New Chattanooga Lookouts infielder Ryan Walker didn't take long to win over the clubhouse.
Hitting close to .400 and scoring clutch runs have a way of doing that.
"He's a good guy, and I love playing with him," Lookouts first baseman Dalton Hicks said. "He doesn't try and do too much, and in the long run, that helps a lot."
Walker tripled into the right-field corner in the seventh inning and scored on Joe Maloney's single to right to propel Chattanooga to a 2-1 triumph over Biloxi before a crowd of 2,952 on a gorgeous Sunday afternoon at AT&T Field. The Lookouts improved to 17-20 and have a three-game winning streak for the first time this season.
Nick Greenwood picked up his first victory for Chattanooga, allowing six hits and a run in eight innings.
Walker went 1-for-3 and is hitting .379 through nine Double-A games since his May 4 promotion from Fort Myers in the high Single-A Florida State League. Among his first 11 hits with the Lookouts are two triples, and he has driven in six runs.
"Ryan has come up and done really well," Lookouts manager Doug Mientkiewicz said. "He's going to take some lumps here and there, but you just try and let someone like him go play. He's made it a game, and having success early can only help. He's got an idea of how to hit, even though it's a little unorthodox at times. When you get a guy here, you see some stuff that you work on, but if you start working too early, the wheels can start spinning and you don't see the player that was here to begin with.
"We kind of let them play and feel their way out for a few weeks and go from there."
The 6-foot-1, 162-pound Walker joined the Lookouts during a road series against the Mobile BayBears and went 0-for-6, though he did drive in a run. In his first series at AT&T, he went 8-for-17 against Pensacola, including a 4-for-4 performance last Monday.
"It felt good to get some of those nerves out," Walker said. "We put in the work every day, and it's always nice to enjoy it on the field."
In Saturday night's 5-2 series-opening win over Biloxi, Walker singled and scored in the fifth and seventh innings.
Walker was an 18th-round pick of the Minnesota Twins in 2013 out of the University of Texas-Arlington, where he was a career .329 hitter. He hit .239 in 76 games with Single-A Cedar Rapids (Iowa) in 2014 and hit .269 in 83 games with Fort Myers last season.
At the time of time of his promotion earlier this month, Walker was hitting .262 at Fort Myers, and he has since dispelled the notion that adjusting to Double-A pitching is the toughest there is to make in the developmental ladder.
"The command is definitely better, but it's fun playing better baseball," Walker said. "It's not a huge adjustment for me as much as it is more fun playing some really good baseball up here. It's all about preparing the right way, and we put in so much work time in the cage and in the field.
"Luckily, it has translated so far, but you've got to keep going."
Contact David Paschall at dpaschall@timesfreepress.com or 423-757-6524.