ARLINGTON, Texas — Jeremy Reed, who was an Angels minor league hitting instructor before joining the big league staff as hitting coach, has spent years with Jared Walsh.

He speaks proudly about what Walsh has accomplished — going from the 39th round of the draft to the All-Star Game — and what he will still do.

Specifically, hitting lefties.

“If you just look at Jared Walsh in general and look at how he continues to prove people wrong, from Day One of being pro, through A ball and Double A and Triple A, I’ve been blessed to be around him longer than some others,” Reed said. “It’s just another hurdle he’s gonna tackle.”

The hurdle came into focus this weekend, because Walsh was not in the Angels lineup on Saturday or Sunday, with the Texas Rangers starting left-handed pitchers.

“Just gotta deal with it,” Walsh said. “Not in my control, but it is what it is.”

Walsh enjoyed a breakout in September 2020, hitting .337 with nine homers and a 1.113 OPS over the season’s final month. He parlayed that into a starting job in 2021, and a spot on the All-Star team. He hit 29 homers with an .850 OPS.

Against lefties, though, he hit .170 with a .565 OPS.

Manager Joe Maddon said in spring training that he was confident in Walsh’s ability to adjust eventually, but he cautioned that the Angels have enough good options who can hit lefties right now that they might not give him much of a leash.

Walsh was in the lineup against a lefty on Opening Day, but since then he has been on the bench each of the three times the Angels faced a lefty. Matt Duffy has started at first each of those games. The Angels also now have Taylor Ward healthy, and he would be a second option to play first against lefties.

Heading into Sunday’s game, Duffy was 3 for 9 with a walk against lefties. Walsh was 2 for 7 against lefties.

Walsh said he worked over the winter with a pitching machine angled in a way to simulate the ball coming from a left-hander. He also said he continues to work against Ali Modami, the Angels left-handed batting practice pitcher.

“He’s made a ton of progress,” Reed said. “This is something we’ve talked about for quite some time. He’s gone into his offseason and tackled a lot of the different angles and the different things that lefties do to lefties. He has a really good understanding of what he wants to do. He has a really good foundation of each guy and and how they represent different shapes or how they’re going to attack them. For that I’m really proud of him, because it’s a difficult task to make adjustments in this game, especially when you’re an All-Star and you’ve proven that you can do things at an elite level.”

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NOTES

Anthony Rendon was out of the lineup with his second off day in the first 10 games of the season. Jack Mayfield got the start at third. …

Left-hander Sam Bachman, one of the Angels’ top pitching prospects, is out with back spasms, but he’s throwing in Arizona. Bachman is expected to be ready to begin his season in early May. …

Noah Syndergaard on Saturday became the first Angels pitcher to win in his first two starts with the team since Shohei Ohtani in 2018. The last pitcher to do it while working at least five innings and allowing two runs or fewer in each game was Andrew Heaney, in 2015.

UP NEXT

Angels (RHP Michael Lorenzen, 1-0, 1.50) at Astros (RHP Luis Garcia, 0-0, 0.00), Monday, 5:10 p.m., Bally Sports West, 830 AM