On the surface, Taijuan Walker pitched another gem in the Philadelphia Phillies' Thursday evening bout against the Washington Nationals. He went 5.2 innings, allowing just four hits, three walks, and one earned run.
It has been a shockingly productive campaign for Walker, who entered Thursday's game with a 2.78 ERA and 1.37 WHIP through five starts. He still coughs up walks and gets into jams, but the difference between Walker in 2024 and 2025 has been night and day. He's handling adversity with poise and putting Philadelphia in a position to win games each and every week.
And yet, we know the book on Walker. Maybe last season really was an injury-spurred fluke. Maybe we always should've put more stock into his 2023 campaign with the Phils — a solid, unspectacular 31-start effort in which he recorded only 138 strikeouts in 172.2 innings.
Walker can coax soft contact and keep base-runners in check, but at a certain point, the dam breaks and the runs come flooding in. He is not a late-game, high-leverage pitcher. He needs to be in and out at the first sign of real trouble, especially once the pitch count spikes.
Rob Thomson stuck with Walker deep into the sixth inning on Thursday after five clean frames — and Philadelphia paid the price.
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Rob Thomson once again stuck with Taijuan Walker too long in Phillies sixth-inning implosion
Walker was only responsible for one earned run on Thursday, but the final line is a bit misleading. The Nats piled on four runs in the sixth inning across seven batters that Walker faced before Orion Kerkering recorded the inning's final out. A Bryce Harper error at first base and a Rafael Marchán passed ball made the last few runs "unearned," but Walker gave up a couple RBI knocks and a walk to prolong the inning.
It's difficult to overstate how good Walker has been compared to what we all bore witness to a year ago. If we rewind the discourse a few months, Phillies fans were ready to crowd-fund Walker's plane ticket to a new franchise. Now, on the first of May, there is real debate over whether or not Philadelphia should deploy a six-man rotation upon Ranger Suárez's return.
The 32-year-old righty deserves a ton of credit for attacking the offseason and coming back with a more dynamic arsenal. When Walker was initially bumped into the rotation due to Suárez's preseason injury, there was a pervasive sense of dread throughout the Phillies fandom. He did not look particularly good in spring training and the 2024 campaign was best left forgotten. And yet, Walker has been an invaluable member of the Phillies rotation so far; Philly had won three of five games in which Walker took the mound prior to Thursday's outing.
Still, the job of a manager is to read the room and operate proactively. Walker is not without his flaws and warning signs, and his weaknesses are often more exposed the deeper he pitches into a game. That issue is not unique to Walker — most pitchers struggle as pitch count inflates — but with Walker, he has been especially volatile across two-plus years in Philadelphia. There's no reason to keep letting the base-runners and runs stack up, even if not every one is "earned."
Walker deserves his spot in the rotation for now, but Thomson needs to keep a tight leash on him, especially with New York continuing to increase its lead in the division.