Walker rides season ‘roller coaster’
This story was excerpted from Steve Gilbert’s D-backs Beat publication. To learn the complete publication, click on right here. And subscribe to get it repeatedly in your inbox.
If he’s going to experience a curler coaster this yr, D-backs first baseman Christian Walker goes to move to an amusement park. When it involves his time on the ballpark, Walker is attempting to maintain issues on a fair keel.
“Honestly, last year was such a good learning experience for me,” Walker stated.
Walker opened the yr crushing balls on the plate, however having little to point out for it. His anticipated stats early within the season, that are based mostly on issues like exit velocity and launch angle, had been excellent. His precise numbers weren’t.
Walker’s numbers ultimately got here round final yr. He completed with 36 homers and a 126 OPS+ and in addition gained his first profession Gold Glove award.
This yr, his numbers are good — he had a 135 OPS+ heading into play Friday evening and had already hit 11 homers — and mentally he’s incorporating classes from final yr.
“Just like when the numbers weren’t there last year and I had to trust my process, it’s kind of a similar headspace this year to be honest,” Walker stated. “Like I know I feel competitive and I feel good and am helping the team right now. Outside of that, acknowledging the numbers doesn’t feel like … doesn’t really add much to it.”
Walker will encounter struggles in some unspecified time in the future this yr, each participant does, and that information will maintain him from hitting the panic button and altering the whole lot unexpectedly.
“Obviously I want to keep it going, but in the same sense, I understand how quickly things can change and how temporary things can be in baseball. Not like a negative Debbie Downer kind of sense, but I’m just trying to be real with the whole thing and I feel like as long as my process is good and I feel competitive, then everything else will kind of line up.”
Toward the again half of final yr, D-backs supervisor Torey Lovullo observed that Walker was doing a greater job of chopping down his swing when he wanted to hit a ball arduous up the center versus all the time trying to hit the ball out of the ballpark.
“I think he’s just a very good hitter that is understanding how he feels per pitch, per at-bat and he’s counterpunching what he’s getting from the pitcher,” Lovullo stated. “Just a mature approach, a very, very mature, professional approach right now.”
That will maintain him off these amusement park rides.
“I think when people talk about the roller coaster of baseball, for me it’s reacting to either needing to be better or feeling like I’m playing maybe outside myself at the moment,” he stated.
“It’s like I both gotta maintain on to it actually tight otherwise you’re attempting to get again this elusive factor and it is like, each ends of that spectrum are exhausting. So for me, the battle is simply staying in the midst of the highway.”
