Could the Dodgers take a shot on Taijuan Walker?

With all of the Winter Meetings moves, a few significant names got lost in the shuffle. One of those is Taijuan Walker, who recently became a free agent.

The former first-round pick of the Seattle Mariners, the Arizona Diamondbacks non-tendered Walker after he made only four starts across two injury-marred seasons in 2018 and 2019. Despite the injury troubles stealing a pair of his prime years, Walker is still entering just his age-27 season (for context, Tony Gonsolin turns 26 years old during the 2020 season), making him a prime bounce-back candidate and a solid investment for any team looking to build a starting rotation from the ground up.

The Dodgers certainly don’t seem to be in that sort of position though. Their rotation had the best starter ERA in all of baseball last season, why would they need to give Walker a chance?

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There are actually quite a few compelling reasons that the front office already seems to have considered valid this offseason. A few weeks back, the Dodgers front office was rumored to be interested in Kevin Gausman, another post-hype starting pitcher with first-round pedigree and success in the major leagues.  Gausman, like Walker, has been pitching in the majors since 2013, for multiple teams, and had his best seasons between 2016 and 2017 (and far less notably, both are sitting on 11 wins as their career-high for a season).

Outside of these similarities, these two pitchers are different in terms of their 2020 value from the Dodgers perspective. While Gausman actually has some bullpen experience from the past couple seasons, Walker really has not been healthy since 2017, and when he has been healthy, he’s been a starter through and through.

That may be significant, as the Dodgers have plenty of rotation options, and just as the front office values versatility in the lineup, they do the same on the mound. Ross Stripling, Kenta Maeda, Dustin May, and Julio Urias all are talented enough to be on an MLB rotation for another team, but the Dodgers had so much pitching in 2019 that these were all bullpen arms at times.

Walker may not have bullpen experience, but Maeda and Stripling certainly didn’t either heading into their stints in LA. Plus, Walker is coming off of injuries that have spanned two seasons. He certainly won’t be setting a career-high in innings pitched or games started wherever he goes, so having a soft landing with a team known to get a lot out of their starting pitchers could be the perfect pit stop. Even more optimistically than a one-year “prove it” deal for Walker, the six-foot-four righty could end up fitting in perfectly with the Dodgers, spending the next few seasons of his prime in the LA rotation. In 2017, Walker pitched in the NL West for the 93-win Dbacks and thrived, going 9-9 with a 3.49 ERA, and 146 strikeouts to just 61 walks in 157.1 innings.

No matter how long he stays in LA, the team could certainly use a pitcher with his ceiling and his low-cost. He only was slated to make $5 million with Arizona when they non-tendered him, so he is unlikely to make more than that with whichever team picks him up for 2020.

If LA misses out on Walker, that’s certainly not the end of the world, but signing Walker to a one-year deal worth less than $5 million seems like a worthy gamble.