Christian Walker two-homer game leads D-backs to series win

PHOENIX — Christian Walker had been unhappy with how he had been handling fastballs recently, so for the past few days, he’s emphasized working on hitting them better when he’s in the batting cage.

“I’ve been missing fastballs [and fouling them] straight back a little bit and it’s been bothering me,” Walker said.

The work paid off for him and the D-backs in a big way in the first inning Thursday as he hit a three-run homer, the first of two he would hit on the night, as Arizona rolled to an 11-1 win to grab the three-game series against the Angels at Chase Field.

“It felt really good to come through for the team early,” Walker said. “You get a chance with a couple guys on, and to go on and make that count in the first is big.”

Walker added a solo homer in his next at-bat in the third, which pushed the Arizona lead to 4-0 and gave starter Brandon Pfaadt more cushion to work with. Pfaadt made the most of it, allowing just one run over six innings of work.

“I think when Walker does that twice early on in the game — homers twice, gets the party started — I think it’s a lot easier for us to attack the zone,” Pfaadt said.

Walker will be a free agent at season’s end and find out what his value is on the open market.

What he means to the D-backs, not just on the field but in the clubhouse as the team’s unofficial captain, is harder to measure, but easy for his teammates to see.

“The consistency is incredible,” said Joc Pederson, who crushed a grand slam in the seventh inning. “He posts every day at first base, posts in the middle of the lineup, great defense, great at-bats, all around great teammate. Just a huge component you can build around.”

Walker, who has won the past two NL Gold Gloves at first base, brings an intensity and work ethic to the ballpark that is hard to match.

“He’s a very stabilizing personality,” D-backs manager Torey Lovullo said. “It’s just who he is at his core. He’s a very stable at-bat and he’s a very dependable defender. That’s what he brings to the clubhouse the minute he walks in there.”

Even after hitting two homers and with his team easily heading toward a victory, Walker’s unhappiness with himself for striking out in the eighth inning was easy to see.

“Everything,” Pfaadt said when asked what Walker means to the D-backs. “I think he’s probably that main guy, that main glue person on the field and off the field. Especially over there at first. I mean he makes every play. You know what you’re gonna get day-in and day-out. And obviously, his personality is one of a kind.”

Nothing has come easily for Walker, who found himself stuck behind Chris Davis in Baltimore, Freddie Freeman in Atlanta, Joey Votto in Cincinnati and Paul Goldschmidt in Arizona before finally getting his chance to play regularly in 2019 at the age of 28.

“It’s just a pure swing,” Lovullo said. “If I was going to teach somebody a swing, I would tell him to watch Christian Walker. It’s just a really nice simple approach. There’s a high level of intensity, there’s a high-level intelligence every at-bat.”

Walker’s second homer came on a hanging slider and he crushed it to the concourse area in left-center. The ball left the bat at 113 mph and traveled a Statcast-projected 464 feet.

“That might be all I got,” Walker said of how far the ball traveled. “That’s maxed out for sure.”

With Walker, though, you never know.