The St. Louis Cardinals have Jordan Walker, who is an emerging star.
A Potential Star in the Making
On this day, 24 years ago, Jordan Walker was born. It feels like we’ve been waiting on him FOREVER!
By now we have bypassed the small sample size in many offensive statistics and should now be seeing numbers that are “stable”. The key one I’ve been waiting for? 200 PAs. We crossed that threshold earlier this week.
If you accept Goldy 2022 as comp, he racked up 6.8 fWAR and that is with a somewhat harsh positional adjustment, no? Walker plays RF, where the position adjustment is less and from the Statcast sheet, it appears his defense is rated better. Jordan will likely pick up a few runs in baserunning as well.
Improvements Across the Board
Each day that passes the answer seems to be leaning harder and harder to the “yes” side. Even as the season has unfolded, we have seen improvements. Defensively, baserunning, contact hitting and power.
Last year, we were surprised when he succeeded. This year, we look forward to his ABs.
Walker’s Impact on the Cardinals’ Future
What I want to venture into more is what does this mean for the Cardinal line-up, the future and the rebuild. The earlier article attempted to define what “more stars” meant, and I coined the term “Starz” to reflect my data-drive definition didn’t always comport with everyone’s subjective definition of a star. Remember that a Starz player is defined as one in the top 20th percentile of WAR.
When people say the Cardinals need more “star” players, they are correct. They need around 4 more (ie. 9, no