PEORIA, Ariz. – Travis Blackley can’t wait for his left shoulder to be healthy enough to pitch again, because his confidence already is back at full strength.
“When you have that feeling of being in control of yourself and being in control of every pitch you throw, you know that nobody can hit you,” he said.
Blackley, a 22-year-old rehabbing his surgically repaired shoulder at the Seattle Mariners’ training facility in Peoria, is getting to that point.
He’s playing catch at about 150 feet and hopes to pitch in some instructional league games this fall, with an eye toward competing for a job on the Mariners’ pitching staff at spring training.
Blackley knows he is better than the pitcher who was both brilliant and bewildering last year in six starts for the Mariners. His 1-3 record and 10.04 earned run average may have led fans to wonder what had gone wrong with the supposed next great pitcher in the Mariners organization.
But Blackley knew.
Even on the day he beat the Texas Rangers in his major league debut July 1, 2004, the shoulder wasn’t well.
“That first game was straight guts,” he said. “My warmup in the bullpen, I wasn’t feeling that great at all. But as soon as I stepped out there, the adrenaline took over.”
He labored through his other five starts, including a nightmare at Oakland on July 26 when he walked nine in four innings.
The shoulder hurt and, eventually, it cost him the rest of the 2004 season and all of 2005.
“I kind of knew it was coming, the way my arm had felt the whole year,” he said. “I had a feeling that if it didn’t happen last year, it would sometime this season. I wasn’t surprised at all when it happened.”
When he landed on the disabled list late last season, the Mariners called it “shoulder tendinitis.” He tried to pitch at spring training last February but couldn’t, and an exam revealed a torn labrum that required surgery.
The time off because of the surgery has been a good mental breather for Blackley – especially after the strain of his 2004 season – although the rehab has been more monotony than drudgery.
“It’s the same stuff every day and it gets old quickly. Get me a pillow,” he said. “But I’ve got to get it done, and it’s almost over.
“The whole year in general has been pretty good. I’ve got a new house (in Peoria) and my little boy is seven months old and growing up. He’s crawling, trying to talk, trying to stand.”
Now in his sixth month of recovery, Blackley has endured the heat of Arizona and the boredom of rehab, and he looks at the coming months with enthusiasm.
“I already feel like I’m throwing a heavier ball with less effort,” he said. “All the exercises I’ve done have strengthened my whole body. It’s not just my arm throwing, it’s everything throwing. I feel like I will have that little bit extra on the ball when I come back.”
Blackley has never overpowered anyone with his fastball, nor will he. He relies on control, speed changes and breaking pitches, but can sneak an 87-88 mph fastball past a hitter when the other stuff is there.
“Last year I wasn’t even an 87-88 guy when I was there,” he said. “I was more like an 83-85 guy. But now, instead of being the 87-88 guy that I was, I think I can become the 89, 90, 91 guy that I want to be.”
Blackley likes to throw three different fastballs – hard, batting-practice speed and cut – but by the time he got to Seattle last year, they all were batting-practice quality because of the shoulder.
“When it came down to it, my BP fastball was only 2 miles an hour slower than my harder fastball, and the hitters were all over it,” he said.
Blackley knew he needed to make adjustments in the bullpen between starts, but the aching shoulder never allowed him an opportunity for quality work. As the physical problems overwhelmed him, so did the mental strain.
“It became a vicious cycle,” Blackley said. “I was eating myself up in the pen and not just putting it behind me. There’s pressure to perform up there and if you’re not getting it done, you feel like you have to work on something to hold your spot. That’s something I’ve learned from, and I’ll never do that again. I’m not going to eat myself up in the pen and come out the next game with half my stuff. I learned a lot of lessons last year, and I know they made me better.
“I can’t wait to get out there again.”
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