Mets' Taijuan Walker has a renewed appreciation for 'my second-best pitch'
New York Mets starting pitcher Taijuan Walker throws during the first inning against the Philadelphia Phillies, Monday, April 11, 2022, in Philadelphia. Credit: AP
Lost in the chaos of his early exit, then the rest and rehab of the weeks since, was a thread worth pulling on from Taijuan Walker’s injury-shortened season debut against the Phillies on April 11: Against nine splitters, hitters swung seven times — and missed every time.
Wait, what?
"It’s always been like my second-best pitch,” Walker said recently, ahead of his return from the injured list Saturday after dealing with bursitis in his right shoulder. “I realized I throw a lot of fastballs. Hitters were sitting fastball on me a lot. Especially the Phillies. They’re an aggressive team, they hit the fastball really well. So I just wanted to pitch backwards. They were swinging and missing at the splitter, and it was working really well.
“Even in spring it was working good. I threw it more and just tried to keep them off-balance, especially when you’re [expecting] a fastball. My splitter is hard, but when you’re geared up for a fastball, it plays really well.”
The curious part about Walker considering the splitter — or split-changeup as he sometimes calls it — his second-best pitch, is he has not thrown it with a matching frequency in recent years.
In 2021, splitters accounted for just 14% of his pitches — less than his fastball, of course, but also less than his slider and sinker. It was his fourth pitch.
Compare that with 2016, for example, when he was primarily a fastball (58%) and splitter (20%) guy who mixed in a few other pitches.
“I kind of got lost,” Walker said. “My splitter has always been my second-best pitch. I think once I learned the slider (introduced in 2020 after he missed almost all of 2018-19), I kind of forgot about my splitter. Which isn’t good.”
Now, though, Walker wants to get back to being his old self. He has a renewed appreciation for the split, a realization that could have a significant impact on his 2022. In his debut season with the Mets last year, he followed up an All-Star first half with a miserable second half, so this time he is looking for consistent effectiveness ahead of another shot at cashing in on the free-agent market (if he doesn’t pick up his $6 million player option for 2023).
Coincidentally, his second start also will be against those fastball-hunting Phillies.
“The plan is to use it more early, late,” Walker said, speaking of the season generally. “It’s always been a pitch where I can get swings and misses or ground balls when I need it or weak contact. I can put it wherever I want.”
His other new splitter development: He sort of has two of them. In addition to the one he has thrown for a decade, he also has been experimenting with the grip Carlos Carrasco uses for his split-changeup (which Carrasco also considers his second-best pitch). Walker’s goes down and in on righthander batters, he said, while Carrasco’s falls straight down. So in a sense it is two different offerings, two separate possibilities for opposing hitters to have to think about.
Walker picked that up during spring training and has been intrigued by how it has played in non-game situations. He mixed in the Carrasco kind during his recent simulated game against Mets hitters.
“I liked the way it moved. It was working really well,” he said. “I feel like if I can get both of those working — lefties the one straight down, righties the one that goes down and in — if I can have two different ones, I can throw it more. If you can throw them all for strikes, the more weapons the better.”
Tim Healey is the Mets beat writer for Newsday. Born on Long Island and raised in Connecticut, Tim has previously worked for the South Florida Sun Sentinel, the Boston Globe and MLB.com. He is also the author of “Hometown Hardball,” a book about minor league baseball in the northeast.
