Paul Abbott decided to let it fly.
He had spent most of the morning Friday thinking about whether or not his right heel was lifting, or if he was coming over the top in his motion, or if his general tempo was what he has worked so hard to achieve.
So, on the 17th tee at Washington National Golf Course in Auburn, Abbott decided to cleanse his mind and let it fly.
When Titleist driver connects with Titleist golf ball and Paul Abbott is swinging the way he wants, you must go about 310 yards to see the result. It left him with a 7-iron approach on the par-5 hole.
“That,” Abbott said, “is the best I’ve hit a ball in five years.”
After he did the same on the 18th tee, you knew what else he was thinking: This is how it should be on the pitcher’s mound.
Four hours later, in the Mariners clubhouse, Abbott connected his golf swing with the struggle he’s experiencing on the mound.
“Today on the golf course. Those last two holes. Those drives,” he said. “That’s me. That’s how I play. Aggressive.
“I always tell my kids, when they’re wild, don’t ease up. Throw as hard as you can to find location. Don’t ease up to find location. If I’m going to walk people, I might as well walk people throwing 100 miles an hour instead of 88 or 89.
“The same thing on the course. I finally got in my comfort zone with my swing and I hit two bombs right down the middle.”
Whether it’s a golf club or a baseball, Abbott has decided to grip it and rip it.
“That’s what I did in the pen today,” he said. “I’m going to go full speed, get my control and let it go. That’s how I pitch. When you struggle, you can try to fix things and lose some aggressiveness.”
Abbott has experienced greater challenges professionally than what he’s going through now. Remember, this is a guy who was in a constant state of injury rehab for five years before he pitched his first full major league season with the Mariners in 2000.
Nobody, however, would wish for what Abbott has gone through the past 10 weeks.
He began spring training dogged in his determination to recapture the “good” changeup that he threw two years ago, a process that involves alterations to his throwing motion.
If you think even a slight tweak for a pitcher is a task learned in four easy lessons, then try relating it to golf. Change your swing now and expect to shoot in the 70s next week.
To get where Abbott wanted to be by the start of the season, he had to work constantly at spring training in the bullpen, in the games and in front of a mirror repeating his motion without a ball in what’s called “dry” work.
In the middle of it, his father had a stroke and became gravely ill. Abbott went where he was needed most, and it wasn’t the bullpen in Peoria. Abbott made three trips from Arizona to California to be with his father.
He never missed a start, but understandably he also wasn’t himself. There were days when he struggled with his control like he has lately, and afterward some reporter would remind him of his wildness.
Abbott could have explained then what it’s like to come back to work after spending a sleepless night in a chair at the hospital. He could have, but he didn’t because it would sound like an excuse.
So Abbott continued to work on his motion and wrestle with the mental image of his father. Early this month, Lee Abbott died.
We’ll never know what has gone through Paul Abbott’s mind the past few starts as he tried to return to normal. What stands out are the results: 18 walks, 31 hits, a hit batter in 21 1/3innings and a 10.97 earned run average.
Those are numbers you see in spring training. In essence, Abbott may still be in spring training mode, given the alterations he made and the delays he experienced trying to refine them.
Why, he has been asked, would he make a change after winning 17 games last year?
“So I can be getter,” Abbott said. “I want to get better from last year. I changed my mechanics and I haven’t really gotten comfortable. I wish we could sit down and I could show you films from ‘99 and show you my changeup from the last two years. It’s night and day.
“Then people can say, ‘Now I see what he wants to do.’”
To watch Edgar Martinez drive the baseball now, it’s easy to say he made the right decision to have knee surgery two weeks ago.
There was nothing easy, however, when it came time to decide between having surgery to remove a ruptured tendon or rehabbing with the hope it would heal.
“It was a dilemma,” Martinez said. “At the beginning, I talked to (trainer) Rick Griffin and the doctor. Because of the experience I had in ‘93, it made so much sense.”
Martinez pulled his left hamstring just before the 1993 season and was never right the whole year. He didn’t want to go through that again.
“The doctor said if I didn’t have the surgery, he thought I would have more problems,” Martinez said. “Any time they say you should have surgery you don’t feel good about it, but this made a lot of sense.
“Now, I’m glad I made that decision.”
They’d better brace the outfield fences at Wolff Municipal Stadium in San Antonio. Chris Snelling is coming.
Snelling, the hard-charging outfielder who broke his thumb in spring training, got the final clearance last week from doctors to return to action. He’s playing games at extended spring training at the Mariners’ complex in Peoria, Ariz., and will join the Class AA San Antonio Missions this week.
In his first game back on Wednesday, Snelling went 1-for-3 with a line drive up the middle.
Now the task is to keep him healthy.
Snelling’s intensity on the field has impressed the Mariners and entertained fans since he broke in with the Everett AquaSox in 1999. It also has led to injuries that have sidelined him at some point almost every year he’s been a pro.
“It does seem like he’s always getting hurt,” said Roger Jongewaard, the Mariners’ scouting director. “It’s a little goofy. But it’s a fun goofy.”
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