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Wednesday, April 30, 2008
Why Smoltz could be headed to bullpen
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
Washington — John Smoltz moved to the bullpen midway through the 2001 season because his surgically repaired elbow couldn’t withstand the rigors of starting.
He might go back to the bullpen this season for a similar reason, just substitute the word “shoulder” for “elbow.”
It hasn’t been surgically repaired, but Smoltz knows it would probably be just a matter of time before surgery would be needed if he kept pushing it the way he has with his shoulder since late May 2007.
Talking to him on the phone last night, I heard a guy who’s willing to do whatever he can to get back on the field and pitch for at least the rest of this season, including the possibility of moving to the closer role.
“Yes,” he said when I asked him about the possibility. “Right now I’m sitting at ground zero, taking it day by day, looking at every option to help this team get to the playoffs and end my career the way I’d like to end it.”
If that sounds like an about-face for Smoltz, it is. But the reason he’s suddenly changed his position and is open to moving back to the bullpen, after pleading (successfully) for a return to starting in 2005, is because his health situation has changed completely.
Here’s a chunk of the quotes I typed as Smoltz was being open on the phone last night. He was talking about pitching in pain, about not always saying publicly how much he might be ailing, and about the reasons he’s kept going through injuries, why he’s kept pitching and not gone on the DL every time he’s been hurt.
You might also note the edge in some things he said, which, if you know Smoltz, you understand is a reflection of how much he pays attention to what people are saying and writing about him, and how much that both motivates him and burns at him, whether or not he’ll admit the latter.
“I chose to deal with things the way I chose to deal with them, which leads a lot of people to speculate or wonder or come up with their own opinion,” he said. “But it’s the way I have to deal with things.
“Certainly this news [the diagnosis of a strained rotator cuff and severely inflamed biceps tendon] is not new to me. At the same time, I’m not going to pitch again [right away]. I just can’t right now. I went as long and as far as I could to give as much as I always have.
“The body will definitely let you know when it’s time….
“People are going to say what they want, speculate how they want. Who knows what’s going to happen? I’m totally content with where I’m at and what I’ve got to do. I’ve got to wait. Wait and rehab.
“I’m in great hands with the doctors I have….
“I’m never happy to go on the DL, but I just couldn’t keep pitching this way.”
(Keep in mind, this is a guy who, before he gave up seven hits and four runs in four innings Sunday at New York, was carrying a 0.78 ERA and .179 opponents’ average, and had recorded 20 strikeouts in 12 innings during his previous two starts, including his 3,000th career strikeout on April 27.)
“I’m never a guy that just because I’m not successful, means it’s time to sit,” he said. “This has nothing to do with that.”
He converted 154 of 168 saves for the Braves in 3-1/2 dominant seasons as closer, but Smoltz explained to anyone who would listen during his last year or two in that role, that his elbow, once he got past the second year of recovery from Tommy John surgery, could be better maintained as a starter.
He said the every-fifth-day work schedule of a starter was better for his arm than the erratic schedule of a closer, who might pitch two or three days in a row, and while making mostly max-effort pitches.
As it turned out, he was right. The elbow continued to cause Smoltz problems during his closer years, and he had another surgery after the 2003 postseason (not reconstructive surgery, but also not merely an arthroscopic procedure).
The Braves agreed to move him back to starting after he agreed to a contract extension following the 2004 season, and the elbow has not been an issue since Smoltz moved back to the rotation.
But the shoulder has. Beginning with a sub-scapula tear in 2005, when Smoltz pitched with a great deal of pain late in that 14-7, 3.06 ERA, 229-2/3-inning season and during the division series against Houston.
He had so much inflammation in his last start against the Astros, Smoltz almost certainly wouldn’t have been able to pitch if the Braves had advanced to the NLCS that year.
Smoltz bounced back from that to tie for the NL wins lead in 2006, when he went 16-9 in 35 starts and 232 innings, leading the Braves in wins and innings for the second consecutive season — at age 39.
Then there was the slip on the mound at Milwaukee last May 29, a warmup pitch that he won’t ever forget. He strained his shoulder, an entirely different area of the shoulder, but Smoltz made his next start.
He skipped his next rotation turn after that because of the lingering discomfort - Smoltz always cause it “discomfort,” but I think you or I would refer to it as “pain” - and eventually relented and went on the DL, but even then he and the Braves made it overlap the All-Star break, because Smoltz wanted to minimize the starts he’d have to miss.
