pitch in the middle of the zone.”
The work is producing results. Just 15 games into the season, Walker has already exceeded his Major League home run total from a season ago.
He often produces a sheepish grin when asked about how much he’s allowing himself to take joy in his present success — because he understands how staying committed to his process is the way to ensure it isn’t fleeting.
“You can enjoy it when it happens,” Walker said. “But the main goal is to keep it going.”
