A note about this morning’s COVID-19 results: What’s happened to the players on the Marlins (and elsewhere) is really sad and scary. Hopefully every single one of these cases is mild and the players are doing what they can to take care of themselves, their teammates, and their families. I love, love, love baseball, but MLB should absolutely cancel the season to prevent this kind of thing from happening again and again.

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Last year, on the final day of the regular season, the Arizona Diamondbacks and the San Diego Padres faced off on a Sunday afternoon in Phoenix. To the casual observer, this game was a low-stakes matchup between two teams who didn’t have a whole lot to play for. But for some folks, this game was special. For the first time in 533 days, Taijuan Walker made his way out to the mound to pitch in an MLB contest.

Five hundred thirty three days! That’s a year and a half of hurting and healing. Eighteen months of incremental progress and frustrating setbacks. Five hundred thirty three days of cheering on your teammates while being bitterly disappointed that you can’t join them on the field. Tai only worked one inning – giving up a double but no runs – but it must’ve felt great to toe the rubber again. After the game, Walker admitted, “It was a little emotional when I first walked out there. Two seasons just straight rehab. Just trying to get through it.”

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Tai was drafted by Seattle out of Yucaipa High School as the 43^rd overall selection back in 2010 – the Mariners’ supplemental pick after losing Adrián Beltré to Boston in free agency. Coming up through the minor leagues as a member of the vaunted “Cerberus,” expectations for Tai have always been sky high. He was a consensus top-20 prospect from 2012-2014, climbing as high as #5 on MLB Pipeline’s list, and he quickly made his way up through the M’s system. He made his MLB debut in late August 2013, throwing five scoreless innings against a hapless Astros team, and then closed out his eight-appearance 2014 MLB campaign by spinning a complete game against a solid Blue Jays team (Seattle still lost 1-0, because of course they did). But it wasn’t until 2015 that he got his first extended MLB action.

Coming out of spring training in 2015, Tai won a job in Seattle’s starting rotation, slotting in between Hisashi Iwakuma and J.A. Happ as the M’s fourth starter. Tai’s first start of the season was … incredibly inauspicious. He got absolutely creamed, giving up nine earned runs in just 3.1 IP. Ouch! But after a few up and down starts in April, Tai settled into a pretty good rhythm. Over his last 24 starts in 2015, he recorded an ERA of 3.92 and a FIP of 3.86. The team went 16-8 in those appearances, which is pretty damn good for a club that finished the year with a record of 76-86. Tai’s best performance of the season came against the Twins in July. He needed just 101 pitches to record 11 strikeouts on the way to completing nine innings of one-hit baseball. The stuff was there; if Tai could just find a way to be a bit more consistent, he could be a heck of a ballplayer.

Unfortunately, 2016 was a struggle. After five good starts to begin the season, Tai stumbled. His walks were up, his strikeouts were down, and his home run rate increased significantly compared to the previous season. He still showed flashes of absolute brilliance – he had starts against the Indians and the Angels that were especially fun – but the consistency still wasn’t there. In fairness to Tai, a part of his erratic performance was likely caused by injuries. Discomfort in his right foot nagged him throughout the season and he ended up spending a month on the IL between July and August. Tai would undergo surgery in October after the season:

“I guess I had an extra bone in my foot and I guess that broke off and it was rubbing against my Achilles tendon, and every time I pushed off I would be in pain — and even walking, too. I had surgery on that right after the season, and it turns out I had 10 bone spurs in my foot that they took out.”

That sounds … uncomfortable. It’s pretty amazing that Walker was able to gut out 25 starts for the M’s in 2016. After being rushed back from his IL stint – Tai made just one rehab appearance – he struggled in his return to the rotation, giving up six runs in a four-inning start against the Angels. This performance earned Tai a trip to Tacoma. However, instead of admitting that Seattle brought Tai back too quickly, Servais framed the move as “sending a message” to Walker, punishing him for his lack of performance/consistency. As has repeatedly been the case with Jerry Dipoto’s Mariners, if you end up in the dog house, the team will make sure everyone knows it. Tai would be dealt to the D’backs a few months later.

In his first season in Arizona, Walker established himself as a pretty nifty #2/#3 pitcher. He posted an fWAR of 2.5 in 28 starts – spending a few weeks on the IL with a blister – and learned to stay away from the disaster outings that plagued him in Seattle. The D’backs made the playoffs that season, thanks in part to Tai’s steady, consistent presence in the rotation. He even got a start in the NLDS (though he did struggle in that appearance).

Going into 2018, Tai had already become a fan favorite in Phoenix. He was active in the community and even brought a taco truck to spring training, handing out free tacos (made with his own recipes) to fans. Things were lookin’ up! And then, in his third start of the season, Tai was pulled with the dreaded “right forearm tightness” – one of the worst things that can happen to a pitcher. Walker had a partial UCL tear in his right elbow. After undergoing Tommy John surgery and rehabbing for more than a year, Tai almost made it back to the bigs in May 2019 … but then he suffered a shoulder injury during a bullpen session. This new malady meant he wouldn’t be back until the very last day of the season.

Tai’s projected arbitration salary for 2020 was a fairly modest $5M. Given this price tag and the fact that the D’backs rewarded Tai’s hard work during rehab by giving him the start in game 162 of 2019, it was widely believed they would be interested in bringing him back. However, in a surprise move, the team non-tendered Walker, making him a free agent. When Mariners fans saw that Tai was on the market, many of us clamored for Seattle to sign him. And, shockingly, Dipoto actually made a cool/fun free agent move, inking Tai to a one-year, incentive-laden deal.

This brings us to 2020. Believe it or not, after all this, Tai is still just 27 years old. (He’s about six months younger than Marco Gonzales, who Dipoto referred to as a young building block as recently as February.) Although several guys are older, only three players in the org have more MLB service time than Tai. It’ll be interesting to see how well he takes to his role as something of an elder statesman this year.

The shortened season this year is a big ol’ bummer for Tai. Instead of having ~30 starts to reestablish himself as a dependable rotation piece, he’ll probably only have 10 (assuming everything goes off without a hitch, which seems incredibly unlikely). He has a lot to prove in 2020 if he wants to get a good offer next offseason. His first start on Saturday didn’t really go as planned, but struggling against the Astros while working through the offseason rust (and being supported by some pretty crummy defense) isn’t the worst outcome. Hopefully Tai makes some adjustments and gets stretched out a little more before his scheduled start on Friday against the A’s in Seattle’s home opener.

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Tai has been one of my favorite ballplayers since I fully bought into the hype in 2013 after seeing him tear through the Southern League. He’s big, he’s athletic, and he has one of the most infectious grins in sports. I was bummed when the M’s traded him, but the D’backs are actually my second favorite team, so I still got to follow his career closely and watch him grow into a more complete player. It sucks that we all won’t be able to go down to the ballpark to cheer for Walker in person this season; nonetheless, it’s still pretty cool to see him pitching in a Mariners uniform again. Welcome back home, Tai. #goms