{"id":690360,"date":"2026-05-23T23:03:15","date_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:03:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/690360\/"},"modified":"2026-05-23T23:03:15","modified_gmt":"2026-05-23T23:03:15","slug":"angels-sign-taijuan-walker-to-minor-league-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/690360\/","title":{"rendered":"Angels Sign Taijuan Walker To Minor League Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

The Angels have signed right-hander Taijuan Walker<\/a> to a minor league deal, according to Jeff Fletcher of the Orange County Register<\/a>. Walker was released by the Phillies earlier this season. He is a client of CAA Sports.<\/p>\n

Walker, 33, certainly made an impact in Philadelphia this year, and not in a good way. In five appearances (four starts), Walker allowed a staggering 23 earned runs and eight home runs in just 22 2\/3 innings. Almost nothing was going right for him, with Walker\u2019s strikeout rate, walk rate, and WHIP all trending in the wrong direction from last year. The Phillies, needing a rotation spot for the returning Zack Wheeler<\/a>, decided to release Walker on April 23rd.<\/p>\n

There is no financial risk in the Angels taking a flier on Walker. At the time of his release, Walker was earning $18MM in the final season of a four-year, $72MM pact with the Phillies. The Angels will only owe him the prorated league minimum for any time spent in the Majors, which will be subtracted from the Phillies\u2019 tab. Regardless of Walker\u2019s underwhelming recent track record, at least he won\u2019t cost the Angels a lot of money.<\/p>\n

Of course, his being cheap doesn\u2019t inspire confidence in Walker\u2019s ability to help the Angels. The righty had a 7.10 ERA in 83 2\/3 innings in 2024 and allowed two and a half home runs per nine innings. Walker split 2025 between the rotation and bullpen, with mediocre results in both roles. His 4.25 ERA as a starter came despite a below average 14.7% strikeout rate. Meanwhile, Walker\u2019s 3.15 ERA as a reliever disguised an ugly 11.8% walk rate, and his 5.14 FIP put his true talent two runs higher than his ERA. Even if Walker improves on his small sample from earlier this year, he\u2019s at best a No. 5 starter now.<\/p>\n

On the other hand, the Angels aren\u2019t a bad place for Walker to try to rebuild his value. The club\u2019s rotation is perhaps better than their 4.60 ERA would suggest, but that\u2019s largely due to Jose Soriano<\/a>\u2018s breakout and Reid Detmers<\/a> having a career-best 3.23 expected ERA (well below his actual 5.07 ERA). Walbert Ure\u00f1a<\/a> has a 2.70 ERA, but he\u2019s only 22 years old and walks too many hitters. Jack Kochanowicz<\/a>\u2018s so-so 4.55 ERA is benefitting from opponents\u2019 .249 average on balls in play, and Grayson Rodriguez<\/a> has only made two starts since returning from shoulder inflammation.<\/p>\n

Walker could conceivably get some starts if one of Ure\u00f1a, Kochanowicz, or Rodriguez struggles enough or suffers an injury. The signing also harkens back to the Angels\u2019 offseason strategy, which saw low-cost signings of Alek Manoah<\/a> among others, plus the buy-low trade for Rodriguez. The Angels are currently at 18-34 and have a less than 1% chance of making the playoffs according to FanGraphs, despite manager Kurt Suzuki<\/a> believing they\u2019re merely in a cold stretch. The club could bring Walker up if the need arises and put him on outright waivers if he does poorly, as was the case with Manoah.<\/p>\n

Photo courtesy of Bill Streicher, Imagn Images<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Angels have signed right-hander Taijuan Walker to a minor league deal, according to Jeff Fletcher of the…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":690361,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,591,85,250062],"class_list":["post-690360","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-mlb","tag-sports","tag-taijuan-walker"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690360","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=690360"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/690360\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/690361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=690360"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=690360"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=690360"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}