Throwing you a bender because I just thought you should know...
The Sugar Land Skeeters of the independent Atlantic League, which is not affiliated with Major League Baseball, had 17 players with major league experience on their roster last year. This included 11 pitchers who had thrown in the Show.
According to the General Manager, Joe Klein, the one he would recommend to any major league club was not Roger Clemens but Scott Kazmir. Despite the good word, only one team, the Cleveland Indians, took the advice and decided to give Kazmir a shot in spring training. With the amount of teams looking for good pitching, needing fourth and fifth starters and looking for inexpensive solutions, it is shocking that no one took a chance or saw the possible return of Kazmir.
On the other hand, no pitcher who had fallen as far and had been gone as long as Kazmir had really ever made it back. This is a pitcher who had all lost all command of every facet of his game. He had last recorded a Major League win in 2010. He had gotten hurt, and thrown off his mechanics. He was demoted to the minors where he recorded a 17.02 ERA in 2011 and was topping out his fastball in the low 80's!
Now here he was in Sugar Land, Texas, a former All-Star and American League strikeout leader, pitching in the baseball equivalent of Siberia. But he got healthy, found his spots and developed his pitches enough to warrant the invite to camp in 2013. The Indians watched him throw his fastball in the low 90's again in spring training and were impressed. Apparently they were even more impressed when Kazmir assured them it would reach the mid 90's as the season progressed. Instead of heading North with the club as a long reliever or spot starter, Kazmir was inserted into the rotation as the fifth starter.
His motion is fluid again and his pitches are nasty. His command has returned and he has even added a change up and curveball which were non existent when he was winning strikeout titles with a fastball and slider. He has topped out at 96 mph on his fastball already (as promised) and walked just 5 with 24 strikeouts in his last four starts.
It was 32 months between wins in the majors for Scott and that type of spread is very rarely seen. Once gone to the depths of independent baseball, few players are ever heard from again. The "old" Kazmir is a distant memory and this "new" version is just 29 years old. Many were skeptical, I tuned in to his starts and watched with doubt. But keep an eye on this gem as we may witness even more amazing progress before this career is really over.
Scott Kazmir had definitely disappeared and gone away...and now he is back. Go Scott and Go Tribe!
All this because I know more about nothing...
No comments:
Post a Comment