Imagine building a house without a hammer. Or painting a house with a toothbrush.
Now you know what life on the pitcher’s mound has been like for Paul Abbott much of the past year.
The Seattle Mariners’ right-handed starting pitcher was missing the best tool in his repertoire of pitches, his changeup, and no amount of work seemed to help him get it back.
When Abbott has his good changeup, it floats to the plate nearly 10 mph slower than his fastball, and it dips and dives away from a hitter’s bat like oil from water. It’s not like Abbott was serving up platefuls of home-run balls, but he had lost the feeling, and the confidence, to throw the changeup when he desperately needed a strike.
“It’s one of those things where you’re banging your head against a wall,” pitching coach Bryan Price said. “He basically lost it for a year.”
A pitcher without his best pitch, especially at this level, might as well walk to the mound naked.
“I’ve got a chart at home of all my starts last year,” Abbott said. “You could see a point when my strikeouts dropped last year. My high in the second half of the season was five. You could see right when I lost it.”
Abbott constantly worked on adjustments on his mechanics to get it back, but he battled the feeling that a golfer might experience when he changes his grip. It feels foreign.
“The thing I’m most proud of is that without my best pitch, I’ve still pitched pretty well,” Abbott said.
Abbott went 9-7 last season and had a 3.98 earned run average in his 27 starts. Among them was a Sept. 3 outing at Boston when he didn’t allow a hit until the eighth inning.
Last Wednesday, Abbott was just as effective in most of a 7-2 victory over the White Sox in which he allowed just three hits in 6 1/3innings. He struck out 10, mixing his 93 mph fastball with his 84 mph change and a couple of sharp-breaking 73 mph curveballs
But if you think all was right again in the fastball-curve-slider-changeup world of Paul Abbott, you weren’t the one trying to throw those pitches for strikes.
He gave up two of those three hits, plus both runs and three of the four walks he allowed, in the first three innings. The changeup wasn’t there, and Abbott was fighting as much with his mind as he was with his feel for the baseball.
Then Price visited the mound and told Abbott the only two words he needed to hear: Just pitch.
Price had said the same thing more than once last year as he convinced Abbott that he was good enough and smart enough to win without his best pitch.
“He said ‘I know you’re struggling with the change, but you’ve still got good stuff with your other pitches. Just pitch,’” Abbott said.
“If we were talking about someone like Kazuhiro (Sasaki) or Norm (Charlton) and they had lost their split-finger, those are guys who use primarily two pitches and they would feel a little more naked than Abby. Abby has his a slider and his curveball.”
But the slider, the curve and the fastball weren’t the “out” pitches that Abbott has relied upon his whole career. The changeup was the one that had always gotten the key strikeout or pulled him back ahead in the ball-strike count.
“His changeup is his out pitch, and when you don’t have it, it affects you mentally,” Price said. “In his last couple of starts he has come a long way with it. It’s not completely back, but it’s going in the right direction.”
In a much better direction than the changeup was headed last year.
The talk of Texas isn’t so much Alex Rodriguez anymore as it is the possible fire sale the Rangers may conduct as their season falls apart. If that happens, the biggest item up for bid could be catcher Ivan Rodriguez.
Rodriguez is making $8.6 million this season and, of more importance, will attain 10-and-five status on June 2. On that day, he will have been in the major leagues for 10 years, five with the same team, and earn the right to veto any trade. That could prompt the Rangers to entertain serious offers.
Whether the Mariners are interested, nobody knows. But you’ve got to think they are, even if it means pulling a deal with a division rival.
Rodriguez would fill one of the few holes the Mariners have – a right-handed-hitting catcher with power. The thinking here is that any amount of pitching the Mariners give up would be only a first step of a long rebuilding process needed by the Rangers.
As stout as the Mariners have been so far, the postseason is a far different game. The teams that gear up in the regular season often rise in the postseason.
The Yankees certainly weren’t bashful about trading for David Justice when he became available last June.
They were a team hovering just above .500 and just below the Blue Jays in the American League East Division. Less than two weeks after getting Justice, they climbed into first place and never lost it. All Justice did was hit .305 the rest of the season, then launch the Yankees into the World Series with that mammoth sixth-game home run against the Mariners in the American League Championship Series.
There isn’t anybody in Seattle who doesn’t wants to see Dan Wilson find his hitting stroke again and make a huge impact with the Mariners. But this is a team so close to a World Series that it can smell the night air of October.
One more power hitter – especially a guy named “Pudge” – could take them there.
Of all the questions that Mariners manager Lou Piniella has heard about Ichiro Suzuki, there’s one he couldn’t answer.
How does Suzuki take criticism, a reporter asked.
“I don’t know,” Piniella replied. “There’s nothing to criticize.”
The Mariners won’t know which players they will send to Everett this summer until just before the AquaSox season begins. Unlike past years when the AquaSox’s preseason camp was conducted entirely in Everett, the Mariners will send the players to their facility in Peoria, Ariz., for a few days before determining the assignments.
“We think this will give us an opportunity to get them all on the same field and determine which is the best place for them,” said Greg Hunter, the Mariners’ director of minor league operations.
The training camp for newly drafted players will start June 11. The AquaSox season begins June 24.
Along with the national attention that has come Ichiro Suzuki’s way, so have some butchered pronunciations of his name. The Mariners, in fact, produced a news release last week reminding the media how his first name should be pronounced with three syllables of equal emphasis. Here are some of the wrong pronunciations, plus the one Ichiro prefers.
Wrongee-CHEE-row
WrongEEE-chee-row
WrongIch-EEE-row
RightEEE-CHEE-ROW
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