Taijuan Walker Promoted to Clinton
Perhaps you’re despondent over the fact that James Paxton was scheduled to start last night and didn’t. This should perk you right up. The Lumberkings announced a short time ago that 2010 supplemental first-round pick RHP Taijuan Walker has been promoted to Clinton from extended spring training, along with RH Jandy Sena. RHP Seon Gi Kim went back to Peoria and RHPs Tyler Blandford and Matt Bischoff went on the DL. Walker is scheduled to pitch on Thursday, but the rotation has been in flux for a while, and that information is subject to change.
Walker came into the organization as a strong arm with little polish, having spent most of his earlier years playing basketball. His pre-draft reports had him pitching 91-3 and touching the mid-90s on rare instances, offsetting it with a curve and a slider. Then over the winter, something started to happen. Reports started coming in of his curve developing into a potential plus pitch and that he was sitting in the mid-90s and touching 98. A recent game in extended had him at eight strikeouts in four innings, sitting 95-97 the whole time.
All this information is counterproductive to what I’m going to try to tell you next: remain calm. Walker is going from nice and sunny weather to the Midwest League in the spring. The weather might not be good, the velocity might be down, and yeah, he’ll probably fall behind hitters. But the information we have now would suggest that Walker is a lot closer to what we hoped he would be than he was when he was drafted, and may have been a pretty savvy pick on the part of the scouting dept.
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10 Responses to “Taijuan Walker Promoted to Clinton”
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I like this move. Walker will be facing more legitimate prospects and won’t be able to coast by with his outstanding “stuff”. He’ll have to learn to really pitch, and while he may struggle some, I think it’s probably for the betterment of his development. Zduriencik has said before that he want the minor leaguers to be challenged and put in difficult situations to learn how to persevere, sink or swim if you will, and this is just an example of that (Nick Franklin’s rapid promotions are another example that come to mind).
Any idea on when he’s gonna make a start?
NO! FUCK YOU! I WILL NOT REMAIN CALM! I WILL BE EXCITED AND HAVE LOFTY EXPECTATIONS DAMMIT!
*pant, drool, wheeze, rabid frothing, etc*
(Seriously, I’m looking forward to this. With Paxton coming on and now Walker, I’m about geeked out. Sucks to see Seon Gi demmoted and Blandford injured, tho.)
I thought that was Bavasi’s shtick.
Is Walker throwing, or learning a change-up?
This is a breath of fresh air. After some struggling prospects, it’s nice to see one that is breaking out(?). Our org has had some peculiar picks these couple of years, but they seem to be working out VERY well (I think Baron is coming around… Maybe?).
Final line of paragraph one says THURSDAY. I may have lost that in all the commas.
Right. The lack of pitching smarts is generally concern #1 with me when it comes to late converts to the mound. J.J. Putz when he first came up was a convert from catching. He pitched stupid, all the time, and then he learned a splitter which allowed him to be amazing. It was the tool that made him effective more than an improvement in his approach.
Kim’s promotion was aggressive in the first place, and he didn’t handle it spectacularly. Of all the guys in the rotation, his position was probably the weakest, or it was between him and Mieses.
Blandford has no command, probably will never have command from the looks of it, and is injury prone. The pick really didn’t make sense at the time and still doesn’t.
Both do it, but in different ways. Franklin ended up in Clinton last year, fresh out of HS. Walker is getting the same. The more advanced college bats and arms ended up in High Desert or higher. There’s also whatever it is that Erasmo Ramirez is doing. I’d say the intent is different from Bavasi to Zduriencik, but that’s hard to quantify.
Spent most of his time in instructs doing just that.
I thought that was Bavasi’s shtick.
You are right. From Baker’s Blog, regarding Franklin:
I haven’t seen Walker perform in EST, but maybe Zduriencik is changing his approach, or perhaps he just thinks Walker is good enough to succeed. We’ll see, although it appears that Zduriencik is more interested in players learning to genuinely succeed than “sink or swim” with their natural talents.
Oh, and the Reading Comprehension section of the SAT was my weakest section, as you can see…
Any word as to why Paxton didn’t start?
Awesome to hear! Thanks for all minor league updates JY.
But I already planned my “We Won’t Be Terrible In a Few Years” party! And I got balloons for it too. Balloons.
In all seriousness though, this is still great news. I hope he keeps developing as well as he has been, having great pitchers in Safeco is always a welcome sight.
Nothing I’ve heard. Like I said, the Clinton rotation has been weird. They’ve been skipping starts for guys or switching them around without DL involvement. My guess is that extra side work is happening. The same goes for the High Desert rotation, to a degree.