FORT MYERS, Fla. — At least Taylor Walls is close to his dream. Roughly 25 feet away, if you’re measuring.
That was Walls in his new job near third base on Sunday afternoon against the Twins, still within sight of his preferred position of shortstop but seemingly a world away at the moment.
You see, for now, for tomorrow, perhaps for the next decade, the shortstop’s job in Tampa Bay is expected to be the provenance of Wander Franco.
And that has necessitated a slight course adjustment for Walls. He is putting his long-term ambitions on hold while auditioning for the role of Joey Wendle’s replacement in the Rays lineup.
That means potentially platooning with Yandy Diaz at third base. That means the odd start at second base or shortstop when Brandon Lowe or Franco get a day off. Mostly, that means Walls has a chance to spend the entire season in the majors so he’s not going to sweat the details too much.
“I know I’m a shortstop. I believe I’m the best shortstop in the Major Leagues defensively, for sure,” Walls said. “(But) I understand the game, and I understand how good Wander is as well. So it’s not like I’m going to have the attitude of, ‘I’m better at short, I don’t care about third.’
“My goal is to be the best player (possible) to help this team win. If that’s me playing third base, then I’m playing third base. If that’s me playing second base, then it’s second base. I’m a competitor. I’m going to try to be the best at wherever they tell me to go.”
That’s confident talk for a guy with 54 games in the big leagues, but advanced metrics say Walls has a point. According to Fangraphs calculations, Walls was tied for third in the majors with 10 defensive runs saved at shortstop in 2021. What makes that particularly impressive is that Walls only played 378 innings at shortstop, and the two guys ahead of him on the list (Carlos Correa and Andrelton Simmons) had more than 1,000 innings each.
There were times in 2021 when the Rays would put Walls at shortstop and move Franco to third base, but manager Kevin Cash says that’s not the plan moving forward.
Franco is entrenched at shortstop, and Walls will earn the bulk of his at-bats elsewhere.
“If Wander’s in the lineup, he’ll play short. Out of the gate and for the foreseeable future,” Cash said. “Wander is a stud at shortstop. Wallsy might be a little better at that part of the game.
“There’s no camp in baseball that has that athleticism taking ground balls at shortstop. I’d bet anything on it. It’s amazing what those guys do.”
As good as he is at shortstop, Walls does not have a lot of experience elsewhere in the infield. He has started 30 games at second base in the minors and a dozen games at third base.
The hardest adjustment at third base, he said, was not getting as good a read off the bat. At shortstop, both the pitcher and hitter are in his field of vision. At third base, he has to shift his head from the mound to the batter’s box as the pitch is being thrown.
The more pressing concern for Walls is his offense. While he was a career .272 hitter in the minors with modest pop, he struggled as a rookie last season, hitting .211 with a .296 slugging percentage.
Still, there is reason for optimism. Walls, 25, was far from overmatched at the plate, showing an uncommon ability to work the strike zone for a young player. Walls swung at, roughly, one out of every five pitches outside the strike zone, which placed him among the top 30 hitters in the majors with at least 150 at-bats.
“I started missing fastballs, maybe a little late and a little under. Not getting the (high velocity) at the top of the zone. That’s when kind of slowly started trending downward,” Walls said. “This year (I’m) really cleaning up my path, getting a little more short to the ball, having the thought of something coming high and hard and adjusting down. I think that’s going to help me a lot.”
The opportunity is certainly there for Walls. As a switch-hitter who plays elite defense, he’s got the potential to stay in the lineup all season as long as his bat does not become a hindrance.
“I’m not comparing him to Joey Wendle, but every year Joey Wendle came in and it was like, ‘He’s really good, how are we going to get him at-bats?’ He’d end up with 450 at-bats, 500 at-bats,” Cash said. “That where my head is envisioning Wallsy.”
It’s not a bad place to start, even if it’s not where Walls wants to end up.
