That’s why there was no cut to Taiwan Walker last winter

On Monday night in Cincinnati, Taiwan Walker spread six innings and took a walk in six innings. He only allows to make money once. He didn’t win. In fact, when manager Rob Thomson pulled him up, he lined up for the loss. But Walker is good enough to keep the Phillies within an astonishing distance. Reds starter Andrew Abbott stayed in the game and entered the eighth inning, and the Phillies finally moved him. The NL Eastern Conference leaders continued to win the game 4-1.

I wrote about Walker last time five months ago at the end of spring training. Walker was about to come to a season at the time, the worst regular starting pitcher in baseball, and the frustration of the team surfaced due to the disappointing playoff defeat, the team paid and performed poorly. 6 starters are simple targets for public anger. Even in Philadelphia, it’s hard for athletes to reach pariah status alone in the quality of the game, but Walker has done it.

Through all this, I’m more optimistic about veteran right-handed than most people, and it’s not difficult. I also feel sad for that person on the human level. It’s not easy to have thousands of people boo you whenever you make a lot of money.

More importantly, after he (or actually the worst season of almost anyone’s career), I didn’t see any utility trying to trade or cut Walker. The Phillies either need to eat a $36 million salary or need a serious trade prospect to get others to do so. It’s better to let him through the offseason and reevaluate things later in 2025. That’s not to say he’ll be worse.

Still, Monday’s outing was Walker’s 14th start on the 25th of this year. Overall, he released a 3.39 ERA in 85 innings, which is heavier than the likes of this year’s Spencer Strider or George Kirby. According to the year change rankings for baseball Savant, Walker made the biggest progress in any pitcher in the Xwoba league, and the seventh largest in Woba.

Even as an optimist for the Pacers, I would never guess that he had made those numbers and still started for the Phillies in mid-August.

No matter how bad Walker is in 2024, another reason to keep him around is that nearly every team runs out of starting pitchers. In this regard, Philadelphia people are better than most. In 2025, they used only seven real start pitchers. For the purposes of this article, I define the “real” start as lasting at least three innings and 15 batsmen to eliminate the bottle opener and bullpen game.

This is unusually low; in this case, only the angels, in this case, are stable bastions, using fewer real starters. The Dodgers used 14, while the Brewers and Astros used 12, each Tiger, Metropolis and Padres 11. a lot of!

Not all sailings. Walker won his first few rounds in the rotation, while left-handed Suárez was on Illinois. Aaron Nola has been hurt most of the year and cannot play when she is healthy. Even Zack Wheeler has had some problems and may be facing IL at some point.

The Phillies are one of the better organizations in baseball when it comes to keeping pitchers healthy, and they invested a huge amount of resources in filling the depth of rotation. Consider getting these seven starters, plus the yet-to-last Andrew Painter, who is imminent as he waits for his call: three of the last 12 first-round picks; two prospects for the world’s top 100 after the trade deal. This year alone, the salary is less than $102 million.

Still, Walker didn’t run out of town on the rails, but instead rode a white horse and whirled to save a day.

OK, that’s a bit exaggerated, but Walker’s pitch was good when he watched it cooked a year ago. It’s not perfect; his fastball speed is still ticking since 2023, Walker outperforms Xera’s two-thirds, and his FIP runs halfway through. But, a decent back-end starter (although expensive) is a huge improvement compared to last year.

What I wrote in March is huge. Walker’s tracks have more ingredients than your stepdad’s Secret Chili recipe, and everything went blander last year. From my point of view, the biggest problem is that his three fastballs and his separator fuse it together to make a highly shocking upper 80s paste. Even in the Grapefruit League game, he got more separation on the other side of the track and continued throughout the regular season.

Let’s amplify the sinker and splitters; these are two of Walker’s most used courts in 2023 and 2024, and even now they move very similarly. In 2024, these are the two worst balls in the entire baseball. As a double, Baseball Syed made them spend 27 runs throughout the season:

Overall, life gets easier when the pitcher’s fastball/change combination is hit by .700 OPS instead of 1.100 OPS.

Walker’s best course this year is his cutting machine, his knives with more horizontal action throws than in 2024. More importantly, he throws the ball at three times the frequency. Last year, he threw a cleaner with isolation effect, but its motion curve fell into the cutting machine effect, invalidating the latter. This year, Walker returns to the traditional slider and throws his cutter for almost a third of his time after resting on a higher level. It wasn’t a great court – Walker allowed six home runs with his knives, while his five other courts combined allowed eight more home runs – but the opponent only hit .212.

Plus some marginal gains from elsewhere – more strikes, less walks, more ground balls – Walker is once again an available starter for the majors. But when the Phillies runs for the fourth straight playoff berth, it’s unclear what role (if any) he has the ability to play in the playoffs.

Let’s be as pessimistic as possible about the Phillies’ rotation without turning the next six weeks into a disaster movie. Saying Wheeler’s barking shoulders–he said he “don’t care”–it turned out to be serious. We can also say that Nola, who is currently working on a minor league rehabilitation mission, has recovered from an ankle injury, has returned to professionalism and continues to pitch, just like Walker does in 2024.

This still puts the Phillies with playoff spins for Cristopher Sánchez, Suárez, Jesús Luzardo (all in the top 20 in the pitcher War League, and Wheeler’s top 20) and possible painters.

Back in 2023, Walker’s pitching was better than it is now, Luza was on the marlins, and Sanchez was just an egg. He remains an unused alternative during the playoffs. In this act of his career, Walker’s strength is quantity, which is of lower value in October.

In the regular season, a Major League Baseball team takes 1,400 innings and plays six times a week in variable games to make it throughout the season. In the playoffs, the game is completely unpopular, there are many days of vacation, and the total number of roads in the World Championships does not exceed 100 innings. In this case, the practicality of a player with 4.85 FIP to reach the guy is very limited.

With the Phillies’ rotation choice, Walker has already made several laps on the ‘pen. His 11 relief appearances this season doubled his previous career total. He even saved his first career in May.

But while some pitchers can compete in the starting marathon and still thrived in one inning, Walker didn’t really cut it. When he pitched from the bullpen, he worked harder and got more swings and turnovers, but the gains were small: his fastball speed increased from 92.2 mph to 92.9 mph, from 15.6% strikeout rate and 18.1% WHIFF rate to 22.9% and 18.7%.

After signing David Robertson and selling to Jhoan Duran to strengthen the bullpen, the Phillies have run out of relief points and things can get more and more crowded when Nola gets healthy and the painter is called.

So it’s a shame for Walker to end up being bittersweet. He rebounded from that horrible 2024 campaign. He has reshaped himself, performed well, and made no sense in bringing the Phillies to the path to defending his title. However, the overwhelming possibility is that he will spend another October, not on the hills, but in sneakers and windbreakers.