‘Underdog’ Ryan Walker enjoying rise from 31st-round pick to SF Giants’ bullpen

Toward the end of last spring training, Giants pitching coach Andrew Bailey was giving manager Gabe Kapler the rundown of arms coming over from minor-league camp to round out their bullpen for one of their final exhibitions.

Something stuck out about an otherwise relatively nondescript profile: 26 years old, right-handed, 31st-round draft pick, fifth year in pro ball, hadn’t pitched 10 innings above Single-A.

“(Bailey) said, ‘It looks like he’s going to pick to third base every time he delivers the baseball,'” Kapler said. “I’m like, sure. Really can’t wait to see this. So I was excited to bring him into the game, and sure enough, full crossfire, full across-the-body delivery.

“Sometimes different is enough to get hitters out. … It’d be cool to see him make a name for himself.”

Speaking from the dugout of Scottsdale Stadium that morning in April 2022, Kapler had to be reminded of the name of the reliever he was talking about. It was Ryan Walker.

Safe to say, everyone in the organization knows Walker’s name now.

“It’s been kind of crazy,” Walker, now 27, said of his unexpected rise from the 916th overall pick in 2018. “I was a 31st-round pick. You don’t have a ton of expectations for guys like that. … I guess in reality, I’ve always kind of been an underdog.”

Opener extraordinaire, Captain Crossfire, Walker has carved out an unexpectedly important role on the Giants’ pitching staff since being called up May 19. He has a 2.45 ERA while appearing in more games than anyone besides Camilo Doval and Tyler Rogers.

The Giants have had remarkable success in bullpen games this season — 15-7 after losses in their past two — due in no small part fo Walker, who has opened eight of them, more than anyone on the staff besides John Brebbia.

They had been undefeated in the previous seven Walker opened until Wednesday’s loss to the Angels, and he wasn’t to blame for the first blemish on his record: he worked a scoreless first, striking out three, including Shohei Ohtani.

“It’s been fun to be able to kind of have a role in the bullpen,” Walker said. “It makes you feel a lot more a part of things. …

“I did not like (opening) in the beginning. It’s not that I disliked it, it just wasn’t my favorite. It’s different. But now that I’ve been doing it more, it’s not just the success, it’s also like, cool, you get to set the tone a little without having to be a starter and go eight innings.”

Walker was called up alongside catcher Patrick Bailey, a first-round pick, and neither has been sent down since.

Of course, even on his major-league debut, Walker was overshadowed. Welcome to the life of a 31st-round pick.

“I thought I’d come up and no matter how I’d play, they’d have a specific date set in mind and I’d go down that day,” Walker said. “Now I feel less and less like I have to look behind my back to see if I’m gonna go back down.”

Raised in rural Arlington, Washington, about an hour north of Seattle, Walker didn’t take the path that leads many to a Division-I scholarship. His mom was a dental assistant, and his dad was a property manager. While other young prospects toured the country going to camps and playing in front of scouts and college coaches, Walker didn’t leave the state of Washington.

“Very middle class,” he said. “But they made it work. They put everything they had into letting me play and getting me to where I needed to be. … I never really had the money to be able to do those high-end select leagues and get all this exposure. We had to go a different route and it ended up working out.”

It was at Washington State where he developed the crossfire motion that caught the attention of Giants’ coaches.

The motion is rare among major-leaguers. While it adds deception, the mechanics are harder to perfect and repeat, hurting a pitcher’s ability to locate. Chris Sale used it to much success from the left side, while it helped make a career out of another formerly unheralded Giants reliever, Sergio Romo.

“You don’t see it very often from either side,” catcher Blake Sabol said. “But nothing like (Walker’s).”

The mechanics are typically coached out of pitchers when they’re younger, one reason so few are seen in the big leagues, but Walker said he’s never been pushed in a different direction. He likely wouldn’t be able to change, even if he wanted to.

“If you put a line right down the middle of the mound and say try to land on this line, I never really could,” he said. “I’ve always been able to be semi-successful with it, so it never was a problem.”

The name that came to mind on that April morning last spring for Kapler was Jeff Nelson, a former reliever with the Yankees and Mariners.

“I would prefer to face Mariano Rivera than I would Jeff Nelson,” Kapler said. “Different is good in baseball.”

Kapler’s numbers against Nelson? Eight at-bats, four strikeouts, no hits.

Here’s a number of Walker’s to chew on: 25.7%, or the rate of hard contact hitters have made against him this season. In other words, with his funky delivery, Walker is generating weak contact from three-quarters of the hitters he faces, the fourth-best rate in the majors.