Taylor Walls To Begin Season On Injured List

Rays infielder Taylor Walls has a right oblique issue and will begin the season on the 10-day injured list, reports Marc Topkin of The Tampa Bay Times. That will likely lead to Carson Williams being the Opening Day shortstop, though Topkin notes the Rays are open to external additions as well.

The Rays came into camp with Walls and Williams as their top candidates for the Opening Day shortstop job. Walls is the more experienced of the two, having appeared in 480 games for the Rays over the past five seasons. He doesn’t provide anything with the bat, having hit .195/.286/.298 in his career. His defensive grades are mixed, with 52 Defensive Runs Saved at short but minus-14 Outs Above Average, but the Rays clearly skew to the positive side based on how they keep committing to him. They are paying him $2.45MM this year.

Williams has a chance to produce more than that in the long run but is still unproven. He is 22 years old, turning 23 in June. He got to make a brief debut in the big leagues last year, getting into 32 games. He hit five home runs but struck out at an awful 41.5% clip while only drawing a walk in 5.7% of his plate appearances. His minor league track record has been somewhat similar, though with more walks. In 111 Triple-A games last year, his 12.4% walk rate was quite good and he hit 23 home runs but with a very high 34.1% strikeout rate.

There are some skills there but Williams is clearly still young and raw. No qualified hitter had a strikeout rate greater than 32.3% last year. He’ll need to cut down on the punchouts and is still a work in progress. Understandably, the Rays feel he could still use some more polishing in the minors, as they optioned him to Triple-A Durham earlier this week.

The Walls injury may change that plan, at least for the short term. It’s unclear exactly how long Walls will be out. If the issue is fairly minor, he might only miss a week of the season since IL stints can be backdated by three days, even at the beginning of the schedule.

Until Walls is back, the shortstop depth will feel light. Prospects Jadher Areinamo, Gregory Barrios and Brayden Taylor are not too far off but neither has played at the Triple-A level yet. Ben Williamson only played third base for the Mariners last year but he has some minor league shortstop experience. He appears to be the club’s bench infielder at the major league level and would be the backup for either Walls or Williams.

As Topkin mentioned, it’s possible the Rays look for outside help. Perhaps they could find someone they like enough to bump Williams back down to Triple-A, but adding some minor league depth behind Williams could also be a possibility. Not a lot of teams are looking to trade starting-caliber shortstops at this time of year but some fringe guys may become available in the coming days. As teams break camp and make their final roster decisions, some will trigger opt-outs and become free agents while others will hit the waiver wire.

MLBTR’s Steve Adams recently took a look at some looming opt-out situations around the league. Orlando Arcia, Paul DeJong, Kyle Farmer and Dylan Moore are some guys with recent shortstop experience on that list, though Joel Sherman of The New York Post reports that DeJong plans not to trigger his opt-out. Moore is reportedly going to trigger his. Guys like Leo Jiménez, Brett Wisely or Tsung-Che Cheng could end up on waivers in the coming days. The Rays acquired Wisely and Cheng in the offseason but later lost both in subsequent moves.

Photo courtesy of Vincent Carchietta, Imagn Images