Collette Calls: Walker in Memphis; Does He Have a Prayer There?

Jordan Walker put on his blue suede shoes and boarded a plane to Memphis on Tuesday as the Cardinals once again sent him back to Triple-A. Walker was sent to Memphis on April 23rd of last year despite hitting .274/.321/.397 (but with an impatient approach) in a clear manipulation of service time. The demotion he received on April 24th of this season comes as he was walking more often, but a .155/.239/.259 line with zero homers in 67 plate appearances was the reason behind the move this time around. 

Walker was the 27th outfielder taken across the 228 RotoWire Online Championships this spring, with an ADP of 113, a minimum of 73 and a maximum of 216. Walker is not alone in his struggles this season, with several high profile names off to tough starts, but Walker's struggles are notable given he looked much better after his demotion last year, hitting .277/.346/.455 the rest of the season with a more disciplined approach. Our optimism was also buoyed when Walker hit .286/.356/.470 over the final two months of the season with a 9.6 percent walk rate and a 22.1 percent strikeout rate, even though that included just seven home runs.

Now we stare at an empty hole on our rosters, and many in the RotoWire OC format are likely faced with the tough choice of cutting someone taken as high as the seventh round simply due to poor performance and not injury. I'm with you, albeit in a 15-team league where I'm already dealing with the loss of Seiya Suzuki, Cody Bellinger, Shane Baz, Nick Pivetta and Framber Valdez, and our league only allows for eight non-active players on the overall roster. I am hopeful my own look into Walker can help you make your roster decision easier for you this weekend as you decide whether to ride out the demotion or cut and run to the next option.

It should be noted that Walker is not even the only St. Louis player struggling, as Victor Scott II was also demoted along with his .085/.138/.136 line over 65 plate appearances. Laughably, that isn't even the worst line for a regular this season, as Jose Abreu is still carrying a .065/.132/.081 line and his -37 wRC+ is the worst of any full time player in the league at the moment. Walker has the 25th-worst wRC+, but at least 43 is a positive number even if it is still 57 percent worse than league average in this current depressed run environment. He was just slightly worse than two former St. Louis outfielders in the now-injured Lane Thomas (44) and the slumping Randy Arozarena (46). Walker was certainly not alone in struggling offensively in April, so why demote him now? 

Despite St. Louis struggling, their 11-14 record still has them in the picture in the NL Central, so perhaps the club has some postseason aspirations and is looking to kickstart a struggling offense. After all, they are now starting Mike Siani in the outfield, whom they claimed off waivers from Cincinnati just last season and whose best chance to reach first thus far is via the walk. Simply put, they need to generate offense with multiple players off to slow starts and could not afford to carry Walker's empty bat, so they sent him to Memphis to work on making adjustments. Not everything was terrible this month for Walker, as his average exit velocity and barrel rate were still in the top 20th percentile for the league, but that's where there positive statements end as everything else was around league average or much worse:

Where to even begin with the weirdness that is Walker this season? He is a right-handed batter who hit 140 points better against righties (.195) than lefties (.059) this season and has a 72-point split in favor of righties for his major-league career. I see that and remember a conversation with a scout at the Arizona Fall League who pointed out as we stood on the concourse watching a game that Walker's front footwork could cause issues with lefties who worked him inside out. This is why scouts will never be replaced by computers, because that is indeed how things have played out thus far. I am no hitting coach, but in watching some of the video clips at MLB.com, it certainly plays out, as Walker's front hip was halfway to Memphis on this so-so breaking ball from Andrew Nardi:

Then you see offerings like this where, when up in the count 1-0, he either saw the best pitch tunneling in the history of baseball from Spencer Turnbull or was simply guessing fastball and committed to swinging at a slider that finished halfway in the other batters' box:

To say that Walker is just in between things would be kind, because his batted-ball outcomes were rather predictable in that he was either beating things into the ground or popping them up. Line drives were nearly non-existent in his profile, as he had but two of them this season:

It's not unusual for top prospects to struggle, but what we have seen from Walker this season after investing serious draft capital in him is quite concerning. Walker essentially has a full season of baseball under his belt for his career, and a .262/.329/.423 line with a 107 wRC+ is very respectable, especially for someone who has yet to celebrate his 22nd birthday. He has succeeded (and failed) at the big-league level at an age where most of his peers are still riding buses between minor-league cities in either of the A-level classifications of the minor leagues. I was at a minor-league game in Kannapolis this week where most of the roster was older than Walker. 

My personal belief is that Walker's struggles are related to the fact that he's never really had to deal with failure. He was the 21st-overall pick of the 2020 draft and has been a top-100 prospect ever since donning a professional uniform. He lit up the AFL, he lit up the Grapefruit League, and he's hit .301/.383/.510 in a minor-league career in just over 1,000 plate appearances. The only true struggle he's experienced before this season was the 135 at bats he had in Memphis last spring where he hit .239/.348/.398. Walker was in the majors before he was legally allowed to purchase alcohol because of how successful he had been to that point, but those 29 games in Memphis last year was the only time we had seen him handle any professional adversity. 

Walker bounced back from that demotion last year to have a productive 2023 summer, and the hope is Walker can once again do that this season. Last year's demotion was more about service-time manipulation, whereas this year's demotion was certainly earned. The hope is that he can get realigned in Memphis, where the games are more about process improvement than wins and losses, and come back to St. Louis to repeat his productive summer performance from last season. Fantasy managers just have to hope that process doesn't take too long, as most are likely already carrying multiple struggling or injured players on reserve spots this season.