Janek on the cusp of promotion to hometown team

This story was excerpted from Brian McTaggart’s Astros Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

HOUSTON -- Walker Janek’s baseball life could come full circle later this summer if he continues to make strides in his first full season of professional baseball. Janek, the Astros’ No. 3 prospect, grew up in Corpus Christi, Texas, and saw future Astros stars like Jose Altuve and Alex Bregman compete for the Corpus Christi Hooks -- Houston’s Double-A affiliate.

Janek was hitting .284/.352/.422 with seven doubles, two homers, 10 steals and 14 RBIs in his first 27 games at High-A Asheville, which is where he began his pro career last year. He played in 25 games for the Tourists in ’24 and slashed .175/.214/.289, so he’s made significant progress at the plate. So much so that he could get promoted to his hometown at some point.

“I do love seeing him have success,” Astros senior director of player development and performance science Jacob Buffa said. “I think it’s important to have a stretch of success where, when they experience failure at some point -- because everybody will -- they have enough confidence and enough historical performance to not let it shake them. I think that’s similar to where Walker is at. Absolutely, he’s someone who, if he continues to perform, he could see Corpus this year.”

Janek is a strong defender whose best tool is his throwing arm, which rates as a 65 on the 20-80 scouting scale. The Astros had him ranked in the top 10 on their Draft board a year ago and were thrilled to get him with the No. 28 overall pick from Sam Houston, where he hit .368/.480/.714 with 17 home runs and 13 stolen bases as a junior.

After his poor start at the plate last year, the Astros worked with him on improving his pitch selection. He makes hard contact from the right side, but swinging at better pitches has improved his contact rates. Last year, he had 30 strikeouts and four walks in 103 plate appearances; he has 26 strikeouts and 11 walks through his first 122 plate appearances of 2025.

“The thing we’ve been most happy with and his big focus was basically on pitch selection and swinging at the right pitches and chasing a little bit less,” Buffa said. “That’s not an easy thing to do, but he’s definitely done it, which I think is a huge contributing factor to his uptick in production.”

Getting players to swing at better pitches early in their professional careers is difficult because the hitters are seeing pitches they’ve never seen before. They’re learning what a sweeping slider looks like, what 90 mph cutters look like. Once that part of the education is in place, it’s about shrinking the strike zone.

“I think a lot of hitters, coming into the system -- Walker included -- think ‘I’m a good hitter. I can cover the entire zone,’” Buffa said. “In college, maybe that was true, but most of the time that’s not always the case. There’s going to be some subset of the zone that’s going to be weaker than another. We want to get hitters OK with saying, ‘OK, if that’s not my pitch, that’s not the one I want to offer at. If I want to offer and hit one, then this is where I need to look.’”

Janek has been as good as advertised behind the plate and is one of the best catching arms the Astros have had in their system in a long time. He’s thrown out runners at a high clip despite the sporadic command of younger Minor League pitchers, who are often slow to the plate because they’re working on stuff with their delivery or focused on location.

“It’s framing and being able to beat the ball to the spot and certain parts of the zone and shore up the framing on some of those edges is going to be helpful to him,” Buffa said. “By no means is he bad. The more accurate your pitchers’ locations are, the easier it’s going to be. So they have a really tough job, but that’s always going to be something that we’re going to focus on.”

Walker threw out 34 percent of base-stealers in his career at Asheville. Buffa said Walker has been “extremely studious” and has been a sponge when it comes to digesting information, including what pitches each pitcher throws and when they throw them.

“I think that’s a big part of every catcher’s development, but especially for someone like Janek who has the potential to be a leader and a higher-end producer,” Buffa said. “That’s going to be important for him.”