MLB Mailbag: Jordan Walker, Cubs, Guardians, Tigers, Riley

Categories: Baseball

April 8, 2026

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?