Tom Brennan - Josh Walker, Dillon Gee, and Tylor Megill - A Comparison

A few Josh Walker photos, courtesy of a great photographer, Herm Card

As you know, I wrote a whole lot about Tylor Megill during the season, his meteoric rise to Metsville and all.  What, I shoulda written about their sputtering offense 3 times a week? Megill was newsworthy.

Aside from some late-season fatigue due to his innings leap, he did remarkably well with his variety of offerings, good velocity, and sharp control.  He also learned that unlike minor league hitters, major league hitters are like venomous snakes, and can strike quickly and deeply and badly.  So I expect his HRs-allowed to decrease, as he becomes increasingly adept at dealing with dangerous predators.

I kind of see him as - I dunno - a Dillon Gee upgrade.

And that is no knock on Gee.  

I was, I admit, at first shocked that Dillon Gee, a 21st rounder in 2007, was successful.  When he was added to the Mets staff in 2010, my expectations were low.

After all, despite going 13-8 in AAA in 2010, in Buffalo, he had a swollen 4.96 ERA there, with 174 hits allowed in 161 innings, 23 of them being homers.  

Usually, guys like that?  They come up and get tattooed.

But baseball being baseball, he gets called up from AAA and, like Lugo and Gsellman did in 2016, Gee does BETTER than he did in AAA - he goes 2-2 with a 2.18 ERA in 33 innings in 2010.  The next season, despite a 4.43 ERA, he fashioned a stellar 13-6 Mets record in 2011.  Where were our 13-6 starters in 2021?  Besides the one in Seattle (Flexen), and the one in Toronto (Matz).  None, I thought so. 

The next three seasons, 2012-14, he went 25-26 as a Met, with an ERA of around 3.90 in 71 starts.  Decent.  Solid.  Real solid.

Unfortunately for him, this was the era of the soon-coming emergence of Harvey, Jake, Matz, Thor and Wheeler, all considered race cars compared to Gee, the reliable and highly useful family sedan. 

He still had enough skills to go 11-14 over his next 3 seasons, including 11-11 after leaving the Mets.

To me, he retired too soon at age 32, after a brief stint in Japan.  He finished his career at a very solid 51-48, 4.09 ERA in 854 innings, a career shortened in part by the emergence of 5 seemingly elite pitchers.

I enjoyed and admired Gee.  If he reads this, I'd want him to know that.  Dillon, there were some like me who appreciated your production.

I did stop by St Lucie park just before spring training in 2015, having never been in the park.  It was open - I just strolled in.  2015 was during the emergence of the Fab 5, and Gee was surrounded by reporters in the dugout, as I recall asking him about his likely reduced role given the influx of the Kids with Swagger.  He seemed to be answering the beat writers matter-of-factly.  Decisions about him starting or not were for others to make.

Wikipedia summarized his 2015 as follows:

Gee was preparing to accept a role in the Mets bullpen when it was announced that Zack Wheeler would miss the entire 2015 season due to injury. Gee therefore began the 2015 season in the Mets starting rotation. On May 8, Gee was placed on the disabled list with a groin strain and was replaced in the rotation by top prospect Noah Syndergaard.

He was eventually returned to the active roster on June 3, at which point the Mets announced plans to use a six-man starting rotation. However, after one poor start, the Mets announced plans to return Gee to the bullpen. 

A frustrated Gee told the media, "I'm almost at the point now where I just don't even care anymore. I mean, I'm kind of just over it all." Gee was designated for assignment by the Mets on June 15.

Ouch!  He was jerked around.  Not the first, not the last. Everyone has their level of tolerance.  

Anyway, to me, he was very comparable to the towering Tylor Megill, but with less size and velocity.  I am definitely hoping Megill can exceed Gee's career results.  

Which brings us to Josh Walker.  To me, the big lefty should try to set his sights on being the next Dillon Gee.  In him, I see similar stuff to Gee, but from the left side.  His 9-4, 3.73 ERA season in AA and AAA was stellar, only marred by two bad AAA starts in which he allowed 13 earned runs in 8.1 innings.  Other than those two dumpster fires, he allowed just 35 earned runs in 107 innings, which is a 3.00 ERA roughly.

Anytime a guy has a somewhat inflated ERA, I look to see what would happen if you tossed out a few of the outlier outings.  You do that, and suddenly, Walker's numbers look better.  Same applies with a man folks love to criticize, Edwin "Sugar" Diaz.

Walker, it must be pointed out, had several stellar starts in 2021 and also ended the season with a sterling 1.02 WHIP.  And I particularly love his just allowing 9 cross-border souvenirs A/K/A homers in 116 innings in 2021.

By comparison, Jerad Eickhoff allowed 17 dingers in 80 AAA innings (and 9 more in 20 Mets' innings), and Yamamoto allowed 7 minor league HRs in 33 innings.  So, Walker allowed just 9 in 116 innings, while those 2 major league vets allowed a far higher 24 in 113 minor league innings.  Draw your own conclusions.

What puzzled and concerned me a bit, though, is that Walker did not get called up to start for the Mets at all.  Yes, he still made outstanding progress in his initial career forays into AA and AAA, and his previous career time pre-2020 was only in rookie ball, but here is a list of guys who started for the Mets in 2021, without Josh Walker on it:

deGrom, Stroman, Taijuan Walker, Megill, Lucchesi, Yamamoto, Eickhoff, Stock, Carrasco, Hill, Oswalt, Peterson, and Williams. That's 13 guys. 

Also, several reliever starts were made by 5 pitchers: (the dearly departed Thor, Loup, Smith, Castro, and Gsellman). 

So that's 18 guys who started games for the Mets in 2021 - but Josh Walker wasn't one of them.  Megill (in fairly similar circumstances) was. But, to be fair to Walker, minor league pitcher of the year Adam Oller was not asked to start any Mets games either - in 2021, anyway.

My hope is that they felt doing so would be rushing Walker, and that he is hopefuly very comparable skills-and-stuff-wise to Peterson and - yes - also to Gee, and that Walker shows up getting some Mets starts in 2022.

Unless, of course, he is trade bait.  Which seems doubtful, when you consider the Mets had 18 different guys start games in 2021.  Solid starters are always needed.

To whit, there could at some point in 2022 be TWO Walkers in the Mets' rotation.

Which would be pretty remarkable for a pitcher like Walker who was drafted in 2017 in the 37th round, 1,117th overall that year.  

The same draft year that a lefty of similar size and stature, David Peterson was drafted a mere 1,097 picks earlier.

I love underdog stories and hope Walker gets his chance.

I also, at the same time, want the Mets to beat the Braves and get to the World Series.  Which requires stellar, proven, deep team pitching.

So, we'll see how it all unfolds for Walker in the months ahead.

As a final note, I love to see guys like Walker make it - so they can GET PAID.  

He has invested 5 years (2017-21) in his baseball career and assuredly has earned a mere pittance so far in his career.  It's nice to make that big league roster and get paid $3,500 for every game you're on it.    Megill debuted on game # 69, so I assume he earned about $329,000 (94 X $3,500) - sweet.   Sure beats AAA pay.

Let me conclude by hoping that you, the reader, are earning more than a mere pittance.  Any Macks Mets reader is "worth a million bucks", as my father used to say.  When he said it, though, 50+ years ago, that was a WHOLE lot of money. Back in the days when the likes of the great Sandy Koufax made only about $2,500 per start.

So, hopefully Josh Walker becomes "Earnie" Walker in 2022.