Phillies Finally Jettison Taijuan Walker

The Philadelphia Phillies have released right-handed pitcher Taijuan Walker, and it’s not hard to understand why. The Phillies, two-time defending NL East champs and one of the preseason favorites for the National League pennant, are down two engines and spiraling rapidly toward an uncontrolled crash landing. They need to dump everything that’s not bolted down, and unfortunately for Walker, that’s him.

The 33-year-old right-hander took the loss in two of the Phillies’ eight consecutive defeats, and if his 9.13 ERA is due to regress with better sequencing and luck, it wasn’t going to regress by much. Walker’s xERA is 7.04 and his FIP is 7.82. In 22 2/3 innings, he has struck out 17 batters while allowing 36 hits (including eight home runs) and 11 walks.

On the heels of his final outing in Phillies colors, Jayson Stark posted a statistical coincidence that’s so damning, it almost feels unkind to notice: Opponents have hit .353/.417/.657 against Walker this season. In 1941, the year of his record 56-game hitting streak, Joe DiMaggio hit .357/.440/.643.

Walker’s four-year, $72 million contract will go down as a loss for the Phillies, though not a historically bad one. After all, this is the franchise that gave the infamous five-year, $125 million extension to decline-phase Ryan Howard, and signed Danny Tartabull to a one-year, $2.3 million contract (a lot of scratch for this team in 1997), only to watch him break his toe and hop off into retirement three games into the season.

Over three years and change in Philadelphia, Walker threw 402 2/3 innings, many of them not that bad. He compiled 1.2 WAR over that time, thanks mostly to a pretty good 2023 campaign in which he won 15 games and threw 172 2/3 innings, both career highs. He was also useful, if not spectacular, in 2025. He suffered no career- or life-altering injuries, made the playoffs every year, and — it bears repeating — made $72 million.

It tells the whole story that my reaction to his tenure is one of overwhelming pity or sympathy for the man himself. Getting stinking rich playing for a really good team does not necessarily look like a lot of fun.

When Walker signed with the Phillies during the 2022 Winter Meetings, he was coming off a career year with the Mets, but even at the time no one expected him to be much more than a luxury player. The Phillies had just won the pennant behind an excellent front three of Zack Wheeler, Aaron Nola, and Ranger Suarez — the rotation was already a strength.

But it was top-heavy. Zach Eflin had just moved to the bullpen due to injury, and was on his way out of town as a free agent. In the playoffs, the Phillies had gone by the seat of their collective pants with the no. 4 spot in the rotation: Bailey Falter and an empty carapace in the general shape of Noah Syndergaard.

All they needed was a set-and-forget no. 4 starter, someone to throw five or six forgettable innings 30 times a year. At $18 million a year, I don’t think anyone ever realistically viewed Walker as a bargain signing, but in 2023 he did the job.

The thing is, that kind of pitcher isn’t as valuable in the playoffs, and over 2023, the Phillies had an unexpected bumper crop of pitching development successes. Cristopher Sánchez established himself for the first time as a big league-quality starter; Matt Strahm went from innings-eater to high-leverage weapon; and the emergence of Orion Kerkering and the resurrection of Jeff Hoffman gave the Phillies the bullpen depth to play matchups for an entire postseason game, which they did in Atlanta in Game 1 of the NLDS.

The Phillies didn’t need a no. 4 starter in their two-game Wild Card series sweep of Miami, or in the NLDS, where an extra off day between Games 1 and 2 allowed them to bring back Suarez on full rest for Game 4. And when Game 4 of the NLCS rolled around, Sánchez got the start, not Walker. He’d done his job, and despite being healthy and effective all year, did not throw a pitch in the playoffs.

Walker would never be that effective again, and even if he had, the Phillies kept finding pitchers to jump the line to the rotation. Sánchez took yet another leap and became Philadelphia’s most indispensable starter. There were tantalizing sparks from Spencer Turnbull, Mick Abel, and Tyler Phillips in 2024 and 2025. Jesús Luzardo arrived in 2025 and gave the Phillies no. 2 starter-level performance out of the no. 4 spot in the rotation, and top pitching prospect Andrew Painter finally made his long-awaited debut this spring.

Now, with Wheeler coming back from thoracic outlet decompression this weekend, the rotation lines up as follows: Sánchez, Wheeler, Luzardo, Nola, Painter. There’s no room for a guy with a 9.13 ERA. Even if there were, the Phillies have reached a point where it’s probably time to see if Alan Rangel or Bryse Wilson can give them an ERA under 7.00 for a change.

Releasing Walker is a blindingly obvious move for a team that can no longer afford to be sentimental. He’s gotten his shot, and whatever empathy one might feel for him, he just has not been good enough. That’s life in showbiz.

Even so, it’s a bit jarring to see the Phillies just straight-up cut Walker loose in April. They don’t do this kind of thing very often.

It’s hard to argue with the record of the Phillies’ front office. Under Dave Dombrowski and either Sam Fuld or Preston Mattingly, the Phillies have made the playoffs four times in five seasons and won two division titles and a pennant. If Sam Alito hadn’t shown up during the 2022 World Series and harshed the vibes, we might be talking about this as the best run in franchise history.

I do, however, have a consistent gripe with this front office. The near-total lack of production from the farm system — especially on the hitter development side — has forced Dombrowski and his lieutenants to lean on free agents to plug holes in the lineup. The Phillies have enough money to make that plan work, and when possible, they shop at the very top of the market, which is where the value is.

The most dangerous sector of the free agent market is the second tier. For every bargain, there are five ticking time bombs. My gripe is not that the Phillies frequently shop here — that’s where they got not only Wheeler (who was an Andy MacPhail-Matt Klentak signing, but the point stands), but also Kyle Schwarber. Those two are among the best free agent signings in franchise history. If they get burned by Walker, or Nick Castellanos, or Max Kepler and Adolis García, fine.

My gripe is that Dombrowski has an unhealthily high tolerance for throwing good money after bad. It took at least a year too long to remove Castellanos from the middle of the lineup, for instance, let alone cut him loose. Whit Merrifield got half a season to prove he couldn’t hit .200.

It’s different with Walker. He was so bad in 2024 that his contract went from underwater to completely sunk in the blink of an eye. The Phillies were never going to get back any of the money he was due in 2025 or 2026 in trade, let alone a prospect or a useful player. So they might as well keep him; maybe he wouldn’t live up to the deal he signed, but surely he’d be just as good as any minimum-salary street free agent they’d replace him with.

That turned out to be the case in 2025, but not now. Maybe this is a sign of a newfound urgency for a Phillies team that’s been relentlessly, and perhaps unproductively, calm over the past three years. Or maybe Walker finally just ran out of chances.