Gunnar, Jordan heat up early in MLB
Gunnar Henderson leads MLB with his sixth home run early in the season, and Jordan Walker has gone on a tear —.393 batting average with five homers and 10 RBIs over his last seven games. ( ) Fans are also polling favorite parks as the young hitters draw extra attention on social channels. ( )
Gunnar Henderson and Jordan Walker reached six home runs by April 11, putting two young hitters at the top of Major League Baseball’s early power race. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Henderson hit his sixth homer Saturday in Baltimore’s 6-2 win over San Francisco, a 361-foot solo shot off Logan Webb in the third inning. Major League Baseball’s video feed listed it as his league-leading sixth at the time. (apnews.com, mlb.com) Walker matched that total later Saturday in St. Louis, driving a 428-foot homer to center against Boston’s Garrett Whitlock. Major League Baseball said the blast came in Walker’s 14th game of 2026. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Walker’s surge follows two difficult seasons. Major League Baseball reported that he hit 11 combined home runs over 162 games in 2024 and 2025, then opened 2026 with six in less than three weeks. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Henderson is coming off a different kind of reset. After hitting 28 home runs in 2024, he finished with 17 in 154 games in 2025, according to StatMuse and Baseball-Reference game logs. (statmuse.com, baseball-reference.com) The early April leaderboard is noisy, but the names matter. Henderson is 24 and already has an American League Rookie of the Year award on his résumé, while Walker is 23 and was once one of baseball’s highest-rated prospects. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Walker’s rebound has come with harder contact and fewer empty ground balls. Major League Baseball wrote this week that his problem in recent seasons was driving balls into the dirt, while this year he has been lifting them “through the outfield air” and into the seats. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Henderson’s start has looked more familiar to Baltimore. His player page lists 28 homers in 2024, and his April 11 shot against Webb gave the Orioles another sign that their middle-of-the-order power is back near its earlier level. (mlb.com, mlb.com) Social posts from Major League Baseball pushed both swings into wider circulation over the weekend, and fan chatter around favorite ballparks picked up alongside the highlights. The season is two weeks old, but Henderson and Walker have already forced themselves into the daily scroll. (x.com, x.com)
