Milwaukee Brewers: 3 starting pitcher free agent targets
By Kenny Jilek
Taijuan Walker
If you want a steady starter who will at least improve the back of the rotation and possibly give another great arm to the rotation, Taijuan Walker is your guy. He came into the league in 2013 and has never had a truly bad season. His worst year was in 2015 when he had an ERA of 4.56, but that didn’t tell the whole story as it was his best year control-wise, posting a career-low 2.1 walks per nine innings and career-high 3.93 strikeout to walk ratio.
His career ERA over 108 games and 105 starts is 3.84, which is about what you can expect from him next season. He’s unlikely to have a bad season, and this year in his six starts after being traded to the Blue Jays, he had an ERA of 1.37, so he can be a star in good stretches of time.
The big setback with Walker is his injury history or rather one big injury. In 2018, he tore his UCL, which meant Tommy John surgery. That surgery made him miss the rest of 2018 and all but one game of 2019. Because of this, he was non-tendered by the Diamondbacks and was on the free agent market for cheap, which led to the Mariners picking him up for just $2 million dollars.
After a 2020 season where he shined, his price will definitely be higher, and he’ll probably be looking for a longer contract for some security, but teams will still have their concerns about his health, and that could put him in the Milwaukee Brewers price range. He’s only 27-years-old and could be entering his prime. Maybe this is one that Stearns takes a chance on and hits a home run for the next few seasons.