Taijuan Walker holds his own, but Phillies lineup struggles in 6-2 loss to Orioles

BALTIMORE — Before his start on June 2, Taijuan Walker worked on his timing. Pitching coach Caleb Cotham had noticed that Walker was throwing the ball too early in his delivery, so they dedicated a few bullpen sessions to having him throw the ball later.

Walker would wait until his front foot came down, and then throw his pitch. He also worked on keeping his hands still before he pitched, so he could have a later finish. Those two tweaks made an almost-immediate impact. The right-hander proceeded to throw 5⅔ innings of two-run ball against the Mets in London.

In a 6-2 Phillies loss on Saturday afternoon, he had a more formidable test. The Orioles lead MLB in home runs and slugging percentage, but Walker held his own. He pitched 5⅔ innings and held Baltimore to three runs on six hits with two walks and four strikeouts.

“The timing helped, and the finish late helped, too,” Walker said. “London was a little bit better than it was today, but I’m still working on it.”

The Phillies will take those numbers any day, especially against this lineup. Walker made mistakes but was able to bounce back from them. After Adley Rutschman hit a sacrifice fly to put the Orioles on the board in the third inning, Walker induced back-to-back groundouts to strand a runner at second.

After Walker allowed a solo home run to Anthony Santander to tie it in the fourth, the Phillies starter retired the next six batters he saw on four strikeouts, a line out, and a pop fly.

“It looked like he got a little bit mad, I guess,” manager Rob Thomson said. “He went on attack after that point. It was good to see that.”

Walker has faced worse offenses this season and allowed four, five, six runs. Allowing three against one of the best teams in baseball is perfectly acceptable. Cotham is hopeful that this is the start of a breakthrough. Walker has struggled to find consistent success in his time with the Phillies, but the pitching coach says this version of Walker is the best he’s seen.

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“That outing in London was maybe as good a stuff, crispness, location, quality, late break, as I’ve seen from him since he’s been a Phillie,” Cotham said Thursday of Walker, who is in his second year with the team. “It’s a credit to his hard work, and he’s worked really hard. It’s just about trying to find that feeling of power. Really, for him, it’s not as much about velocity as it is about the finish of the pitches and the shapes being late.

“He wasn’t throwing the ball too early in London. It really changed how the ball was coming out. He was pitching. He wasn’t fighting himself. It was fun to watch.”

Walker’s velocity was a bit down on Saturday afternoon, but that wasn’t as concerning to him as how his splitter was hit. He had trouble keeping it down, and the Orioles took advantage of that. Walker decided to lean on his curveball instead, but sees that as only a temporary strategy.

“I think [I am] close,” Walker said. “I just think the splitter is missing. I feel like all my other pitches have been really good. It’s just really the splitter that usually I don’t give up a lot of damage on, and right now, I’m giving up a lot of hard hits on the splitter.

“So, I’ve been throwing it a lot in between starts, but it’s one of those pitches I have to find. We’re still working on it. I feel like everything else is there. It’s just missing the splitter right now.”

Walker will keep searching, but on Saturday, he did enough to keep the Phillies in the game. The lineup did not. They did get a little unlucky; the Phillies hit 11 balls at 95 mph or harder, but eight of those hard-hit balls became outs.

“Well, actually, we hit a lot of balls hard today,” Thomson said. “Right at people. We had a lot of chances to score, but [Bryson] Stott hit three balls right on the nose. [Brandon Marsh hit two balls right on the nose. Sometimes that happens.”

The Phillies finished with seven hits and just two runs. Less than 24 hours after his extra-inning heroics in Friday’s win, Alec Bohm gave the Phillies an early 1-0 lead. The third baseman drove a hard-hit double to center field to score Bryce Harper in the first and finished 2-for-4.

Edmundo Sosa tacked on another run with a solo home run to right field in the second, but, unfortunately for the Phillies, Santander made that a moot point. After his game-tying home run in the fourth, and his go-ahead sacrifice fly in the sixth, Santander gave his team some insurance runs with a towering two-run home run off José Ruiz in the eighth.

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Ruiz also allowed an RBI single to Gunnar Henderson to give the Orioles a 6-2 lead.

Former Phillie Craig Kimbrel pitched the ninth for the Orioles. It was about as emotionally charged as you’d expect. Kimbrel received a mix of cheers and boos, and when he walked Stott to lead off the inning, he received raucous applause from Phillies fans.

He struck out Sosa, Marsh, and Garrett Stubbs to end the game.