Three batters into the game, with each of his last two pitches having left the park, Taijuan Walker’s night had a chance to go off the rails.
It happened again three innings later, when he loaded the bases and then fell behind on a 3-0 count.
Instead, Walker did what his counterpart could not, limiting the damage to pitch the Mets to a 6-3 win over the Yankees on Tuesday night at Citi Field.
“He didn’t let it get away from him there,” manager Buck Showalter said.
After allowing only four home runs through 91 ²/₃ innings entering Tuesday, Walker gave up back-to-back jacks to Aaron Judge and Anthony Rizzo in the top of the first inning. But unlike Yankees lefty Jordan Montgomery, who went on to give up a four-spot in the bottom of the frame that set the tone for his early exit, Walker overall held the Yankees in check. He worked in and out of trouble early before finishing strong with six innings of three-run ball, retiring the final seven batters he faced.
Making his first start in 10 days because of the All-Star break, Walker came out with a bump in velocity but a lack of fastball command. He was finally able to corral it before it was too late.
Taijuan Walker Corey Sipkin “That fourth inning could have gone really bad,” Walker said. “But to still limit them to very little damage there and bounce back in those last two shutdown innings … everything for me this year is overall really good.”
After stranding a runner in the second inning — in part thanks to his pickoff of Isiah Kiner-Falefa at first base — and two more in the third, Walker saved his best escape act for the fourth inning. He let in a run on a DJ LeMahieu groundout before walking Judge on four pitches to load the bases.
Walker then went 3-0 again to Rizzo, who got the green light on the next pitch and sent a charge into a fly ball to left-center field. But instead of being a go-ahead grand slam, the ball settled into the glove of Brandon Nimmo just in front of the wall to end the inning.
“I didn’t think he was going to swing,” Walker said. “He hit it pretty hard, but that’s just the way baseball works. The ball doesn’t really fly here to center, so I was able to get out of it with just one run, which is huge for us.”
The Yankees went 0-for-5 with runners in scoring position against Walker, who recorded his career-high eighth straight quality start. In doing so, Walker began his second half on a much better note than he did last year — when he didn’t make it out of the first inning against the Pirates, which served as a precursor to a rough second half.
“You couple [the layoff with] the emotion of the fans’ energy tonight, you get out of yourself a little bit,” Showalter said. “But once he got a little more into himself and who he is, he had a lot better feel for everything.”
