Taijuan Walker, Mike Zunino combine for a Mariners win

PEORIA, Ariz. – The postgame routine is a little different for the players and media in spring training compared to the regular season. In the spring, players who are not in the game are allowed to leave after the fifth inning. Once the inning is over you see a stream of players from both teams – usually with jackets on and bat bags over their shoulders – take off down the foul line for the clubhouses. When players come out of the game in later innings they usually head straight to the clubhouse as well.

When we see the starter leave the stadium we run back to the clubhouse to catch them for postgame interviews rather than wait for the end of the game when chances are they will be long gone. Today we left a little later as Taijuan Walker pitched 7 innings in the Mariners’ 5-3 win over the Angels and didn’t leave until just before the start of the eighth. We got to the clubhouse before he did. Felix Hernandez had been there since the fifth inning. As Walker walked toward his locker, where he would talk to us, Felix shouted a couple of questions at him.

“How did you do?” he asked

“Good, good,” Walker replied.

“Score the same?” Felix asked.

“Yep,” said Walker, just before the interview began. After a few questions, Felix piped in again from across the room.

“How many innings?” he asked.

“Seven,” said Walker with an embarrassed laugh.

It appeared that Felix’s interview was over but a few seconds later we heard, “How many pitches?”

“Seventy-two, I think,” said Walker.

“Seventy-two?” Questioned Felix, his voice jumping an octave on the “two.”

The box score said 84, but still, a fantastic pitch count for seven innings. Even better against a squad of Angels regulars that Walker was facing for the first time.

That was the end of the Felix interview. We took it from there. I joked with Walker that I could probably get away with playing any of my postgame interviews with him this spring as he has been so consistent. This outing, however, had something a little different: a run. Walker’s spring record is no longer unblemished. He gave up a solo shot to Matt Joyce on a first-pitch fastball to start the second inning. It was his first run surrendered this spring, ending a streak of 19 scoreless innings.

“We probably should have gone offspeed,” he said. “It looked like they were sitting on the fastball and being the four hitter I’m sure he was thinking, ‘If he throws a fastball I am jumping all over it.’ I threw a fastball middle away and he was all over it.”

It is not as if Walker doesn’t have other weapons and using those weapons has been a point of emphasis with manager Lloyd McClendon this spring. The zeroes aren’t enough; they are spring training zeroes. The quality of pitch selection is very important. McClendon wasn’t happy with Walker going to the fastball too much in his third start of the spring. Walker and Jesus Sucre, who caught him that day, heard about it from the skipper.

“Yeah, yeah,” Walker said, admitting that there was work to be done after that outing. “We’ve just been mixing a lot since and I think that’s been really helping keeping the hitters off balance. It makes my fastball better, too. If I mix my changeup and curveball and slider early it keeps them off my fastball because they know they have other pitches they have to look for.”

McClendon was pleased with what he saw today.

“He worked ahead, used all of his pitches. It was a very impressive outing,” McClendon said before bringing up once again the importance of Walker mixing his pitches.

“The one thing we have to caution about is making sure that he pitches and not overpower them. Just pitch,” McClendon said. “He got in a little bit of pattern there and against good teams that’s a dangerous thing.”

In Walker’s case, McClendon will hold the catcher accountable for the pitch selection as well. The catcher can’t allow Walker to fall into patterns or too in love with his fastball.

“It’s a work in progress for both of them,” McClendon said. “They’re both young. It’s not like they have 15 years in the big leagues. They are both learning and getting better at it.”

Mike Zunino has caught more innings this spring than any other catcher in spring training play. For some this is a head-scratcher as McClendon has admitted that perhaps he caught Zunino a little too much last year and that he wore down as the season went on. The spring innings, however, are important for Zunino. Getting to know Walker and how to better manage him is important. Getting the at-bats to continue to work on the changes he has made at the plate is important and seems to have paid off as he hit his seventh home run of the spring today and currently has an on-base percentage over .400. Zunino, who was responsible for three of the five Mariners runs today, has absolutely no problem with his workload in Arizona. In fact, he thinks it has been perfect.

“I’m really enjoying it, catching a lot because that is the type of feeling you want to have,” he said. “I think skip has done a good job. I’ve been in there 6-7 innings but it has been multiple days and I think that is the best thing because for me it is about getting that recovery back. Getting your body to the condition to play the next day. That’s helped me out so far and hopefully it can carry over to the season because the body is feeling good.”

Although he has caught more innings than any other catcher, he has still started just over half of the spring games and has yet to play nine innings. He is happy with the balance and the buildup may be more valuable for him than rest at this point. We shall see what happens when the regular season begins.

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