Taijuan Walker wasn’t going to keep the goose egg earned run average forever — but things certainly escalated quickly.
And unfortunately when it comes to the right-handed pitcher, if it rains, it pours.
The Giants entered Monday night with the second-best winning percentage in the Majors — and in his first real test of the season — Walker faltered in the Phillies’ 10-4 loss at Citizens Bank Park.
The club is now 9-7 on the season and have dropped four of their last five games.
Walker entered the second frame with early run support, an infrequent occurrence through the first 16 games. It was flushed away in a blowout inning from the Giants, who batted through the order and put up six runs.
One play goes differently and the Phillies would’ve gotten out of the inning allowing just one run and still holding the lead. Instead of a double play, a throwing error from Walker sent the ball into shallow center field and play continued.
What happened next gave flashbacks to 2024 Walker with the domino effect in place. He gave up home runs to Tyler Fitzgerald and Willy Adames, both of which hadn’t homered to this point in the season.
“I think (the error) changes the entire inning,” Rob Thomson said after the game. “Other than that one inning where he made a couple of mistakes, hanging cutter and a fastball he’s trying to go in and left it out over the plate, I thought he pitched pretty good. His stuff was good, he saved the pen, he grinded through five innings.”
The error on Walker came a few plays after his 28th pickoff since 2015. It’s the most by any right-handed pitcher in that span and third overall in MLB.
“I felt like my stuff was pretty good still, attacking the zone,” Walker said after the outing. “One of the biggest things, I would get (ahead in the count) pretty quick and could put them away. Quite a few (full) counts and the pitch count got too high but for the most part though, my stuff was pretty good, it’s just really that one inning.”
He’s right. You take away the second inning and suddenly he has four scoreless and only gave up two hits. Unfortunately, that’s not how it works. The magnitude of the inning that needed to be flushed was too big of a burden to bear for the Phillies’ offense.
Hot right out of the gate, the Phillies put up three runs in the first inning. The only other offensive contribution was a Nick Castellanos solo home run. With two men on in the seventh, J.T. Realmuto was inches away from the second home run of the night but it hooked the wrong side of the left field foul pole. Three pitches later on a full count, he was called out on strikes on a very questionable slider that was well off the plate.
JT Realmuto’s rollercoaster at-bat against the Giants on Monday night.
Walker has turned into a surprising storyline after his first start of the year against the Rockies. He pitched six scoreless innings and collected his first win since May of last season.
That was followed up with another scoreless outing against the Braves. Suddenly, the spot in the rotation with the most question marks heading into the season, showed some promise.
Which leads us to his performance against the Giants: 5.0 IP, 6 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 1 BB, 5 K, 99 P, 2.30 ERA
They say once is an accident, twice is a coincidence and three times is a pattern.
So, was the hiccup inning an accident? Were his first two starts only a coincidence?
The way he responds the next time he takes the mound will be telling.
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