Pirates Neil Walkers Return From Concussion Defied The Norm

The date was July 3rd. We had concerns.

Most Pittsburgh Pirates fans had concerns. Neil Walker was expected back in the Pirates lineup. It wouldn’t be out of the norm for a player to miss a game or two, but this was serious. Walker was returning after suffering a concussion against the Oakland A’s when Pirates RF Ryan Church collided with Walker in foul territory.

Walker’s season had been magical until that point. Big hits, his first big league homer, and shaving cream pies came fast and furious. But in that one moment in Oakland, California, it seemed like it could be lost. (Especially after reading a recent story by FanGraphs–we link it below.)

The hometown kid was enjoying the fruition of years of hard work in chasing his dream to be a major league ball player. In fact, Neil Walker was living the dream. He had been recalled from AAA Indianapolis after an unfortunate injury to Steve Pearce. Walker had played beyond most people’s expectations.

Cool stories like this one by Joe Starkey were all the rage.

"About two hours removed from his first major-league home run, the one that beat the Chicago Cubs on Tuesday night, Neil Walker took a call from his father.“Neil, Mom and I have a bottle of champagne ready,” Tom Walker said.“I’ll be right home,” Neil said.With that, the Pirates’ new second baseman said good night to his girlfriend and drove home, to the same Pine Township house in which he’d grown up rooting for the Pirates."

Neil Walker had turned into a solid baseball player. His production line stood at a solid .295AVG/.325OBP/.464SLG/.789OPS. His glove work at second base had been surprisingly average especially when considering he was learning the position on the job.

But in a post we did on July 3, 2010 we had questions…

"“Let’s trust he can return to the high level of play before his concussion. Yeh, I know, just what this Pirates team needed, another if. Yet one more thing to worry about this year…..” RumBunter"

Our worry was for naught.

It’s now Spring Training 2011 and we all know the answer to Walker’s return after his concussion in 2010. He finished with the second highest average at the second base position and he drove in 54 runs after the All-Star break which tied Albert Pujols among players in the National League.

But it was the fury with which Walker came back to the game he loved that was amazing. Walker returned strong with hits in six straight games after the concussion. Then in six games from July 17th to 23rd, Walker had sixteen hits. For the month of July, Walker slugged .462, had an OBP of .364 and hit .319.

He kept up the pace in the dog days of August when he slugged .491 with three homers, two triples and seven doubles. He slowed in September and October, but still hit four bombs. And an important sign that showed a patient approach, he put up his lowest strikeout (17) totals and his most walks (15) in 115 at-bats.

Walker had such a solid season, that he left most of us with no memory of what he had been through. We discussed his concussion in our interview series with Walker this winter:

"“Having a concussion is no fun, I felt like I was in a daze for about five days, loud noise, bright lights, moving too fast all made the headaches come back. But fortunately not doing much for about seven days, and the fact that it was only my first concussion all helped in getting back quickly and safely. I definitely feel like it would have gotten worse had I come back too soon.I can’t imagine playing a sport like football where you get your head banged around on a weekly basis, concussions are nothing to mess with. I do remember what happened in mine, but I was in a dazed state for days.” Neil Walker Pittsburgh Pirates 2B"

Walker would finish his rookie season with a line of .296AVG/.349OBP/.462SLG/.811OPS. In the 60 days after the concussion, Walker performed at a clip of more than .20 higher in OBP and more than .30 higher in SLG. Numbers that were significantly better than he performed prior to getting his first ever concussion. Of course, the small sample sizes worked in Walker’s favor but considering his strong performance prior to the concussion, we felt it was still worth noting that production historically doesn’t improve, but substantially works the other way.

Even using Walkers entire total season numbers show that Walker defied the historical dropoff reported in the detailed work Jeff Zimmerman did in his Fan Graphs article. (Linked at the bottom of this post.)

An interesting take we had on this was could Walker’s defense have been hampered by the concussion? The Fan Graphs article rightfully focused on the rather substantial reduction in slugging and on-base percentage of players returning from concussions. It would be interesting to see the same thing regarding defense, if only there was a statistic representative of the skill.