SAN FRANCISCO — A tied ballgame heading to the top of the ninth is typically when the home team decides to deploy its closer.
Facing these circumstances Friday night, the score even at 2 in their first game against the Tigers, Giants manager Bob Melvin didn’t have a closer to call on.
After Camilo Doval was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento before the game, Melvin tapped Tyler Rogers for the highest-leverage situation of their eventual 3-2 win. The submarining set-up man recorded a 1-2-3 inning, but afterward the manager named a different reliever when asked about ninth-inning duties going forward.
Ryan Walker will handle ninth-inning duties in Doval’s absence, Melvin said, but the crossfiring right-hander was unavailable after pitching in their previous two games.
“It makes it a little more seamless,” Melvin said of the decision to go with Walker over other options such as Jordan Hicks or the Rogers brothers, all of whom have closing experience. “Hicks will move up a little bit. Everybody will move up a little bit behind Tyler, who will pitch the eighth. We’re trying to keep the roles, and then the lefties can kind of do their thing.”
Appearing in a major-league high 59 games, Walker has posted a 2.24 ERA while striking out 30.5% of the batters he has faced and walking only 5.6%. While the former 31st-round draft pick wasn’t on many radars when he debuted last May at 27 years old, the pressure cooker of the closer’s role shouldn’t be too foreign.
In addition to his 21 holds this season and his lone career save that he notched last August in Philadelphia, Walker has an average leverage index of 1.32 (an average situation is 1.0) this season compared to 0.90 as a rookie last year. Entering play, only Doval (2.03) and Tyler Rogers (1.35) had higher average leverage indexes among Giants relievers.
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“Walk certainly deserves it,” Melvin said. “He’s been really good. We don’t want to get Tyler out of the eighth. He’s been so good in the eighth. Our bullpen’s been really good at times — the back end — we don’t want to throw it into flux and everybody’s in different roles. The hard part is that (Walker) has been that fireman who comes in with guys on base and oftentimes pitches out of a jam and then the next inning as well.
“But he gets lefties out, he gets righties out, he’s got swing and miss stuff.”
Doval blew his fifth save of the season Thursday against the Nationals and was optioned to Sacramento before Friday’s game.
With a career-high walk rate, Melvin said he hopes Doval, an All-Star in 2023, can harness his command and return to the closer’s role in short order.
“It just needs to be a cleaner game with him. Our expectation – and our best team – is with him closing,” Melvin said before the game. “This affords him the opportunity to go down there, do some of those things and get back here and be the All-Star that he was last year.”
