Life in the Minors
Weakest link turns out
to be strongest friendTHE job of minor-league pitching coach began to lose a lot of its luster this past week. With the Frontier League's trade deadline approaching, our staff completed a highly detailed study of the 24 players on our roster. As pitching coach, I was responsible for finding the weak links of our pitching corps. My job was to examine our pitchers.
The experience was a relatively new one for me, seeing as how our pitching staff last season was perhaps the strongest in the league. With the best closer in side-winding escape artist Brian Partenheimer, who earned Frontier League Relief Pitcher of the Year honors after posting 17 saves, and the best strike-throwing staff of stubborn relievers and resilient starters, pitching was the least of our worries.
This year, however, our team has done an about-face. While our 2001 club featured a hustle and bustle offense that often had to use smoke and mirrors to generate runs, this season's Dubois County offensive attack is one of the league's best, with a .295 team batting average and six regulars with individual batting averages over .300. Our pitching, however, has been quite inconsistent, especially in our bullpen.
So while our pitching has been good enough to get us into striking distance of capturing our second consecutive West Division crown, it has become apparent that changes would need to be made to position us for a run at the league championship.
One by one I examined the performances of all of our pitchers to date, looking at tendencies, crunching numbers and creating matchups for each of our pitchers against any of the teams we may be battling either to get into the playoffs or in the finals.
As I ran my fine-toothed comb through pages and pages of statistics and pitching charts, going through highlighter after highlighter, looking for any way to make our ball club better prepared for the possible postseason, I began to see something I probably didn't want to see.
The pitcher that I was closest to, a friend, a former teammate of mine, was the weak link. As I flipped through my notebook with my notes of observations for each game our pitchers had appeared in this year, and dug through piles and piles of statistics, and tried to search the cavities of my mind to find an argument that disputed the fact, I realized that the search was rapidly becoming futile.
It was heartbreaking. This is a guy that I pitched with on the 1999 Evansville Otters team that captured our own Frontier League West Division crown. He was an all-star that year, pitching with arm problems stemming from bone spurs in his pitching elbow. He persevered through painful pitch after painful pitch, gritting his teeth through unthinkable discomfort as he played through the pain. I remember watching him walk around with that crooked elbow, before games, during games, after games, even on days he didn't even pitch. His face was red all the time from the hurt he endured. I thought that light shade of brick red was his natural skin tone until I saw him again last year, when I became his pitching coach.
As his coach I was no less impressed with his toughness and his work ethic, as we spent hour after hour retooling his mechanics and teaching his body new muscle memory, now that he had his elbow surgically repaired.
It had been a tough run for him. Drafted on a couple of occasions, he peaked as a 12th-round pick his junior season in college. He turned down the offer when the scout that came to his home insulted his father for wavering on his signing when the organization low-balled on their original bonus offer. A year later, he signed as a free agent with the Arizona Diamondbacks. After leading the Arizona Rookie League D-Backs in saves, regularly registering in the low 90-mph range from his low, three-quarter arm slot, he felt that he was finally on his way. But he was released the following spring training.
The next year he began a five-year odyssey through the Frontier League that would see him become one of the circuit's only 20-win, 10-save hurlers in its history. But last year was absolutely his proudest.
All the work we put in hit a high midway through the season when his velocity began to climb. After opening the year throwing in the low 80s, where he had been for the past two years, he hit 88 one night. And then 89, and 91 and 92.
He was quite a presence for us the latter portion of the year, recording five wins and six saves while carrying an ERA of around 2.50 and a strikeout per inning pitched. The bounce was back in his step.
It all came to a head this offseason, when while throwing in a workout for a scout, he hit 92 on the gun. He was later offered a free-agent contract by a major-league organization, but he declined so he could return for one last year of baseball in the FL. He was finally at peace with his ghosts. After three years in the independent Frontier League and the death of his father, he returned this year with hopes of starring in his final minor-league season, looking to a career in coaching after the 2002 campaign. A last hurrah.
But the dream has turned back into a nightmare. With an inexplicable loss of control, he has registered twice as many walks as strikeouts, and has carried an ERA of close to 5.00. Each time he has taken the ball over the past month or so, we both feel the sense of urgency. He pitches knowing he is playing for his job, and I watch, and coach, and hope, for him to recapture his form of a year ago.
But it just hasn't been there. He knows it. I know it. Now the decision lies with our manager and director of baseball operations. His word is final, although we all know that keeping our reliever may cost us our best shot at a title. We badly need a quality pitcher for the stretch run.
As I sit here in front of my laptop in one of the many hotel rooms of the Midwest that I have occupied during my three seasons in the Frontier League, with the trade deadline less than 12 hours away, I am torn -- hoping for a championship while praying for my friend.