Photo Credit: Andy Marlin-USA TODAY
It was an ugly night on the mound for Taijuan Walker as the Mets were blown out by the Toronto Blue Jays.
If there is such a thing as an All-Star curse, then it clearly latched itself on to Walker right now given the starter has now endured two consecutive rough outings.
After giving up six runs in just one-third of an inning against the Pittsburgh Pirates in his last outing, Walker again struggled to find the filthy stuff that had established himself as an All-Star in the first place following a stellar first half in Queens on Saturday.
With the Mets struggling to spark their offense into life, it was down to Walker to perform magic on the mound, but he gave up a leadoff homer to George Springer to start the third. The outfielder showed New York what they could have had.
Teoscar Hernandez then blasted a two-run home run later in the inning as the Blue Jays bats exploded, and it only got worse for Walker and the Mets in the fifth.
It looked like for a moment that Walker might have to leave the game after he hurt himself trying to stop a ball driven up the middle, but he managed to convince manager Luis Rojas and pitching coach Jeremy Hefner to allow him to stay in the game.
That proved to be a mistake.
Both Springer and Vladimir Guerrero Jr. got on base in the fifth, and that set the stage for Marcus Semien to come up and hit a three-run home run after an 11-pitch at-bat to blow Walker out of the game.
The All-Star has now allowed six runs in two consecutive games after not giving up more than four runs in an outing through his first 16 games of the season. His final stat line from another tough evening was four-plus innings pitched, six hits, six earned runs, two walks, one strikeout and three home runs allowed.
It wasn’t pretty.
Walker’s ERA has now ballooned from 2.50 to 3.43 after a rough couple of outings, while his ERA in June and July now stands at 5.16 after he pitched to a stellar 1.84 ERA in April and May.
“I’ll be fine,” Walker said after the blowout. “It’s a long season, 30-plus starts. These starts are going to happen. I don’t want them to happen. But they are going to happen.
“And now I’ve got to find a way to bounce back and go back out there and get back out to what I was doing in the beginning of the year.”
Walker is closing in on 100 innings pitched this year, something he hasn’t done since before 2017 when he underwent Tommy John surgery, and there was a moment of panic when it appeared that the starter had hurt his non-pitching shoulder in the fifth.
However, Walker downplayed the issue.
“Everything’s good,” Walker stressed. I felt great. My arm felt great.”
And Mets manager Luis Rojas displayed his trust in his pitcher, but also acknowledged that certain guys will need to be monitored when it comes to workload.
“He’s a guy that we obviously trust, right? He’s done so much for us,” Rojas said. “We’ve talked about these things, not about Walker in particular, but just about keeping an eye on every guy because of how last year was.
“We’ve got to do our best to keep them out on the field, just to keep them fresh. Our performance staff, I think, is on it, just paying attention.
“That’s the best that we can do at this point.”
Walker will now attempt to reset and get back to the level he was pitching at prior to the All-Star break while. In the meantime, the Mets will debut pitcher Rich Hill in their series finale against the Blue Jays Sunday.
