SCOTTSDALE — The scrimmage against Team USA at Scottsdale Stadium three years ago proved to be a memorable day for seven young Giants. 

Because they didn’t want to put much mileage on highly paid veterans as they prepared for that spring’s World Baseball Classic, Team USA’s coaches borrowed seven Giants prospects for the day, and five of them got into the exhibition game against San Francisco. The prospects got to keep their hats as a memento and six of them sat for a photo in the red, white and blue. 

The seventh turned out to be the best of the bunch, and a year later, it looked like he might be a pretty obvious choice for Team USA in the 2026 World Baseball Classic. 

Ryan Walker missed that photo because he was playing catch, but he enjoyed the day and gave the hat to his father. He then went out and so thoroughly dominated Triple-A hitters that the Giants called him up in May, and the next year, he was so good that he finished the year as the closer.

Had Team USA been putting together a bullpen for a 2025 WBC, the Washington native would have been an easy pick. Instead, Walker will spend all spring at Giants camp, but he still has big plans for March. 

President of baseball operations Buster Posey and manager Tony Vitello have both said they want to see a spring competition for the high-leverage bullpen spots. But Walker, even coming off an inconsistent season, is still the most likely choice to close out games early in the season.

It would solve a lot of problems for Vitello if Walker can get back to his 2024 form and lock up the ninth. And that’s exactly what the 30-year-old intends to do.

“I’m coming in with the mentality of earning that spot,” Walker said this week. “I’m not here to sit around and be like, ‘Oh I just want a job.’ I’m coming in with the full mentality of I’m going to earn this role and it’s going to be good. 

“I love the role, I love the high-leverage situations, and that’s where I want to be. I have no other intentions.”

There were enough stumbles in 2025 to keep Walker from entering camp as a locked-in closer, but when he looked back on it, he also came away with a sense that it wasn’t as bad as it might have felt during some of those nights when he couldn’t hold on in the ninth. He blew seven of 24 save opportunities a year after going 10-for-10 when he replaced Camilo Doval, but there are a lot of numbers that back up the sense that there were plenty of positives, too. 

Walker’s ERA jumped from 1.91 in 2024 to 4.11 in 2025, but his FIP was 3.30 and his xERA was 3.85. He faced 266 batters and gave up just four homers. His walk rate was higher than in 2020, but still put him well above average. 

His hard-hit percentage was the lowest of his career, but he had set an impossible bar in the previous two seasons, finishing in the 99th percentile and then 98th percentile. Last season, Walker ranked in the 86th percentile, and he continued to get groundballs at a good clip. 

Walker’s fastball velocity was the best of his career, although the pitch got hit hard at times. That was in part because there were nights when his slider was so far off that he had no choice but to fill the zone with sinkers, but he believes he found a mechanical fix over the winter. 

“Last year I would start counter-rotating pretty heavily and that just made it hard to get back to where I need to be to get my pitches to do what they need to do and be where they need to be,” he said. “I just kind of focused on staying more square and having a better direction towards the mound with my upper body so I don’t get too counter-rotated. That’s helped out a lot getting my arm to where it needs to be.”

Walker often wasn’t able to get his hand in the right position to spin the ball last year, but he feels he has found a fix. Even his misses have felt more competitive in bullpen sessions, as opposed to last year, when they often floated across the heart of the plate. 

What never left, even in the down times, was the belief that he could handle the ninth in the big leagues, and the Giants left the door open for that to again be his role. It was a good winter to be in the closer market, but the front office pretty much completely ignored it. 

Jason Foley has closing experience, but he won’t be ready until midseason because of rehab from shoulder surgery. Non-roster invitee Michael Fulmer does, too, but it would take a massive spring to make that a consideration early in the year.

Posey and Vitello have both hinted that the Giants could go with a committee, although they also know that relievers prefer set roles. Vitello said he has a “dream scenario” for how the Giants might one day line up in the late innings, but he has been coy when asked about specifics. Posey noted that it’s extremely rare that a team consistently gets through late-game scenarios the way his title teams did in 2010, 2012 and 2014.

“Personally I do think if you can find a role for guys — we’re all somewhat creatures of habit — that’s beneficial, but at the same time, we want these pitchers to understand their role one week might look different the next week just depending on where we are with help or where we are with who has been used,” he said this week. “We’re going to need some malleability in that bullpen and again, there is opportunity here and we’ll see who seizes that opportunity.”

Vitello’s first taste of big league life will be a lot smoother if he can settle on a closer over the next six weeks and limit the number of tough decisions he has to make late in games. The Giants do believe they can exploit matchups, but that’s easier to do in the seventh and eighth than the ninth. 

For better or worse, those last three outs are the most scrutinized, and losing late leads is the easiest way for a manager to find himself in hot water. 

The frontrunner for the job said Tuesday that his inconsistent 2025 taught him a lot. He’s confident that he’ll return to form, which would be one of the best things that could happen to the Giants this spring.

“It’s been good for me to kind of learn from that and figure out an even better mentality going forward,” Walker said. “Like I said, I have all the intentions in the world of coming into spring and dominating and earning that position.”

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