Published: Sunday, November 22, 2009
Mariners’ Feierabend can’t wait for spring training
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Associated Press
The Mariners’ Ryan Feierabend missed all of the 2008 season after he had surgery on his elbow.
PEORIA, Ariz. — Ryan Feierabend won’t call himself the Seattle Mariners’ forgotten pitcher.
But ...
The 24-year-old left-hander can’t wait to show his fastball and slider to Don Wakamatsu and Rick Adair in February at spring training.
Those introductions to the Mariners’ new manager and pitching coach were interrupted just a few days into spring training last year when Feierabend threw a slider in the bullpen and felt a pop in his elbow.
On March 4, famed orthopedist Dr. Lewis Yocum performed “Tommy John” ligament surgery, and Feierabend became essentially an out-of-sight, out-of-mind Mariner as he remained in Peoria and rehabbed.
“I didn’t have a chance to pitch in front of them, so I do have to go out and prove something,” Feierabend said last week in the training room at the Mariners’ spring-training facility. “Once I had surgery, one of the things that ran through my mind was that they didn’t get a good look at me.”
Nearly nine months into what typically is a year-long process before a player is pitching competitively again after such an injury, Feierabend is throwing off the bullpen mound and feeling good.
After the expected ups and downs during a summer of rehab, he felt nothing but enthusiasm after his first bullpen session Nov. 9.
“I was very surprised at how it went,” he said. “I’d say 20 out of 25 pitches were right where I wanted to throw them. I couldn’t ask for anything more from the first time back on the mound. It felt like a first bullpen when I’d be getting ready for any other season. I feel really good.”
The key is to keep feeling that way.
After taking the Thanksgiving week off, he’ll throw bullpens twice a week from Nov. 30 through Dec. 18, then take two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s.
He’ll return in early January for workouts that will have him ready to show Wakamatsu and Adair what he’s really got by the time spring training begins.
“My first priority is to make sure I’m 100 percent healthy,” Feierabend said. “But I’d like to be ready going into spring training and not ready by the end of spring training.
“I’d like to be ready to compete for a job on the big-league club. But if that doesn’t happen, then I’ll go to the minors and work on my control and my other pitches and hopefully get called up sometime during the year.”
Feierabend, the Mariners’ third-round draft pick in 2003, has pitched 25 big-league games, including 19 starts.
He finished the 2008 season with the big-league club and made eight starts, but says his arm never felt good. He’d spent more than two months on the minor-league disabled list with a strained flexor tendon in his forearm.
“Five out of seven days, I just felt horrible,” Feierabend said.
He had been pitching with a partial tear near the elbow, and the offseason last year didn’t do a lot to heal it. In his first bullpen session at spring training, the elbow fell apart.
It began a year of rehab in a place no player wants to be — the training room in Peoria. While most of his teammates moved on to play for the Mariners or their minor league affiliates, Feierabend and a small band of injured players stayed behind for a long, hot summer in Arizona.
If there was a bright side to his situation, it’s that Feierabend devoted more attention to the final stage of his wife’s pregnancy than he otherwise could have. In June, Sarah Feierabend gave birth to son Trey.
“The good thing is that I live down here, and I get to go home and play with my son,” he said.
Still, the injury was the biggest challenge in Feierabend’s pro career.
“It’s the first time I’ve spent an extensive period of time on the disabled list,” he said. “It’s not so much physically draining as it is mentally draining. It’s been a good experience to work on my mental toughness. At about five months, I started having, not really doubts, but I started wondering if this was the way it’s supposed to go because I had soreness in my elbow. Fortunately, Dr. Yocum came down here and I’d see him once a month, and he said those were all normal symptoms.
“At about 61/2 or seven months, I started having no pain whatsoever. Ever since then, knock on wood, I’ve been pain free.”
His next challenge is to make an impression on Adair and Wakamatsu.
“This year, are they going to look at things differently with me because I had surgery?” Feierabend wonders. “I don’t know if Rick and Don got a look at me when they were with Texas and Oakland when I got to pitch for Seattle the past couple of years. So hopefully this year, when I get my work in, they’ll be able to take a closer look at me and see what I’ve got.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog.
