Christian Walker Hasn’t Fixed the Astros’ First Base Problem

When the Astros signed Christian Walker to a three-year, $60 million deal in December, it felt like a reasonable solution to a longstanding problem. The Astros have rarely gotten good production from their first basemen in the past decade, and while Walker hasn’t quite been All-Star caliber, in recent years he’s generally provided solid offense with exceptional defense for the position. So far this season, he’s struggled mightily, which unfortunately for the Astros has come at a time when other key players have also failed to hit, and the rotation has weathered numerous injuries as well.

Last year, Walker hit .251/.335/.468 (119 wRC+) with 26 homers and 3.0 WAR for the Diamondbacks, while over the past three seasons, he averaged 32 homers, a 120 wRC+, and 3.6 WAR; his 2024 shortfalls mainly owed to his missing a month due to an oblique strain. Even with time missed, that 2024 production looks like the second coming of Jeff Bagwell next to the .226/.291/.360 (87 wRC+) performance of Astros first basemen last year, with 18 homers but -1.4 WAR, a total that was somehow not quite as bad as the first basemen of the Rockies and Reds. Starter José Abreu crashed and burned and was released in mid-June despite only being about halfway through his three-year, $58 million deal. Thereafter, Jon Singleton did the bulk of the first base work, sharing the job with Yainer Diaz and Victor Caratini on days when one or the other wasn’t catching. It wasn’t great, but it at least stopped the bleeding in that Abreu alone produced -1.5 WAR, while the rest — a group that also included Zach Dezenzo, Mauricio Dubón, and three players who made a single appearance at the position — netted 0.1 WAR.

As Michael Baumann pointed out when Walker signed in December, first base has been a multiyear problem for the Astros. During the 2022-24 span, only three teams had lower WARs at a single position — right field for the White Sox, Rockies, and Pirates — than the Astros’ -2.7 WAR at first. Over the past decade, Yuli Gurriel was the only Astros first baseman to exceed 2.0 WAR in a single season (he did it twice), and five times in the past six seasons, the team’s regular or co-regular first baseman finished with negative WAR.

Unfortunately through the season’s first eight weeks, the 34-year-old Walker has fit right into this pattern, hitting .199/.268/.333. Of course, he’s not the only position player from our Top 50 Free Agents list who changed teams this past winter and has struggled:

That’s seven out of 14 who are below replacement level nearly one-third of the way through the season, and nine below league average in terms of offense. Walker’s production — and contract — looks even worse when compared to that of the man he originally replaced in Arizona. Goldschmidt, who is 3 1/2 years older, hit for just a 100 wRC+ last season, and settled for a one-year, $12.5 million deal with the Yankees, which right now looks like a fantastic bargain.

Walker’s season has already included some ups and downs, in that he had a three-week period where he appeared to emerge from his slump. These are arbitrary endpoints, chosen to illustrate the contrast between these unequal segments of his season:

Shortly after that hot streak ended — really, before anyone figured out that it had ended, just that he’d had back-to back hitless games for the first time in four weeks — Walker sounded as though he believed the worst of his bad start was over. “I had to remind myself [that] my swing isn’t broken,” he told MLB.com’s Brian McTaggart on May 13. “I’m feeling good, feeling much more competitive. Feeling like I’m helping the team more, which I love. Overall, I feel like it’s trending in the right direction, for sure.”

More from McTaggart:

When he was struggling at his lowest points, Walker felt he was getting too “pushy” with his hands, which means he was pushing his hands off his body instead of pushing down in the zone before working the bat up through the zone. He said nothing was clicking or making sense.

“And it was just a matter of which drill, which feel, which thought in the box is all going to make that come out,” Walker said. “You can get the cage work feeling good, but trying to take something applicable into the game, into the box, that keeps you in the moment, keeps you reactive, but also gives you a home. Whatever is clicking right now, the feeling, I’m sure it will change a little bit, but I’m definitely feeling better, for sure.”

Unlike, say, Trevor Story, whose current offensive stats are notably out of whack relative to his track record just about everywhere one could look, Walker’s overall 2025 numbers generally don’t offer glaring contrasts to what came before. That said, most of the comparatively subtle differences show setbacks rather than improvements. His 50.2% swing rate is up about two points over last year. His 27.9% chase rate is up nearly four points from last year and is his highest mark since 2020. His 74.9% contact rate and 12.5% swinging strike rate are his worst marks since 2021, the year he hit for just an 88 wRC+ in 115 games. His swing decisions, as measured by Robert Orr’s SEAGER metric, have gotten worse. Where he ranked in the 95th to 99th percentile in SEAGER annually from 2022–24 — which is to say, he was exceptionally good at identifying and swinging at the pitches with which he could do real damage — he’s down in the 60th percentile now. As a result, Walker’s 6.8% walk rate and 27.8% strikeout rate are his worst marks since he became a regular in 2019; his walk rate has dropped 3.2 percentage points from 2024, while his strikeout rate has gained 3.7 points relative to last year and (gulp) 8.6 points relative to 2023.

