Adam Walker Will Look Familiar to Milwaukee
The Milwaukee Brewers claimed outfielder Adam Brett Walker off waivers today from Minnesota. Walker, who just turned 25, was originally selected in the third round of the 2012 draft out of Jacksonville University.
Here’s a distillation of roughly all his virtues as a ballplayer:
As a professional, Walker has recorded 124 home runs in 2,449 plate appearances — including 27 homers this past season in 531 plate appearances for Triple-A Rochester. He has considerable power. Indeed, by at least one measurement, he has nearly the most power. Because, consider: his home-run figures are also accompanied by a number of walks and an even greater number of strikeouts. All told, roughly 45% of all Walker’s plate appearances this year produced one of those two outcomes. That’s an unusually high figure. Which means that Walker was left with relatively few opportunities with which to actually hit those home runs.
Here’s a table featuring Walker’s rate of home runs per batted ball at every professional level:
| Season | Level | PA | K% | Batted | HR | HR% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2012 | Rookie | 252 | 30.2% | 156 | 14 | 9.0% |
| 2013 | A | 552 | 20.8% | 393 | 27 | 6.9% |
| 2014 | A+ | 554 | 28.2% | 349 | 25 | 7.2% |
| 2015 | AA | 560 | 34.8% | 307 | 31 | 10.1% |
| 2016 | AAA | 531 | 38.0% | 276 | 27 | 9.8% |
| Total | — | 2449 | 30.4% | 1481 | 124 | 8.4% |
HR% denotes home runs as a percentage of Batted.
It’s not so common to discuss homers this way — that is, as a function of batted balls — so the reader might not have a great sense of what constitutes a strong showing by this measure. For the sake of comparison, here’s the entire collection of qualified major-league hitters in 2016 who recorded a higher mark than Walker’s career figure:
| # | Name | PA | K% | Batted | HR | HR% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | Chris Carter | 644 | 32.0% | 343 | 41 | 12.0% |
| 2 | Chris Davis | 665 | 32.9% | 347 | 38 | 11.0% |
| 3 | Khris Davis | 610 | 27.2% | 389 | 42 | 10.8% |
| 4 | Mark Trumbo | 667 | 25.5% | 443 | 47 | 10.6% |
| 5 | Nelson Cruz | 667 | 23.8% | 430 | 43 | 10.0% |
| 6 | Todd Frazier | 666 | 24.5% | 427 | 40 | 9.4% |
| Mike Napoli | 645 | 30.1% | 363 | 34 | 9.4% | |
| 8 | Edwin Encarnacion | 702 | 19.7% | 463 | 42 | 9.1% |
| 9 | Brian Dozier | 691 | 20.0% | 477 | 42 | 8.8% |
| 10 | Kris Bryant | 699 | 22.0% | 449 | 39 | 8.7% |
| 11 | Adam Duvall | 608 | 27.0% | 388 | 33 | 8.5% |
| 12 | David Ortiz | 626 | 13.7% | 451 | 38 | 8.4% |
| Yoenis Cespedes | 543 | 19.9% | 371 | 31 | 8.4% |
HR% denotes home runs as a percentage of Batted.
Of 146 qualified batters.
That’s 13 hitters out of over 140 qualifiers — or, less than 10% of the entire sample. Walker’s 2016 home-run rate was beaten by only five qualifiers this year — or, less than 5%. That’s rare power.
For how rare it is throughout the league, it’s actually not as rare in Milwaukee. The highlighted rows in the second table illustrate why: one of them (Chris Carter) denotes a current member of the team; the other one (Khris Davis), a recent member of the team. Carter and Davis are basically only two of five hitters this season to have done one a major-league field what Walker did on a bunch of minor-league ones. There are more nuanced ways to discuss Adam Walker, of course. If pressed for time, however, “younger Chris Carter” or “bigger Khris Davis” will mostly suffice.
Carson Cistulli has published a book of aphorisms called Spirited Ejaculations of a New Enthusiast.
That swing screams Chris Carter. It feels like he’s just laying the bat out there, and it goes 400 feet.
the key for that kind of hitter is plate discipline. he is going to miss inside and outside the zone but on average outside contact is about 20% lower than inside the zone.
guys like adam dunn made it work because they did not swing outside the zone. he would still miss a lot but at least he did not further lower his contact by going outside of the zone.
i have not seen him but his minor league walk rates are basically average which is not great for a 30+ bomb guy with contact issues.
it can be done, c. davis went from average walks to excellent walks later in his career but the odds for a mid 20s guy to developee that skill are not great.
of course we live in a high power low on base era (like half of the HR leaderboard this year had an obp of just over 300- Tomas, Frazier, Carter, Kemp, trumbo, K Davis, Duvall…) so if he has real usable grade 65+ game power he could have some mlb role but Im still not overly exited about his profile.
Walker struck out about 10% less than Carter did in the minors. Walker is on a whole different level in the strikeout department.
On top of not being able to hit for average or get on base, he also can’t play defense. The ONLY thing he has going for himself is HR hitting.
I meant Walker struck out about 10% MORE than Carter did in the minors.