One More Look At the New Taijuan Walker

I didn’t expect to be writing about Taijuan Walker this close to Opening Day. I doubt that either he or the Phillies would have expected him to be in the rotation to start the season. Last year, Walker pitched his way out of the best rotation in the National League; three Phillies starters received Cy Young votes, and a fourth, Ranger Suárez, made the All-Star team. Just before Christmas, Philadelphia made an opportunistic trade for Jesús Luzardo and plans to promote Andrew Painter (the team’s top pitching prospect since, I dunno, Gavin Floyd?) around midseason.

Even with two years and $36 million left on his contract, the phrase “surplus to requirements” was invented for people in Walker’s position.

But when the end of March actually arrived, Suárez’s back was giving him problems. He’ll start the season on the IL, and back into the rotation goes Walker.

It’d be underselling things to say that Walker’s had a rough go of it in Philadelphia. He was signed in December 2022 to be a reliable no. 4 starter, and that much he accomplished in 2023. But when the playoffs rolled around, the Phillies dispatched their first two opponents before Walker’s turn in the rotation came up, and in Game 4 of the NLCS, manager Rob Thomson opted to go with Cristopher Sánchez in the first leg of a bullpen game.

Walker’s non-participation in the playoffs was a talking point among fans and local media in the winter of 2023-24, but it should not have been cause for concern in and of itself. Playoff baseball has changed dramatically in the past 15 years, and for most of that intervening time the Phillies were so bad only a real masochist would pay attention. A no. 4 starter in the regular season can be valuable without being good enough to pitch in the playoffs.

Some of the negativity around Walker isn’t his fault, but he didn’t make his life easier last year. In 2024, he had a 7.10 ERA and a 6.94 FIP in 83 2/3 innings. Out of 157 pitchers with at least 80 innings last year, Walker had the worst ERA, the worst opponent batting average, the worst WPA, the second-worst WAR, the second-worst FIP, and the third-worst K-BB%.

I have a great deal of sympathy for Walker’s plight, and I think he got a bad rap in 2023 for reasons that were mostly outside his control. But he was horrendous in 2024, beyond what any context could excuse. Philadelphia’s flaccid one-round exit from the postseason last year soured the mood around the team, and Walker’s head was among those that fans most wanted to see roll.

That didn’t happen, because nobody was going to trade for a guy with a 7.00 ERA and $36 million left on his contract, and while the Phillies shouldn’t throw good money after bad, nor should they just release a guy who has even a marginal chance of pitching effectively in the majors again.

I don’t expect that much from Walker in his return to the rotation, however long it lasts. But he is trying something different this year (how could he not?), and it’s worth exploring whether it could work.

First, I want to get into what went wrong in 2024.

Walker has never been the kind of guy who can blow hitters away just by dumping fastball-slider around the zone three times through the order. Spencer Strider he is not. Even when he was much younger, pitching in Seattle and Arizona, Walker’s fastball velocity was only average.

By the time he reappeared with the Mets in 2021 and 2022, Walker was throwing five or six pitches, including a four-seamer, a sinker, and a splitter, which was one of the best offspeed pitches in the game in 2022. The Phillies have an insatiable, bordering on indecorously avaricious, lust for pitchers who throw multiple fastballs. So not only did they sign Walker to a four-year contract, they had him lean into his cutter more.

In 2023, Walker threw his splitter more than any other pitch, and his three fastballs in roughly equal proportions. And it worked; he made 31 starts, won 15 games, posted a 4.38 ERA. Not spectacular, but perfectly acceptable for a back-of-rotation starter working behind Suárez, Zack Wheeler, and Aaron Nola.

Let’s leave Walker’s breaking pitches out of it for a moment. If you take his fastballs and splitter — which made up more than 90% of his total pitches thrown — Walker threw in two different velocity bands, and each band had two distinct pitches with distinct spin and movement profiles. You’re not going to get a huge amount of swings and misses that way, at least not throwing in the high 80s and low 90s, but it’s hard to square that arsenal up.

In 2024, Walker’s stuff backed up across the board, and his command went a little wonky. He lost a little bit of fastball velocity, but he started throwing his sweeper — one of his worst pitches in 2023 — not only harder, but more often. Walker induced less horizontal movement on his sweeper, and what’s worse, he also got less horizontal movement on his cutter.

One thing led to another, and all of a sudden, a four-pitch mix with distinct movement and velocity characteristics got smorshed into one five-pitch cloud of hittability.

Once everything blends together, hitters don’t have to judge speed and movement so much as they can just count on something in the high 80s coming in with a certain kind of movement.

What Walker’s done to combat that is to change up his repertoire. In spring training, he’s been throwing a slider with gyro movement, instead of a sweeper. The Phillies love a sweeper almost as much as they love a multi-fastball guy, but things were so bad last year that Walker is going back to the slider he was throwing with the Mets.

The results have been inconsistent. He was nails in his first three starts, earning rave reviews, but got bombed in his last two. On Monday, his performance inspired Philadelphia Inquirer columnist Marcus Hayes to run a review that led with Walker’s salary in the headline (always a bad sign) and his postgame meal in the lede. (An even worse sign, by the Iron Law of Steve Simmons’ Fictional Hot Dog Stand.)

I suspect that Walker’s preseason, like most, will end up being less predictive and revelatory than his detractors would have you believe. Will he stay in Philadelphia’s rotation once the Phillies have five other healthy starters? Probably not. But I’d also be shocked if his ERA didn’t come down substantially from last year. For four reasons.

First, I’d take the under on anyone who posted an ERA of 7.10 the year before. It’s almost impossible to be that bad two years in a row. Second, Walker is genuinely throwing harder than he did last year, even this early in the season. Does 92 mph vs. 91 mph make a world of difference? Perhaps not, but when that fastball velocity is being judged against a high-80s splitter, every fraction of velocity separation helps.

Third, Walker’s slider has similar velocity and horizontal movement characteristics to last year’s sweeper; maybe it’s a few tenths of a mile an hour slower. But he’s getting six inches more drop on it, which is huge. That’s enough movement to give his slider actual separation from his fastballs and splitter, which will make life harder on hitters no matter what’s coming.

And finally, Walker is getting a few more inches’ worth of movement on his cutter, which is behaving about the way it was in 2023. For me, it’s the weakest of Walker’s three fastballs, useful mostly to keep left-handed hitters from sitting on his four-seamer. But last year, opponents hit .435 off Walker’s cutter; at that point, you might as well not bother throwing it anymore.

But in 2023, with just those couple extra inches of glove-side movement, and without a stricken breaking ball wandering into its movement path, opponents hit just .276 off Walker’s cutter. That’s not going to get GIF’d on Pitching Ninja, but it’s a useful complementary pitch.

The Phillies probably won’t have to rely on Walker much this season, but based on last year’s performance, they probably would’ve preferred not to rely on him at all. If he can just keep them in games until Suárez comes back and/or Painter comes up, Walker could steal another win or two for his team. And that could make a big difference in a close NL East race.

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