PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla. — By the time Cardinals right fielder Jordan Walker raced into the distant corner at Clover Park to track down a double and get the ball back to the cutoff man, he had already covered a lot of ground in the game.
He shielded his eyes from the early-game glare in right.
He backtracked and twisted on a ball hung up by the wind.
He caught a ball with his back to the wall, a few feet shy of a grand slam.
As the Mets' pushed toward a 3-1 victory Tuesday night at their spring training home, Walker had four putouts in right field by the beginning of the eighth. He caught two fly balls at the wall, easing back toward it without hesitation and using his height to complete the catch. For a former infielder still in his first few years of tracking fly balls in right, the evening was a busy one and it gave Walker a variety of flyouts to chase, some wind to deal with, an inning or two of that evening glare, and a few doubles to assure did not become triples.
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"He's getting better at slowing down on balls that are up against the wall, where he's having to pick up and turn to hit the cut," manager Oliver Marmol said late Tuesday after the team's split-squad, day-night doubleheader in two different ballpark. "It's not just a grab, rip and go. He's focused on hitting the first guy and you can see that. He's under control."
Walker also drew two walks in the game.Â
Walks proliferated through the game. Walker had the Cardinals' only two, but Cardinals pitchers issued eight, four of them from starter Lance Lynn.
The Cardinals' right-hander had to roll the second and third innings — that is, depart the inning in the middle of it, let a reliever finish it, and then return to start the next inning. The abandonment of baseball's bedrock substitution rule is permitted during spring training so that starters/pitchers can get their work in but not get trapped in prolonged, pitch-bloat innings.
That was the approach with Lynn. Once it took him more than 30 pitches to get through the first inning, the Cardinals purposefully put a governor on his next few innings so that he did not throw more than the prescribed pitches (sometimes as few as 12) and still be able to get the feel of warming up and readying for another inning.
They wanted him to get at least four "ups" and to do so that meant abbreviated innings finished by another pitcher.
Lynn struck out four while getting the equivalent of 3 1/3 innings, or 10 outs. He limited the Mets to a few runs given the number of baserunners and laborious innings. He threw 71 pitches, 42 of them for strikes.
Jeff McNeil worked Lynn through an 11-pitch walk in the first inning that added to the mushrooming pitch count. All four of Lynn's walks came after he had the hitter with two strikes. In the second inning, Lynn walked a batter to load the bases and bring Home Run Derby legend Pete Alonso to the plate with the bases loaded.
Not that Lynn faced him.
The Cardinals rolled the inning so that Lynn could go to the dugout and check out his pitch location on an iPad while a minor-leaguer brought over from the back fields cleaned up the inning. The Mets torched a 1-0 lead by the Cardinals in the bottom of the second inning with Brett Baty's home run off Lynn. It sailed well over the head of Walker as he tracked it to the wall but did not have a play.
Joseph King replaced Lynn in the second inning and walked in a run to break the tie game and face the middle of the Mets' order.
Catcher Ivan Herrera set up the Cardinals' lone run and early lead with a triple to right-center field. It did not outlast the inning.Â
As the walks mounted in the bottom of the first inning and overwhelmed the pitch count, the Cardinals still minimized the damage before shortening Lynn's appearance or turning to a minor-leaguer for rescue. The rolling of an inning meant McNeil also hit with the bases loaded and did not face Lynn.Â
With the bases loaded, McNeill sent a pitch from a young reliever to the deep edge of right field that would have been, could have been a grand slam. The wind was not on its side
Walker eased up toward the wall, got all of his height under it and made the catch for the out.
All in a night's work.