This week’s mailbag gets into Jordan Walker‘s hot start, the Cubs’ approach to Cade Horton‘s season-ending injury, the future of the Guardians, and slow starts for the Tigers as well as Braves third baseman Austin Riley.
Sam asks:
I know it way too early to ask this question I cannot help it. Jordan Walker has a 183 wRC+ and is on pace for 39 HRs is he has 456 ABs (ZIPS AB projection). He will cool off a bit—at least. But say he has finally arrived (met his potential, however you want to call it) and settles into being a 130-135 wRC+ and 30-35 HR hitter, how do you think that impacts the Cardinals’ short and long term outlook with their rebuild?
Walker, 24 in May, sits at a 181 wRC+ through 44 plate appearances after hitting a solo home run in five trips to the plate Tuesday at Nationals Park.
I pulled up the wRC+ leaderboard last year through April 6th, with a minimum of 40 plate appearances. Here’s a list of the top 20, first showing their wRC+ through April 6th and then showing what it was for that player for the rest of the season.
- Aaron Judge – 246 / 202
- Kyle Tucker – 224 / 126
- Kristian Campbell – 207 / 63
- Tyler Soderstrom – 206 / 119
- Jackson Merrill – 201 / 108
- Spencer Torkelson – 193 / 112
- Anthony Volpe – 192 / 75
- Corbin Carroll – 181 / 136
- Nolan Arenado – 178 / 75
- Kyle Schwarber – 178 / 151
- Lars Nootbaar – 171 / 90
- Alex Bregman – 166 / 121
- Fernando Tatis Jr. – 164 / 129
- Sal Frelick – 162 / 110
- Heliot Ramos – 159 / 103
- Brendan Donovan – 157 / 115
- Jose Altuve – 155 / 111
- Teoscar Hernandez – 153 / 97
- Eugenio Suarez – 152 / 123
- Jazz Chisholm Jr. – 150 / 124
- Jordan Westburg – 149 / 110
- Shohei Ohtani – 148 / 174
- Andres Gimenez – 147 / 60
- Julio Rodriguez – 144 / 125
- Nico Hoerner – 138 / 108
- Jackson Chourio – 136 / 109
- Seiya Suzuki – 135 / 121
- Lawrence Butler – 134 / 93
- Rafael Devers – 134 / 135
- Brice Turang – 134 / 123
Walker came into the 2026 season with 1,039 Major League plate appearances and an 89 wRC+. Every player is different, but the best comp here might be Torkelson, even though the latter had a little more experience and success in his career to that point. But I’d say the range of rest-of-season outcomes on Walker remains very wide: this could be nothing, or a full breakout. Sorry, the truth is often boring.
I also think it’s worth asking whether Walker has hit like this in the Majors before. For that, we use the Stathead Span Finder. I’m not a huge OPS guy, but that’s probably the best “overall offense” stat in this tool. Walker’s OPS is currently 1.014, spanning 11 games and 44 PA. He has had a couple of streaks at least this good, basically in June and August of his 2023 rookie season:
- 6-6-23 to 6-18-23: Walker hit .395/.477/.789 (1.267 OPS) with 4 HR in 44 PA
- 8-22-23 to 9-5-23: Walker hit .432/.488/.838 (1.326 OPS) in 4 HR in 43 PA
Even in his lousy 2025 season, Walker had a 43-PA July run where he hit .342/.419/.500 (.919 OPS) over 43 PA, though he did not homer during that streak.
What kind of evidence is on the breakout side of the ledger?
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