This is a preview of the Joe Sheehan Baseball Newsletter, an e-mail newsletter about all things baseball, featuring analysis and opinion about the game on and off the field from the perspective of the informed outsider.
You can subscribe to the newsletter for one year for $79.95
using your PayPal account or major credit card. (Zelle users, please email me for details.)
--
Cardinals 6, Nationals 1
AB R H BI
Walker RF 4 1 1 1 HR
Is this finally happening? Jordan Walker’s fifth homer of the season, to the deepest part of Nats Park, was his fourth in five games. That includes a grand slam over the weekend in Detroit that landed somewhere north of Windsor. Walker is hitting .295/.367/.682, with a 14/5 K/BB and a 29% strikeout rate.
There are mixed signals in the underlying numbers. Walker is finally putting the ball in the air, with the highest flyball rate and lowest groundball rate of his career. What he’s not doing is hitting the best kind of fly balls, with a 3.3% pulled-flyball rate that ranks 247th among 265 qualified hitters. Digging into his swing data, you can see that he’s swinging “up” more, with an 8% attack angle that’s the highest of his career, without sacrificing swing speed to do it. This is what we’ve been hoping to see from Walker for a long time, him getting the ball in the air and letting his strength do the rest.
What you hope is that we’re in the middle of the process. Walker has adjusted his bat path to hit the ball up, and what will come next is catching the ball in front more often so as to hit more of those flies to the pull side. Walker has enough power to center and right to be productive hitting to all fields. It’s a tougher way to make a living, though. You want oppo power to be part of the mix without carrying the profile.
I think we’re seeing a hot stretch from a hitter who is still a work in progress. The 1050 OPS isn’t real, but the higher flyball rate is. Walker will vary widely around the mean this year but end up hitting .270/.335/.490 or so and finish the season as a completely new hitter compared to 2025, set to enter a extended peak a bit like George Springer’s (.274/.364/.491, 131 OPS+) from 25 to 29, or Derrek Lee’s (.288/.376/.530, 134 OPS+) at the same ages.
