Taijuan Walker wobbles in the seventh, but Phillies finish off a sweep of the Padres

SAN DIEGO — Taijuan Walker seemed like he was headed for a quality start on Sunday until he walked onto the mound in the seventh inning. Walker’s pitch count was low — just 73 pitches — and he didn’t have any sort of pitch limit entering his first outing of the season.

There were times last year when manager Rob Thomson would pull Walker in the fifth or sixth, even when his pitch count was low, but on Sunday, he decided to let him have the seventh. It did not go well. Walker got one out on a fly ball and then walked Ha-Seong Kim and yielded a single to Graham Pauley.

Pauley’s single hit first baseman Bryce Harper’s mitt and then Kim’s foot, so both Kim and Pauley reached base safely. With one out, pinch-hitter Luis Campusano stepped up to the plate and hit a three-run home run to cut the Padres’ deficit from four runs to one. Walker finished his day after 6⅓ innings, allowing six earned runs on eight hits with two walks, four strikeouts, and two home runs, in an 8-6 Phillies win over the Padres.

Thomson said after the game that he chose to leave Walker in because he wanted to save the bullpen.

“His pitch count was really good,” he said. “He was really efficient. We didn’t really want to use much of our bullpen because of the starter situation. [Cristopher] Sánchez will go [Monday against the Angels], [Spencer] Turnbull will go on Tuesday, and [Zack] Wheeler will go on Wednesday. So that gives Wheeler an extra day and it gives Nola two extra days.”

It was a spectacularly bad way for Walker’s outing to end, but there were some positive takeaways. His velocity fluctuated wildly at times last season, but on Sunday, he hit 92 mph in the first inning and continued to hit it throughout the game. He averaged 91.6 mph on his sinker and 91.1 mph on his four-seam fastball.

“I thought it was good,” Walker said of his velocity. “I thought I had good life to it. The ball was coming out well. Again, I felt like I got some broken bats on the righties, two-seams in on their hands and stuff, and just mixed it really well, kept them off balance.”

Walker was efficient with his pitches, which was why he was in a position to pitch the seventh in the first place. He also made a savvy defensive play in the second inning to start a double play. But that seventh inning put a damper on everything he’d done in the first six.

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Despite that, he was still in line for the win. When Walker exited, the Phillies had a 7-6 lead, and Johan Rojas added on in the eighth inning with a hard-hit, ground-rule RBI double to right field. It was a good all-around day for the center fielder, who made a jumping catch at the wall in the sixth inning to rob Fernando Tatis Jr.

It was also a good day for Kyle Schwarber, Alec Bohm, J.T. Realmuto, and Bryson Stott, who all had multi-hit games. Realmuto hit a two-run home run in the sixth inning and Stott hit a pair of two-run homers, in the second and the fourth. It was the first multi-home run game of Stott’s big league career.

“It’s always good to put some good swings on the ball, especially when you have a few games in a row where you feel like you were a little off, or something like that,” Stott said. “I wasn’t even mad about my third at-bat or fourth at-bat. Put a good swing on that one and hit it hard, just right into the ground. It was a good sinker. But yeah, felt good.”

Nick Castellanos didn’t record a hit, but he reached base in all of his at-bats. He took three walks and grounded into a force out in the eighth inning. It was his first three-walk game since July 1, 2021. Stott, who hits behind Castellanos, said that seeing more pitches helped him on Sunday.

“I was joking with some guys that it was like roles reversed,” Stott said. “Last year, hitting in front of him, and sometimes doing that for him, and he would tell me that it helps. And for him to have those at-bats today was huge. He’s just a professional hitter and that’s what he can do every single day. He knows that. And they were huge.”

Bohm continued his stretch of dominance, going 3-for-5 with a strikeout. Two of his three hits were doubles; the Phillies third baseman has 17 hits in the first seven games of this road trip.

“Me and Whit [Merrifield] were sitting there and said he was due for an RBI,” Stott said. “It’s been three at-bats. He’s pretty incredible. He’s another professional hitter. And he gets on these runs where it doesn’t matter, it could be a knuckleball, a slider, an underhand fastball, you know he’s going to hit it. Really good.”

Bohm committed an error in the eighth inning, but it didn’t prove to be costly.

Jeff Hoffman entered in relief of Walker in the seventh inning, allowing one hit in two-thirds of an inning. Yunior Marte pitched a clean inning in the eighth, and José Alvarado got the save in the ninth, pitching a 1-2-3 inning with two strikeouts.

The Phillies (19-10) left San Diego on Sunday night with a three-game sweep. They conclude the road trip with three games against the Angels starting Monday night.