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Taijuan Walker has a 2.98 ERA Since Returning to the Phillies’ Rotation
Published:
Credit where it’s due, Cy-Juan Walker has been excellent this summer:
Actually, he’s been excellent all season long. There was a brief blip in May when fans and media started grumbling, but the entire body of work is great. Walker has a 3.39 season ERA over 25 total games, 15 coming out of the bullpen and 14 as a starter. It’s almost split right down the middle in terms of his usage, but amounts to 85 total innings, which is already more than he threw during the 2024 regular season.
Currently, Walker is posting:
- a 2.38 strikeout to walk ratio, his best number since joining the Phillies.
- a 2.8 BB/9 number, his lowest walks-per-9 rate since his final New York season
- a 1.6 WAR, which is 4th-highest across his 13 MLB years
- a 1.5 HR/9 number, way down from last year’s 2.6
- a +8 runs better than average, which compares pitchers based on strength of schedule and ballparks (this number was -25 last season)
- a 37.9% hard hit average, lowest number in 5 years
- 44.3 ground ball percentage, matched up with career averages after last year
- a .734 opponent OPS, down from .975 last year
So on and so forth. You can go down the advanced stats list and find a lot of things to like. For what it’s worth, Walker has a 3.71 ERA as a reliever and a 3.31 ERA as a starter. Three of those starts were quality starts, when he went at least 6 innings while giving up 3 or fewer runs. It’s the same amount Aaron Nola had through nine games before he went on the IL.
He’s having a really nice turnaround season, Cy-Juan Walker. Look at the side-by-side percentile marks from Baseball Savant:
Kevin has been writing about Philadelphia sports since 2009. He spent seven years in the CBS 3 sports department and started with the Union during the team's 2010 inaugural season. He went to the academic powerhouses of Boyertown High School and West Virginia University. email - k.kinkead@sportradar.com