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Jordan Walker and Masyn Winn, the Cardinals’ 23-year-old rising stars, would meet and greet the faithful.

Winn, unmistakably, is a rising star. Statistically, he’s the best defensive shortstop in the National League. He’s sixth among NL shortstops in on-base percentage. And since the All-Star break, he’s hitting .329.

But come to think of it, Walker actually might not count as a rising star. Baseball journalists, like myself, indeed prematurely anointed him as one — the touted 6-foot-6 slugger debuted at age 20. But 830 at-bats into this thing, there’s still doubt.

All I want for Christmas is for Jordan Walker to become a star. St. Louis fans deserve one. And while Winn brings flair and smacks a lot of singles and doubles, it would be very cool to have a slugging star — a giant in the league — for years to come, as a role model and perennial All-Star.

But even the most faithful Walker followers might’ve wanted to walk away this summer. On June 22, he was hitting .210 with an absurdly low .562 OPS (on-base percentage plus slugging percentage). He’d only homered three times. Walker went on the injured list that day with appendicitis.

Since his return, in 70 at-bats entering Sunday, his batting average was fitting for St. Louis — .314. His OPS in that stretch was .803, which would be eighth-highest of NL outfielders for the full season. On Friday against the Cubs, the night before the fan experience at the Rawlings Experience, Walker uncorked three balls for hits — 107.9 mph, 111.4 mph and 111.7 mph, the latter sailing for a 434-foot home run, his first homer since May 17.

He’s resuscitating his promise.

He’s saving his career.

It’s too early to say he’s definitely a Cardinals starter in 2026 (which would’ve been a laughable sentence to hear during the sunny days of, say, 2023). But he’s playing his way into the outfield competition right now, along with Lars Nootbaar, Victor Scott II, Alec Burleson and even Ivan Herrera (Burleson and Herrera will likely play everyday, but with times at designated hitter and, for Burly, first base). Of course, it’s possible that Chaim Bloom, the executive who takes over the team in the winter, will move a player or players.

Now, regarding Walker, I admit you’ve been reading articles about his hitting optimism for years. Every month it seems, he’s working on this new tweak to his swing or this new motion to his leg kick.

But in three conversations with Oliver Marmol, spanning the past weekend, the manager spoke with conviction about Walker’s progress to the assembled writers.

“I would say that he is more committed to the plan than I’ve ever seen,� Marmol said Friday, just hours before Walker’s offensive showcase. “And that’s a really good thing, because I feel like, and I’m being very honest, I think there was a little bit of hesitancy in — (him) committed to it, not committed to it, committed to it. And we saw the inconsistency in play. And now there’s a full buy-in on what he needs to do in order to get to where he’s capable of. Now it’s a matter of continuing to run him out there and see what comes from it. But I think that the conviction behind what he’s doing right now gives us a much better shot of getting there.�

In May, the Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold detailed how the hitting coaches had Walker, essentially, show them the swing he truly wanted to swing. From there, the coaches could work off of that, not the other way around.

“That led to more key moments, because it opened up just more dialogue. …� Marmol said Sunday. “‘You’ve done it the way you want. Now let’s talk.’ … You have to give time the guy with the high ceiling. … But you have to be making some sort of progress.

“I felt like with Jordan, a couple months ago, we were stalling out — ‘I can’t point towards anything at the moment that says we’re headed in a better direction.’ That’s not the case anymore.�

For the season, Walker is hitting .240 in 246 at-bats, along with four homers and a .631 OPS.

And his strikeout rate is 30.5%, which is in the bottom 4% of all Major League Baseball players.

But since his return from the appendicitis, his strikeout rate dropped to 25%.

And he’s always had a powerful stroke — just one that hits too many grounders. For 2025, Walker is in the 99th percentile for bat speed on the stat site Baseball Savant, and he’s in the 87th percentile for average exit velocity.

“This is the first time I feel that he has 100% bought in to the process ...� Marmol said Saturday of Walker’s swing. “The path is better. The setup is better. It allows his body to move the way he actually wants to move without having to force it. I think that’s an important part of this. …

“There’s conviction behind the work. He’s had early success (since his July 18 return from the IL), which allows him to buy into that process a little better. Sometimes you buy in and you don’t have the early success and you start to doubt. He’s doubled-down on — ‘This is the direction that I want to go.’ We’re starting to see some quicker adaptation to what we want.