A look at Walker’s bat tracking metrics show that he’s lost a bit of bat speed, dipping from an average of 75 mph (with a 52.8% fast swing rate) last year to 74.1 (with a 40.6% fast swing rate) this year. Those are averages, and a check of his monthly splits shows that he dropped to 73.7 mph in March and April before rebounding to 74.6 this month. Not that it has correlated with improved production, at least based on his monthly splits: .196/.277/.355 (82 wRC+) through April, and .203/.256/.304 (58 wRC+) so far in May.

Checking out the brand new swing path metrics that Statcast rolled out earlier this week — call this a test drive, as it’s the first time I’ve played with these — the numbers show that the average tilt of Walker’s swing has flattened by one degree overall relative to last year, from 30 degrees to 29. That isn’t damning in and of itself, and may have more to do with where he’s being pitched than some mechanical issue. Meanwhile, he’s actually improved his ideal angle of attack rate — the frequency with which his bat is angled between 5 and 20 degrees at the point of contact — from 46.9% last year to 55.2% this year. Again, that doesn’t line up with his level of production, though within this season’s numbers, he had a slightly higher rate in his less-terrible March/April (56.7%) than his woeful May (53.3%).

Note that I also tried lining up these new metrics with the arbitrary endpoints above that showed shifts in his production. The most revealing split I found was that during this dire recent stretch that began on May 12, he’s averaged 75.6 mph with his swings, compared to 73.1 mph during his good stretch, suggesting he may need to dial it back just a bit.

Back in more familiar analytical territory, I see two glaring differences that are cutting into Walker’s production. First off, he’s taken just 27 plate appearances against lefties and has hit .087/.185/.130 — that’s two hits, a single and a double, plus three walks. His 13.1% share of PA against lefties actually stands out more than that grim slash line, because it isn’t as though he’s platooning; he’s started 49 of the Astros’ 50 games at first, and gone the distance in 44. The Astros have taken a major league-low 258 PA (13.9%) against lefties; the next-lowest team, the Angels, has 290 (16.1%), and the third-lowest team, the A’s, has 370 (19.6%). Like most righties, Walker hits better against lefties; from 2022–24, he batted .264/.350/.492 (128 wRC+) in 480 PA (25.5% of his total), compared to .245/.325/.478 (118 wRC+) against righties. He’s missing out on an important portion of his offensive diet.

The other thing that really stands out in Walker’s 2025 stats relative to recent years is that he’s suddenly struggling mightily against four-seam fastballs:

Walker’s production against the heaters was pretty consistent from 2022-24, with his drop-off from ’23 to ’24 more a correction relative to his expected stats than a true decline; his xwOBA against them in 2024 actually improved by 35 points even as his wOBA fell by 28 points. In terms of Statcast run value, he’s dropped from nine runs above average last year (and 35 above from 2022–24) to four below average this year. His performance against changeups has declined notably as well, from a .328 AVG/.656 SLG in 2024 to .158 AVG/.263 SLG in ’25, with a Statcast run value drop from six above average to two below.

On the subject of expected versus actual numbers, Walker’s quality of contact has fallen off just a bit, but it’s still pretty good. What’s really changed is the gap between his actual and expected numbers; check out the drops in his percentile rankings:

Walker outdid his xSLG last year by 11 points, but this year, he’s 74 points short. Likewise, he was eight points short of his xwOBA last year, but is 41 points short this year; he’s in the 19th percentile in terms of both of those gaps, which have increased during this latest slump. Since May 12, he’s averaged a 93.3 mph exit velo with a 20% barrel rate, 53.3% hard-hit rate, and a .309 xwOBA (that recent 30.4% strikeout rate is really cutting into his production), but has just a .161 wOBA over that span.

It bears noting that while Walker is pulling the ball more often, both in the air (22.3% vs. 19.2%) and overall (44.6% vs. 41%), he’s playing in a less favorable park for righties except when it comes to home runs (thank you, Crawford Boxes), at least according to our 2024 park factors by handedness, which are based on five years of data:

Fewer lefties, a drop in bat speed, trouble with four-seamers, a less favorable ballpark, perhaps some bad luck — all of these factors are cutting into Walker’s production, and they’re adding up at an inopportune time for the Astros. Yordan Alvarez has hit just .210/.306/.340 (78 wRC+) and has been out since May 2 due to a muscle strain in his right hand. Jose Altuve, who homered twice in the Astros’ 9-2 win over the Mariners on Thursday, is hitting .243/.296/.370 (89 wRC+) and hasn’t clicked in his new position, left field (-6 DRS, -2 FRV), and the team’s second basemen — mainly Brendan Rodgers (26 games) but also Dubón (15 games) and Altuve himself (10 games) have combined to hit .216/.280/.284 (63 wRC+) in that role. Meanwhile, within the past week, Hayden Wesneski learned that he needs Tommy John surgery while Ronel Blanco has been sidelined by a bout of elbow inflammation, running the team’s total of injured starters to six.

That the Astros are somehow 26-24 with a 56.6% chance of making the playoffs despite that litany is actually somewhat impressive. Still, this is a team that’s depending on its two oldest position players (the 35-year-old Altuve and Walker) and a superstar with a hand injury to turn things around while having two green rookies in the rotation (Colton Gordon and Ryan Gusto) as well as Lance McCullers Jr., who recently returned from a 2 1/2-year absence due to injuries. For all of their recent success, nothing is guaranteed for these Astros — or for Walker.