My Two Cents: Mental Health Struggle Very Real for Rays Shortstop Taylor Walls
In this story:
TAMPA, Fla. — It's Monday night, closing in on 10 o'clock, and Tampa Bay shortstop Taylor Walls is in the batter's box at Steinbrenner Field. The Rays are down a run to the Houston Astros, but speedy Chandler Simpson — the tying run — is on third base with just one out.
Josh Hader is on the mound for Houston, and he's one of the nastiest closers in the game. Success against Hader is a rare thing. Walls, a Florida State grad who's a .188 career hitter but has an MLB career because he's one the best defensive players in the game, is facing long odds in driving in that tying run.
The plan, Walls thought, was to lay down a bunt, giving up an out to bring Simpson home. But he popped it up instead — a huge mistake — and was the second out. Catcher Ben Rortvert fouled out three pitches later, and the game was over. Another loss for the Rays, and another tough night at the plate for Walls.
Flash forward 24 hours, and another 10 o'clock has just come and gone. Walls is standing in front of his locker in the Rays clubhouse, and his 4-year-old daughter is at his side, looking for something to play with. He puts her in his chair, hands her a pink bat. She smiles, and Walls begins his postgame interview.
There are questions about his game-winning sacrifice fly in the ninth inning. It was the same scene, all over again, just like the night before. One out in the ninth with the score tied, and it's on Walls to come through.
He did.
Walls talked about his approach in hitting a fly ball deep enough to left field to score Christopher Morel, and the Rays had a much-needed 3-2 win, just their fourth in 17 home games in their temporary home at Steinbrenner Field. He talked about his teammates coming up big, too, and the nightly battle to win or lose.
Mental health matters a lot to me, and I was very curious what the last 24 hours were like between Taylor Walls' ears. So I had to ask about his mental state of mind in the last question of night.
''How's your mental approach these days? You have a tough night last night. What's it like last night, what's it like all day before you get to the ballpark? What's your mind like?
"You got an hour?'' he asked.
Yes I do, Taylor Walls. Yes I do.
Fighting the demons within
There's an old adage in baseball that says ''you are what the back of your baseball card says you are.'' Taylor Walls' card says he's a small-town kid from Cordele, Ga. It says he's 5-foot-8 and 185 pounds, and played college ball at Florida State.
It says he's a .188 hitter, with just 225 hits since 2021 in 1,198 at-bats. It's the lowest batting average of any active player with 1,000 plate appearances or more. He's also struck out 357 times, nearly 30 percent of the tries, and often at the worst times imaginable.
But he's also a defensive wizard at the most important position on the field. That baseball card also says he's among leaders in defensive runs saved every year. This year, he's first — the best in baseball — with 12 runs saved. He wins games with his glove too, and often, and that's why Tampa Bay Rays manager Kevin Cash keeps trotting him out there.
Walls' teammates and coaches will tell you that he's the hardest-working guy in the room. He knows his strengths, and works hard on them every day. He knows his weaknesses, too, and knows them all too well.
He's driven to be better. He's heard it since high school that he was too small to ever make it to the show, had too many holes in his game. He's proved all those doubters wrong five years into an MLB career. There are plenty of critics, for sure, but he's here and doing his job. some days better than others.
He's also very human, and failures takes their toll. The successes feel so great, but the losses —especially when he could have done something about it — literally tear him apart from head to toe. Especially the head. The toes? They're probably fine. The mind? It's a mess some days.
That's why I asked the question. I really wanted to know what was going through his brain. It's a subject that matters to me, matters a lot.
"I don't know, man. This game is about turning the page, and that's something I probably don't feel like I do well myself,'' Walls said. "Last night consisted of me going home and probably not going to sleep until about 4:30 because I'm caught up thinking about it.
"I'm waking up at 12, still feeling defeated, not being the best I can be. That's tough.''
Walls got choked up on the last few words, and the interview was over. His emotions were getting the best of him, and it was best to stop. He picked up his daughter in his arms, and headed for home. It would probably be another late night, but this time the memories would be so much better.
That's baseball. The daily grind. The highs, the lows and the mental challenges involved in getting through it all. It happens to everybody. And that's why the clubhouse dynamic is so cool in baseball. They're all in it together, those 26 guys, and the other dozen or so that come and go through the course of a season. That's why you fight until the last out every night.
And sometimes you win, sometimes you lose. But you scratch and claw and fight, and live with the results, even when it's uncomfortable.
"Nobody's cashing in any at-bats here, no matter what point of the game it is or what you've got on the scorecard in that moment,'' said veteran second baseman Brandon Lowe, who was tending to a child of his own in the happy Rays locker room. "Those at-bats, it's time to do something. For Taylor, it seems like those big moments are finding him right now, and he's been .500 now these last two nights. Wallsy could have tried to do too much in that appearance, but he understood that a fly ball to left would get the job done, and he did what he had to do.
"It's something that we all know, the grit that's in here. We've not giving up, and we're staying locked in. Guys could have checked out, but no one was throwing in the towel. We got to the eighth and it just kind of felt like guys were passing the baton and not trying to do much more. That's how you win ballgames.''
Especially when you really, really need it.
Blocking out all the outside noise
Taylor Walls doesn't waste his time on social media, but he hears about it. Hears the criticism, hears to jabs, hears the vitriol. To him, none of that matters from whiners in their mom's basement. He's a professional baseball player, and he has a job to do to the best of his ability.
Some nights it works out, some nights in doesn't. But that's the best thing about baseball. There's always another game the next day.
You just try to win the moment. And on Tuesday night, Walls did just that. It felt good, really good, especially since it was his first RBI in a week, and just the second walk-off winner of his career. The first was a home run against St. Louis way back on June 7, 2022, nearly three years ago.
These moments don't come along very often, so you try to be ready for them the best you can.
After tying the game at 2-2 in the bottom of the eighth on a Jonathan Aranda two-run single, the Rays came to the ninth looking to steal a win after doing nothing for seven innings. Astros reliever Kaleb Ort walked lead-off hitter Christoper Morel, and he went to third on a Brandon Lowe double. Josh Lowe popped up for the first out, and then came Walls, batting left-handed and the righty Ort.
"Getting to second and third with no outs was huge,'' Walls said of Morel and Lowe's contributions. "I was fortunate enough to put one in play. I was just trying to play to my strengths a little bit more and not be so competitive with myself. I probably should have been a lot more ready for the first pitch, because I kind of froze on it and it was the best pitch I probably saw in the whole at-bat. Sometimes you get a second chance, and sometimes you don't. But I got another one, and I came through.
"It felt really good. I needed it, personally. I want those spots. It sucks not coming through, and it's great when it does. It feels like the times you don't come through heavily outweighs the times that you do. I'm going to try to bottle this one up as much as I can, and celebrate it as much as I can. These tend to get overshadowed by the ones you fail at. This one was big for me personally, and I'm going to go home and celebrate.''
Tom Brew is the publisher of ''Tampa Bay Rays on SI'' and has been with the Sports Illustrated platform since 2019. He has worked at some of America's finest newspapers, including the Tampa Bay Times, Indianapolis Star and South Florida Sun-Sentinel. He owns eight sites on the "On SI'' network and has written four books.
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