ANAHEIM, Calif. — This was the team that put him down. These were hitters that knocked him flat with a barrage of first-inning homers. The Los Angeles Angels sent him reeling to rock bottom.
On Sept. 3 at Safeco Field, Taijuan Walker endured the worst outing of his career, giving up six runs on six hits, including three straight homers, and never got the third out of the first inning.
Ten days later, Walker walked off the mound at Angels Stadium having thrown a three-hit shutout in Seattle’s 8-0 win Tuesday night. He was perfect for 5 2/3 innings, didn’t allow a hit for six innings and struck out 11 to improve to 6-10.
And the Mariners? Well, they won their seventh straight game to improve to 77-68 and remain 2 1/2 games out of the American League wild card.
How did this happen for Walker?
It started after Walker could barely lift his voice above a whisper after that Saturday evening loss at Safeco Field.
Hours after the 10-3 drubbing, when teammates had left for home, Walker wandered into pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre’s office looking for answers. The embarrassment from earlier in the evening was a low point in an already disappointing season. He was broken and without answers.
And so it began.
The two men went over the brief outing, pitch by painful pitch. Then Stottlemyre outlined the changes that Walker needed to make to his mechanics—changes he had preached before but that had fallen on the resistant ears of a 24-year-old that had experienced success in the big leagues doing it the previous way. But that success was a distant memory.
So each day since, Walker and Stottlemyre work on the changes in pregame catch sessions and midweek bullpens. The hints of helping were there in his previous start—a win over the Rangers. But it all came together against the Angels.
Walker was brilliant for five innings, not allowing a hard hit ball. He struck out seven in the first five innings, including five straight hitters. The bid for perfection was broken up by a throwing error by Ketel Marte with two outs in the sixth inning. The Angels got the first hit of the game to start the seventh on a Kole Calhoun leadoff single.
The Mariners grabbed a 2-0 first-inning lead in the loudest and most impressive fashions. With Norichika Aoki on first base having led off the game with single, Nelson Cruz worked a 3-1 count off Angels starter Alex Meyer. The tall right-hander threw a 93 mph fastball on the inside half of the plate that Cruz was looking for.
He unleashed that short, violent swing, getting his hand through and turning on the cookie. The result was a terrifying sound that only a handful hitters can produce on a well struck ball. Cruz launched a towering home run to deep left field that had Angels left fielder Jefry Marte standing and watching after two steps.
Cruz’s homer was the 200th the Mariners have hit this season, the fifth time in franchise history that number has been reached. It’s the most by any team in the Safeco Field era.
Seattle added two more runs in the second inning off Meyer. The first was manufactured. Leonys Martin led off with a single, stole second, moved to third on Daniel Vogelbach’s grounder to second and scored on Marte’s sacrifice to center. Aoki, the team’s unlikeliest power threat, jumped on a first-pitch fastball, driving it over the wall in right for his third homer of the season to make it 4-0 and doubled that with a four-run sixth.
