The Wallner Brothers

[gbg]

Reading recent (and not so recent) discussions about Matt Wallner, it got me thinking and researching a hunch.

I think the diverging views around Wallner stem from the fact that there's really three Matt Wallners, and they each show up at different times. Let me explain.

Looking at his career (2022 - 2026) slash line splits by month, you get this:

April - June: .168/.314/.401 - .715 OPS

July - August: .242/.355/.566 - .911 OPS

Sept - October: .236/.347/.421 - .768 OPS

Interestingly, his strikeout percentage doesn't change all that much month to month, hovering between 30 and 35%.

Even with suspect defense, I think we'd all be happy with Midsummer Wallner patrolling RF. He'd probably be an All Star - only Judge and Soto had higher numbers among outfielders last year. But Spring Wallner is awful, and Fall Wallner is pretty much an average COF.

So far this year, we're not even getting Spring Wallner, but if you look at just his March/April career splits (.185/.307/.352), he's about one double away from almost exactly matching that (terrible) career stat line for that period. He's exactly what we'd expect him to be at this point in April. History says he'll heat up when the weather does, but in the meantime, it's going to be painful. And then he'll likely fade as the weather cools off again.

This is why there's so polarizing of views. If you love the hometown boy, you point to the MidSummer version and hope that he can turn it on year-round. On the other hand, if you went to kindergarten with him and he stole your lunch money, you point to the other months and are totally justified wanting him off the team.

Is he worth keeping for those two months of tater-mashing brilliance each year? 

[ashbury]

I've looked at Wallner's career splits more times by now than is probably psychologically safe, so I will just say that there are other splits than calendar months that worry me more about him.  For example, league-wide the pitchers b-r.com categorizes as "power" do a little better than their "finesse" counterparts, but Wallner's splits along that dimension are much more extreme.