Two-time teammates Taijuan Walker and Robbie Ray will go head-to-head for the first time in their careers when the Philadelphia Phillies and host San Francisco Giants continue their three-game series Tuesday night.
A matchup of two of the best starting staffs in baseball lived up to its billing in Monday’s series opener, with the Phillies’ Cristopher Sanchez and Giants’ Landen Roupp pitching brilliantly in a game won 3-1 by the Giants.
In a tight contest in which none of the four runs was scored on a hit, the Giants fittingly pieced together their two-run, difference-making uprising in the eighth inning with a single, two hit batsmen and two run-scoring infield outs.
The right-handed Walker (3-5, 3.64 ERA) and left-handed Ray (9-3, 2.68) were teammates with the Arizona Diamondbacks from 2017-19, then again on the Toronto Blue Jays for the stretch run in 2020.
They missed each other by two days when the Giants and Phillies split a four-game series in Philadelphia in mid-April.
Walker dueled Roupp in the first game of that series, a game won 10-4 by the Giants on the strength of homers by Tyler Fitzgerald and Willy Adames in Walker’s five innings.
Ray didn’t get a decision in the game he pitched in the April series, giving up four runs in innings of an 11-4 San Francisco win. Philadelphia’s Bryce Harper homered off of Ray.
Walker will start against the Giants for the 13th time in his career, having gone 4-5 with a 4.90 ERA in the first 12 outings. He’s just 1-3 with a 5.76 ERA in six lifetime starts at Oracle Park.
Ray, meanwhile, has gone 4-2 with a 5.63 ERA in nine career starts against the Phillies.
In a week of important games with both teams facing top-flight competition — the Phillies will close the first half of the season in San Diego, while the Giants will be at home against the Los Angeles Dodgers — San Francisco manager Bob Melvin wasn’t surprised at the playoff-type pitchers’ duel in the series opener.
“He’s pretty good,” Melvin said of Sanchez with a chuckle to begin his post-game press conference after the win. “You try to scratch a run or two. You’re hoping to get a run and get his pitch count up to get him out of the game. And hopefully do some damage against the bullpen. And that’s what happened.”
The win was the Giants’ 50th of the season in their 92nd game. Last year, their 50th victory didn’t come until July 26 in their 105th contest.
Like the Giants, the Phillies entered the series riding a two-game winning streak.
While San Francisco was honored with three All-Star selections — all pitchers, including Ray — in the full-roster announcement on Sunday, many felt Philadelphia, the top team in the National League East, was short-changed to get only two invitations — Zack Wheeler and Kyle Schwarber.
One of the Phillies’ top candidates, .299-hitting shortstop Trea Turner, said not being selected wouldn’t be a motivation this week.
“I really wasn’t that surprised,” he insisted to a media gathering Monday in San Francisco. “I think my teammates were more surprised than I was. When you are 32 and have played 11 seasons in the league, a snub like this maybe doesn’t hit home as hard as it would in years past.
“A lot of awards for me now, I’ve realized, are for the people around me. They probably want me to get those more than I. I just want to play baseball, do my job, do it well, win a championship.”