Daily Notes: Taijuan Walker to Debut on This Day in History

Table of Contents
Here’s the table of contents for today’s edition of the Daily Notes.

1. Taijuan Walker to Debut on This Day in History
2. Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
3. Today’s Complete Schedule

Taijuan Walker to Debut on This Day in History
The Purpose of This Post
The purpose of this post is to announce that today — a day which has, until now, belonged to the future, but which, in short order, will reside entirely in the past — that today right-handed Seattle prospect Taijuan Walker is scheduled to make his major-league debut at 8:10pm ET against the Houston Astros.

Regarding Taijuan Walker, How He Was Acquired
Walker, presently 21 years old, was a supplemental-round pick by Seattle in 2010 out of a California high school.

Regarding Taijuan Walker, His Prospect Status
Here’s where Walker ranked on certain, notable midseason top-prospect lists:

Baseball America: 7th.
Baseball Prospectus: 9th.
Bullpen Banter: 3rd.
FanGraphs (Marc Hulet): 5th.
Minor League Ball (John Sickels): 5th.

Regarding Taijuan Walker, What He Throws
Inspecting a collection of the available scouting reports on Walker — plus the PITCHf/x data (courtesy Brooks Baseball) from his appearance in the Futures Game — one finds that he’s likely to throw the following four pitches:

• A four-seam fastball at an average, probably, of ca. 94 mph.
• A cut fastball in the low-90s.
• A curveball at 73-75 mph.
• A changeup in the mid-, or even high-, 80s.

Action Footage: Walker’s Fastball
Here’s slow-motion footage from his August 20th start (box) of Walker throwing his fastball at probably 96 mph to Rockies minor-leaguer Ben Paulsen in the second innings of that game:

Action Footage: Walker’s Curveball
And here’s video of Walker’s curveball, which pitch he threw to Colorado Springs shortstop Drew Garcia for strike three, looking, after the latter had fouled off five consecutive fastballs on a full count:

Regarding Taijuan Walker, His Numbers This Season
Walker recorded strikeout and walk rates of 28.3% and 8.9%, respectively, in 84.0 innings with Double-A Jackson — the former of which figures continues to rank second among all pitchers with 70-plus innings (starters, essentially) in that league. Following a June promotion, Walker’s rates (57.1 IP, 26.0% BB, 11.0%) deteriorated in almost the precise way one might expect from promotion to a higher level.

Today’s MLB.TV Free Game
Minnesota at Texas | 20:05 ET
Liam Hendriks (20.1 IP, 123 xFIP-, -0.2 WAR) faces Yu Darvish (168.0 IP, 66 xFIP-, 4.5 WAR), in a matchup featuring two pitchers from the Eastern Hemisphere — a.k.a. one of the top hemispheres there is.

Readers’ Preferred Broadcast: Texas Radio.

Today’s Complete Schedule
Here’s the complete schedule for all of today’s games, with our very proprietary watchability (NERD) scores for each one. Pitching probables and game times aggregated from MLB.com and RotoWire. The average NERD Game Score for today is 5.8.

Note: the following table is entirely sortable.

Away		SP	Tm.	Gm.	Tm.	SP		Home	Time
Roy Halladay	PHI	5	0	5	4	8	CHN	Jeff Samardzija	14:20
Miguel Gonzalez	BAL	3	9	5	3	7	NYA	CC Sabathia	19:05
Dillon Gee	NYN	5	6	6	3	9	WAS	J. Zimmermann	19:05
Shelby Miller	STL	10	3	8	6	9	PIT	Francisco Liriano	19:05
Ervin Santana	KC	7	8	6	6	4	TOR	Mark Buehrle	19:07
Zach McAllister	CLE	4	7	6	7	8	DET	Rick Porcello	19:08
Hector Santiago	CHA	4	1	4	9	3	BOS	Ryan Dempster	19:10
Jose Fernandez	MIA	10	1	8	8	7	ATL	Julio Teheran	19:30
Liam Hendriks	MIN	2	3	5	4	10	TEX	Yu Darvish	20:05
Jered Weaver	LAA	4	7	5	3	5	MIL	Wily Peralta	20:10
Taijuan Walker*	SEA	18	4	8	4	0	HOU	Brad Peacock	20:10
Bronson Arroyo	CIN	5	3	4	7	3	COL	Jeff Manship	20:40
Tim Lincecum	SF	7	4	6	3	7	AZ	Randall Delgado	21:40
David Price	TB	7	10	6	7	4	OAK	Jarrod Parker	22:05
Eric Stults	SD	4	6	5	3	7	LAN	Hyun-Jin Ryu	22:10

To learn how Pitcher and Team NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
To learn how Game NERD Scores are calculated, click here.
* = Fewer than 20 IP, NERD at discretion of very handsome author.