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Home > Mark Bradley > Archives > 2008 > May > 17
Saturday, May 17, 2008
Rare error: Braves rushed Devine
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
It’s a mistake the Braves rarely make, but they made it with Joey Devine. They rushed him. They rushed him to the extent it could have, maybe even should have, ruined him.
The happy news is that it didn’t. Devine is in uniform at Turner Field this weekend, possessor of a 3-0 record and a 0.51 ERA. The bad news: He works now for Oakland.
The Braves traded him to the A’s in January for Mark Kotsay. The Braves got a center fielder. The A’s got a good young arm in dire need of a change. “I was very excited,” Devine said Saturday. “I built a lot of relationships with the Braves, and playing for Bobby Cox was a blessing. But I just felt a fresh start was what I needed.”
After what befell Devine in 2005, it was fair to wonder if anything good would happen for him in this organization. The year started nicely enough, Devine becoming an All-American closer at North Carolina State and the Braves making him their No. 1 pick in the June draft. On cue, Devine blew through Class A and AA, yielding only six earned runs in 22 outings.
Meanwhile, the big-league club was trying to make do without a real closer. (The overmatched Chris Reitsma would finish as the team’s saves leader with 15). On Aug. 19, the call was made for, ahem, Devine intervention.
“He was pitching at a high level, dominating in the minor leagues,” said general manager Frank Wren, then John Schuerholz’s aide-de-camp. “In hindsight, it would be easy to say we [rushed him], but he had the sort of stuff we thought would let him be successful. And we didn’t envision him as a closer; we envisioned him as someone who would help fortify our bullpen.”
Said Cox: “We didn’t have anything else. We were out of everything.”
Devine stayed up all night packing in Mississippi. He caught a morning flight to Atlanta. The Braves were playing San Diego in a Saturday afternoon game on Fox. It went to extra innings. The new guy was deployed to open the 12th. Working on “zero sleep” but a heaping helping of adrenaline, he got through it.
Cox sent Devine back out for the 13th. On the inning’s second pitch, he tore a hip flexor. “I should have been more open with the organization,” Devine said. “I should have stopped immediately, but I didn’t want my major league debut to be an injury.”
It became something worse. Xavier Nady hit a two-out grand slam. Three days later, Devine was touched for another, this one by Jeromy Burnitz in Wrigley Field. Thus did the No. 1 pick become the first pitcher to surrender grand slams in his first two games.
Soon he was back in the minors. It was only during his first bullpen session in Richmond that Devine told coaches about the hip flexor. He healed quickly enough to be named to the parent club’s playoff roster. Alas, another indignity was awaiting.
“If you play 18 innings, somebody’s going to hit something,” Wren said. “It just so happened that [Houston’s] Chris Burke hit a 300-foot popup that got into the first row of seats.”
So that was Devine’s rookie season: Five different uniforms (counting N.C. State’s), two grand slams, one season-ending homer. Over the next two seasons he bounced between the minors and here, never quite seeming the hot prospect he’d been.
Ask Devine if he believes the Braves hurried him, and the first thing he’ll say is, “Not at all.” But then: “It might have been a little quick mentally. To go from the draft to being in the big leagues a month and a half later and then being in the playoffs, I never had time to sit back and think about what was going on.”
At a time when half the Braves’ pitchers are hurt and the cry to promote Charlie Morton from Class AAA is reaching full volume, it’s prudent to recall Joey Devine. “We try to err on the side of caution,” Wren said, and for good reason.
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