But ...
The 24-year-old left-hander can’t wait to show his fastball and slider to Don Wakamatsu and Rick Adair in February at spring training.
Those introductions to the Mariners’ new manager and pitching coach were interrupted just a few days into spring training last year when Feierabend threw a slider in the bullpen and felt a pop in his elbow.
On March 4, famed orthopedist Dr. Lewis Yocum performed “Tommy John” ligament surgery, and Feierabend became essentially an out-of-sight, out-of-mind Mariner as he remained in Peoria and rehabbed.
“I didn’t have a chance to pitch in front of them, so I do have to go out and prove something,” Feierabend said last week in the training room at the Mariners’ spring-training facility. “Once I had surgery, one of the things that ran through my mind was that they didn’t get a good look at me.”
Nearly nine months into what typically is a year-long process before a player is pitching competitively again after such an injury, Feierabend is throwing off the bullpen mound and feeling good.
After the expected ups and downs during a summer of rehab, he felt nothing but enthusiasm after his first bullpen session Nov. 9.
“I was very surprised at how it went,” he said. “I’d say 20 out of 25 pitches were right where I wanted to throw them. I couldn’t ask for anything more from the first time back on the mound. It felt like a first bullpen when I’d be getting ready for any other season. I feel really good.”
The key is to keep feeling that way.
After taking the Thanksgiving week off, he’ll throw bullpens twice a week from Nov. 30 through Dec. 18, then take two weeks off for Christmas and New Year’s.
He’ll return in early January for workouts that will have him ready to show Wakamatsu and Adair what he’s really got by the time spring training begins.
“My first priority is to make sure I’m 100 percent healthy,” Feierabend said. “But I’d like to be ready going into spring training and not ready by the end of spring training.
“I’d like to be ready to compete for a job on the big-league club. But if that doesn’t happen, then I’ll go to the minors and work on my control and my other pitches and hopefully get called up sometime during the year.”
Feierabend, the Mariners’ third-round draft pick in 2003, has pitched 25 big-league games, including 19 starts.
He finished the 2008 season with the big-league club and made eight starts, but says his arm never felt good. He’d spent more than two months on the minor-league disabled list with a strained flexor tendon in his forearm.
“Five out of seven days, I just felt horrible,” Feierabend said.
He had been pitching with a partial tear near the elbow, and the offseason last year didn’t do a lot to heal it. In his first bullpen session at spring training, the elbow fell apart.
It began a year of rehab in a place no player wants to be — the training room in Peoria. While most of his teammates moved on to play for the Mariners or their minor league affiliates, Feierabend and a small band of injured players stayed behind for a long, hot summer in Arizona.
If there was a bright side to his situation, it’s that Feierabend devoted more attention to the final stage of his wife’s pregnancy than he otherwise could have. In June, Sarah Feierabend gave birth to son Trey.
“The good thing is that I live down here, and I get to go home and play with my son,” he said.
Still, the injury was the biggest challenge in Feierabend’s pro career.
“It’s the first time I’ve spent an extensive period of time on the disabled list,” he said. “It’s not so much physically draining as it is mentally draining. It’s been a good experience to work on my mental toughness. At about five months, I started having, not really doubts, but I started wondering if this was the way it’s supposed to go because I had soreness in my elbow. Fortunately, Dr. Yocum came down here and I’d see him once a month, and he said those were all normal symptoms.
“At about 61/2 or seven months, I started having no pain whatsoever. Ever since then, knock on wood, I’ve been pain free.”
His next challenge is to make an impression on Adair and Wakamatsu.
“This year, are they going to look at things differently with me because I had surgery?” Feierabend wonders. “I don’t know if Rick and Don got a look at me when they were with Texas and Oakland when I got to pitch for Seattle the past couple of years. So hopefully this year, when I get my work in, they’ll be able to take a closer look at me and see what I’ve got.”
Read Kirby Arnold’s blog on the Mariners at www.heraldnet.com/marinersblog.
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