We’ll kick off the week with Monday’s minor moves from around the game… Projected Arbitration Salaries For 2022.We're just the lucky ones that get to watch the totals pile up for our favorite baseball team. Whatever happens, his power potential is going to give him plenty of opportunities to have a long Major League career. Whether Walker has a long-term future with the Twins, due to that aforementioned depth, is to be determined. It means they can give Walker all the time and attention they believe he needs to become as strong of a hitter as possible before he's dropped into the deep end. Fortunately for Minnesota, their outfield is in a pretty good position with talent like Byron Buxton, Eddie Rosario, Max Kepler, and even rebounding slugger Oswaldo Arcia in the mix. Wily Mo Pena will be the first guy to tell you that pitch identification and discipline will go a long way in determining what kind of a player Adam Brett Walker turns out to be for the Twins. "I’m telling you, raw power, the only guy I ever saw who hits ’em where Adam hits it when he gets one was Mark McGwire." But if he continues to learn what a pitcher is trying to do to him, and stays aggressive in the zone where ‘he’ likes the ball … "Obviously, with those strikeout numbers, Adam’s still in the process. "One of our coaches who had been in baseball a long time said, ‘Chad, that might be the farthest ball I’ve ever seen hit.’ "Adam hit one in a game at our park … there’s a berm that has to be 50 yards behind the left field fence, and he hit it over the berm," Allen said. These people all expect Walker to hit at least 25 home runs a year, and that would only improve with more discipline. For those unfamiliar with the 20-80 scale, 50 is average and 60 is considered a "plus" tool. The Twins' own list rates his power a 60.
Rating his raw power on the 20-80 scale, Kiley McDaniel gave Walker's raw power a 65. That's the danger for Walker.īut man.that power. As he climbs the ladder, the pitchers - and how good they are at getting him to chase low and outside of the strike zone - will just get better and harder to resist.īallooning swinging strike rates mean lower batting averages, less opportunities to create those extra-base hits, and therefor less run creation. He knows that he's tempted by balls low in the zone, because that's his sweet spot, but he also knows that this is where pitchers will try to challenge him. Going back to Reusse's article, Walker understands his challenges. His power is so prodigious that it overwhelms strikeout rates, pedestrian batting averages, and some very "meh" on-base averages.
No matter how we look at it, in spite of the massive red flags in Walker's game (perhaps just red flag, singular, since it's just contact we're really worried about) he's continued to produce offense at a rate worthy of a middle-of-the-batting-order hitter. By the measure of wRC+, which measures a hitter's run creation versus the league average, Walker has strung together marks of 118, 130, 111, and 125. Since wOBA is on the same scale as OBP, you'll understand that those numbers are excellent. 367 in his four years in the Minnesota system. Indeed, in spite of lackluster batting averages and less than impressive on-base numbers, the right-handed slugger has posted wOBA marks of. He collected 65 extra-base hits in 2015, and the next-closest player in that category was.oh hey, another Twins prospect - Max Kepler with 54.įanGraphs presents additional data, telling us how Walker performed versus the rest of his league. Yes, his home run and strikeout totals led the Southern League, but his 31 doubles was good enough for sixth. 254 career hitter in the minor leagues, Walker derives immense value by being an extra-base hits machine. He doesn't walk often enough to be considered an Adam Dunn-esque " Three True Outcomes" type of player but the draw is clear. That's a lot of home runs and, yes, a lot of strikeouts. He hit well enough in Double-A to earn a promotion to Triple-A this season, whether from Day One or a few weeks into the summer, and he's now a member of the 40-man roster. Long known to be of massive power potential and massive strikeout totals, Walker has been promoted to the point where he's just one phone call away from the Major Leagues. So Patrick Reusse reminded us on Friday in an article discussing one of the Twins' most enigmatic prospects.
In September of 2015, somebody asked Double-A Chattanooga manager Doug Mientkiewicz whose "best shot" goes further: Miguel Sano, or Adam Brett Walker? Mientkiewicz praised a number of Sano's traits before answering: "But best shot? Walker's goes farther."
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