After hot stretch in 2020, Walsh picks up where he left off
Now that Jared Walsh has started this season with two weeks just as hot as the last four weeks of his 2020 season, the Angels’ first baseman can make an admission.
Walsh was right there with anyone else who wondered if last year was a small sample-size mirage.
“With baseball, for as much failure as we have, there’s going to be doubt,” Walsh said this week. “Every player puts in the work, but you want it to show up on the field. I’d be lying if I said there was no (doubt).
“But I think that’s a natural reaction for anybody. If you really care about it. There’s a lot on the line personally. But it was nothing that I felt like was impossible to overcome.”
There could have been even more doubt after a spring training in which Walsh was 9 for 44 (.205) with a .502 OPS. Walsh, though, said he’s never been good in spring training because it takes him some time to get his mechanics back in order after the winter.
So far so good.
“I’m really happy with where I’m at right now,” Walsh said. “I think it’s just being patient, and I know a lot of other hitters kind of feel the same way. So for me, it’s just seeing pitches and getting comfortable in the box.”
Walsh, 27, is hitting .324 with three home runs and a 1.067 OPS through 12 games. This came after a 2020 season in which he hit nine homers with a .971 OPS in 108 plate appearances, mostly in September.
Walsh has now moved into the cleanup spot — right behind Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout — while Anthony Rendon is on the injured list.
Certainly, six weeks of sizzling hitting is not much more of a sample size than four weeks, but each week continues to add to his résumé and prove that manager Joe Maddon was right about what he thought the first time he saw Walsh in spring training 2020.
Maddon didn’t know much about Walsh before being intrigued with the swings he saw in batting practice, particularly the way Walsh used his hands.
“They’re kind of lightning,” he said. “He’s got lightningquick hands, the way he releases them at contact.”
Maddon said many hitters swing with their arms, which is a habit often developed with an aluminum bat swing that rewards imprecise contact.
But the best hitters generate the whip in the bat from the elbows to the fingertips, Maddon said.
“It permits him to be more accurate with the barrel,” Maddon said. “And then how his hands actually work through the strike zone, that’s power. It’s just different. He’s got that different sound. It comes off hotter.”
A swing like that, and the numbers it produced, should not have gone overlooked in the minors, but Maddon believes Walsh was a victim of being a 39th-round draft pick in 2015.
“I think his draft status got in the way a little bit early, and he had to fight through that,” Maddon said.
The whole two-way player experiment with Walsh likely never would have happened if the Angels had envisioned him being the type of big-league hitter he has been so far. In fact, the Angels have now essentially had Walsh abandon pitching.
His versatility nowadays comes in his recent appearances in the outfield. With Dexter Fowler now out for the season, the Angels have been using Walsh in right field.
He made a sliding catch on Tuesday night, adding even more to what Maddon likes so much about his skill set.
“It’s all there,” Maddon said. “The guy just needs opportunity. He needs good health, and he’s going to be a really good baseball player.”