We didn’t do an WNBA Tuesday piece last week for a few reasons, but after last night’s Golden State Valkyries’ victory over the soon-to-be-moving Connecticut Sun, we thought we’d chime in again—even though most of our NBA offerings has come true. The Valkyries now have a 4-2 record, good enough for a tie in the top spot among Western Conference teams. We’re not going to comment on roster management stuff, but we are going to look at the current roster and see who sabermetrically doesn’t belong.

The good news is that no one on Golden State roster has negative value six games in, although three players who have seen just 19 combined minutes all have 0.0 Win Shares, currently. Of the eight players with at least 90 minutes played so far this season, the “worst one” is guard Kaitlyn Chen with 0.3 WS. Thus, every regular is producing positively at this point, which is a good sign. Of course, the real value is determined by the Win Shares per 40 Minutes Played sabermetric statistic, which grinds all flukes down.

We’re also going to throw in the oft-injured Tiffany Hayes here into our nine-player discussion below, as she missed two games but is averaging more than 15 minutes player per contest, which is on par with those who have played all six games and been on the court for at least 90 minutes total. These are the core entities on the roster, and we’re dealing with big enough sample sets here to make a proper sabermetric analysis at this early point in the season. So, here are our player rankings for May 26, Ballhalla style:

  • Guard Tiffany Hayes: 0.240 WS/40, 20.0 Player Efficiency Rating (PER)
  • Guard Veronica Burton: 0.226 WS/40, 19.3 PER
  • Forward Laeticia Amihere: 0.213 WS/40, 20.2 PER
  • Center Kiah Stokes: 0.169 WS/40, 12.2 PER
  • Forward Gabby Williams: 0.157 WS/40, 19.1 PER
  • Guard Kaitlyn Chen: 0.138 WS/40, 15.2 PER
  • Forward Janelle Salaün: 0.126 WS/40, 13.6 PER
  • Forward Kayla Thornton: 0.119 WS/40, 12.0 PER
  • G/F Kaila Charles: 0.113 WS/40, 11.4 PER

If forward Cecilia Zandalasini (0.149, 22.1) can recover from injury and stay healthy, that would add another piece of the depth puzzle here. She’s only played in two games so far, although her sabermetrics in that smaller sample size are solid enough to put her in the middle of the starting lineup. Alas, she is not there yet, so the above list shows some interesting information, although again, the season is only 14 percent complete. There is a long way to go, and any player can rise and fall easily enough right now.

However … there is a clear pecking order here with the top five players, who all fit into a traditional starting lineup (two guards, two forwards, and a center). Stokes needs to improve on her overall efficiency: she is shooting just 37.5 percent from the floor at the moment, which is more than 10 percentage points below her career mark (48.2). We can expect, therefore, a statistical correction to that anomaly as the season progresses. Having that clear starting quintuplet in place is a key determination here, too.

Depth is always important, and the duo of Chen and Salaün are doing well enough in those immediate roles. However, Chen is getting the opposite statistical anomaly: she is shooting 50 percent right now from three-point range, which is 10 percentage points higher than her career number (39.1). Collectively, she shot just 31.3 percent from downtown in her four years of college ball, including just 35.4 percent in her best season—her senior year at Connecticut when she had a lot of talented teammates to help.

She will experience a lot of regression to the mean, eventually, and that leaves only Charles as a physically reliable backup off the bench in the backcourt. She’s okay, of course, but the Valkyries need more support for Hayes, who is often injured, and Burton, who was the team MVP last year and plays a lot of minutes. So, already see a new for better guard depth on this roster. Thornton is now in her age-33 season and never should have been an All Star last year when she was just tenth on the team in WS/40 (0.105).

Overrated based on her counting stats due to volume-driven production only, Thornton really should be seeing the floor as little as possible. This is where Charles again has to cover depth issues, hopefully with some help from Zandalasini. The final issue here, of course, is the lack of a decent backup center so Stokes can rest for a third of the game, at least. Iliana Rupert (0.159, 15.9 in 2025) played well enough last year; she has yet to see the floor this season. She is still rostered by the team, so she has to play now.

The team overall still lacks true star power, and that remains a flaw of the roster management: Burton is tenth overall in the league for total WS (1.0), but no other Valkyries player is in the Top 20. If the team truly wants to compete for a title, it will need at least one other player in the Top 20 there, if not two players—and no, Caitlin Clark is not in the Top 20, either, but her better teammate, Aliyah Boston (0.8, 16th) is. But we digress: you get the point. Golden State can’t rely only on Burton to carry them.

In fact, no Valkyries player resides in the Top 20 right now for PER, and that is a problem that needs to be remedied. Sometimes the Golden State game plan seems to rely on bombardment and bludgeoning of the other team with volume-based production, and that only works, generally, against lesser-talented teams. When facing teams with elite PER talent, the Valkyries struggle as their own efficiency isn’t very good. This is something we pointed out last year with three-point shooting, for one, and it still needs a fix.

For now, the schedule ahead is a mixed bag: the Indiana Fever come into town this week, after pounding Golden State in Indianapolis last week for their first-ever victory over the Valkyries. Then, it’s the defending champions coming to Ballhalla on Sunday for a matinee, so those are two games the home team will struggle to win with its current lineup and roster. After that, the seven-game Commissioner’s Cup stretch begins, and don’t get us started on the ludicrousness of that staged ridiculousness. Doh!

However, those seven games feature expansion Portland, Minnesota (away), Las Vegas (away), Phoenix, Seattle (away), Los Angeles, and Dallas. A quick glance at the next nine games, therefore, suggests the Golden State team might have a hard time even reaching four victories overall in the next four weeks of play. Time will tell, and we hope we are wrong; we know to never underestimate Head Coach Natalie Nakase, but she can only do so much with the roster she is given, and right now, it needs more.

Still.