PSA to baseball writers: Mariners' Taijuan Walker is pretty Twitter-savvy
Let this be a lighthearted warning, baseball scribes of the world: some players pay attention to your tweets, your columns and your hot-takes and will make you aware of it once in a while in amusing fashion.
Friday night's surprising news of the Arizona Diamondbacks signing Zack Greinke means that the Los Angeles Dodgers are still in the market for a big pitching acquisition to complement Clayton Kershaw and the rest of the rotation. They've since been linked to Hisashi Iwakuma, who is a free agent after four solid seasons with the Seattle Mariners.
On Saturday, Christopher Crawford of Baseball Prospectus chimed in on Twitter regarding the Iwakuma market and how a potential Dodgers' signing would impact the Mariners:
That second tweet, the one that name-drops M's pitchers Nathan Karns and Taijuan Walker, was 'liked' on Twitter by Walker himself. Crawford made note of that:
Walker, one of the Mariners' most promising young pitching talents, went 11-8 with a 4.56 ERA in 29 starts in 2015, but it's unclear if he'd be a strong enough No. 2 to pitch behind Felix Hernandez if Iwakuma signs elsewhere.
Uh oh. pic.twitter.com/e5rYcW1rnx
— Christopher Crawford (@CVCrawfordBP) December 6, 2015
Back to that tweet: Crawford didn't even tag Walker's personal Twitter account in his tweet, but the young pitcher found it anyway, and filed it away in the memory banks. Perhaps Walker is an avid Baseball Prospectus reader. Maybe he was searching his name on Twitter (which can be a dicey proposition for professional athletes, but that's a conversation for another column). Whatever the case may be, he replied with a quick note that might just mean he was having a particularly dull Saturday:
So, all other baseball writers...watch out! Walker's out there on the Twittersphere.
@ProspectInsider @CVCrawfordBP I need some excitement lol
— Taijuan Walker (@tai_walker) December 6, 2015
