'A cornerstone player,' Arizona Diamondbacks' Christian Walker in last year of contract

SAN DIEGO — The Diamondbacks played a day game on Sunday, which meant pregame work on the field at Petco Park was limited. But two hours before first pitch, there was Christian Walker standing at first base, taking ground balls, catching throws from a teammate.

Walker was doing something he has been known for since he first arrived in Arizona more than seven years ago. He was putting in the work.

It is how, in his early 30s, he turned himself into one of the better all-around first basemen in baseball. It is how he has managed to put together one of the better first halves of anyone in the National League, to the point that his omission from the All-Star team on Sunday caused a minor stir in the Diamondbacks’ clubhouse.

And, in a way, it is how he has approached his impending free agency: by putting his head down and trusting that his work will continue to reward him.

“I think for me to be the best player I can on the field, it’s about the reps,” Walker said. “Come out every day, get lost in the work. Everybody says, ‘Trust the process,’ but it’s truly that for me. Every day focus on what I have to do to be prepared that day.”

Walker, 33, is a little past the halfway point of his platform season. It is going about as well as he could have hoped.

With 22 homers and 64 RBIs, he is on pace for 40 and 115, respectively; both would be career highs. He is playing his usual stellar defense. He is a durable anchor in the middle of the lineup, having started 88 of the Diamondbacks’ 90 games.

And he has managed to mostly avoid prolonged slumps — he has posted an OPS under .700 in a month only three times over the past three seasons — while enjoying scorching hot stretches, like last week’s series at Dodger Stadium, where he homered five times in three games.

Diamondbacks aim to bring back Walker

Walker continues to position himself for a healthy payday in free agency — and, for a change, the Diamondbacks do not sound content to let him walk, something they have done with many of the top free agents in franchise history.

“Of course,” Diamondbacks General Manager Mike Hazen said about whether he would have interest in re-signing Walker. “I don’t want to get into any conversations. But, yes, of course. He’s been a cornerstone player for us.”

When asked if there were any financial considerations he needed to weigh in determining whether bringing back Walker would be feasible, Hazen did not sound like he was preparing to let his first baseman walk without making an effort.

“I feel like we have enough flexibility,” he said, “all the way around with where we are financially that we’ll have room to do what we need to do.”

Moreover, Hazen raved about Walker’s all-around game. He said Walker does things he wants to see from all of his players, from his work ethic to his approach at the plate. He called Walker’s performance this year the “legit maturation of a really good hitter.”

“He’s everything in our clubhouse,” Hazen said.

Walker’s career path was anything but typical. A fourth-round pick by Baltimore out of South Carolina in 2012, he was trapped in the Orioles system at a time when slugger Chris Davis was signed to lucrative, multiyear contract. He bounced around on waivers in the spring of 2017, going from the Braves to the Reds and finally landing with the Diamondbacks, who also passed him through waivers before outrighting him to Triple-A Reno.

Career has had bumps but Walker's payday coming

Walker again found himself trapped behind an established first baseman, this time Paul Goldschmidt. While Walker finally did emerge in 2019 — the year after Goldschmidt was traded to St. Louis — he actually opened the season in a platoon with Jake Lamb and wasn’t going to get regular at-bats until Lamb went down with an early-season injury.

“It’s not easy when you’re trying to work your way to the big leagues, but you have this huge wall in front of you,” said former Diamondbacks outfielder David Peralta, who now plays for the San Diego Padres. “But the great thing about him was, he never stopped working. He was always getting better. He was just waiting for that opportunity and the opportunity came.”

Walker has been a solidly above-average offensive player ever since — except, that is, for 2021, when he had his season wrecked by an oblique injury.

At various points along the way, Walker never expected his career would advance this far, to the point where he is just a half-season away from free agency, with the chance to secure a life-changing contract. He said it has him feeling like he is “playing with house money, to some extent.”

Walker said that just because he is this close to free agency doesn’t mean he feels determined to test the open market.

“There’s no mindset with, like, trying to drive a market up or get the most,” he said. “If something happens, great, but it’s not about milking it for everything or anything like that.”

Walker said he is obviously aware of his contractual status, aware he could be playing elsewhere next year, but he said he is trying to approach the situation the best he knows how, by working the way he always works while also trying to be wide-eyed about everything he is experiencing.

“I don’t know what the future holds,” he said. “Obviously, I love Arizona and the guys here, and I love my teammates. Everything about it.

"But also the reality is there’s a chance this could be the last summer I’m playing with these guys, right? I’m just trying to appreciate it from all different angles and have the most fun I can and enjoy the moments the most I can.”