A lot of people ask me how long Smoltz has been pitching with the shoulder pain he’s currently feeling. I’ve said I thought it might go all the way back to late in the 2005 season, at least to varying degrees.
But he told me last night that the ’05 injury and the strain last season were unrelated. However, when I asked if he’s been pitching in pain to some degree since Milwaukee, he said, almost sheepishly, that was a fair assessment.
“It’s fair to say that,” he said, almost sheepishly. “I‘m not claiming to be hero, or trying to be viewed as one. I‘ve been through a lot. It’s not for everybody to know. I choose to do it.
“I’ve been through a lot, and I’m not going to give in to any circumstances. This now, it’s no different than things that faced me before. I’m just older.”
Smoltz will be 41 on May 15.
“People are going to assume my time’s running out,” he said. “So be it. It might be. But that doesn’t affect my desire. When my desire to overcome these things is not there, I’ll be [finished]. But that’s not the case.”
It’s almost like he views it as a weakness, admitting that he hasn’t been able to get rid of the shoulder pain. Dude’s got a different mindset, for sure.
(Me, I’d be pulling reporters aside all this time and saying, ‘Man, my arm’s freakin’ killing me and I’m still making half the hitters in the league flail at my pitches like minor leaguers.’ On a different note, if I was a big star athlete I’d not suffer fools who ask stupid questions. I’d be, like, ‘Dude, that’s the worst question I’ve ever been asked. Come back when you’ve got something pertinent to ask.’ Come to think of it, I’d call me a real prick if I was a reporter covering me.)
But back to Smoltz.
I asked if this injury he’s got now could be compensatory, or whether the trapezius strain he had during spring might have been. And from his quick response, I could tell this is something he has been told or discussed with team trainers and or Dr. Andrews.
Yes, he said, it could be. Actually, he said it as though it probably was true. That most of his shoulder/neck problems are probably related to a degree.
He also mentioned an incident many of us have forgotten from last season, the May 14 game at Washington when he dislocated the pinkie finger on his throwing hand, a grotesque-looking injury that was caught close-up by the TV cameras.
Remember that? He didn’t miss a start.
In fact, he threw seven scoreless innings in each of his next two starts, before the Milwaukee slip-up. But in those two starts after the finger injury, Smoltz made adjustments, like he has for most of his career, to compensate for pain that certain arm angles or pitches might cause.
And after all the years of making adjustments for this throbbing shoulder or that stiff elbow, the old dude is, in my unsophisticated view, simply breaking down. It happens, especially when you’re not jacked up on HGH to get you through the fading years.
All of us over 40 marvel at what he can do, but it can’t last forever. There’s not much else to compensate with, when he’s injured all the various parts of his shoulder and elbow, and been under the knife or the ‘scope repeatedly, and continued to pile up more innings than pitchers half his age.
By the way, anyone who doesn’t understand or recognize what the man has sacrificed - and I’m just talking health, not personal matters you probably know about - isn’t looking with a nonjaundiced view.
Yeah, he’s made millions and reveled in a lot of glory (and played every great golf course).
But I’m guessing that shoulder and elbow are going to be seriously arthritic for the second half of his life, which has probably already begun.
I’m also thinking that, more than it affects you, me, or many other injured pro athletes, being told he cannot pitch, or having to sit and watch his team scramble to fill in and then lose without him, absolutely eats away at Smoltz.
He wants to go out on his own terms. Wants so badly to go out with one last blaze of glory. Wants to shine once more on that big postseason stage where he was so good for so long.
For his sake, you’ve got to hope he gets the chance.
Getting back to why he’s open to moving back to the bullpen (sorry, I just realized how much I’ve rambled here), I think it’s because this shoulder thing has forced him to chance his course at midstream, or midseason.
He said to me that, honestly, that trapezius strain this spring was entirely unexpected, and that it was more neck than shoulder. That his shoulder was not the reason he was throwing in sim games for the early part of spring training.
But it might well have led to this inflamed rotator cuff and severely inflamed biceps tendon that he’s dealing with now, and that’s going to take at least a few weeks, I’d imagine, before he’s able to pitch.
And now that he’s got this stuff going on in there, and he’s seen how ineffective it makes him as a starter when it gets to this point, Smoltz has been forced to accept the fact that, once again, his health might not (probably won’t) allow him to pitch even 6-7 innings every five days.
It sounds to me like he knows the tank is running low, and he wants to make the remaining fuel get him at least through this season and, he and the Braves hope, the postseason. He doesn’t have many arrows left, wants to use them sparingly.
Maybe an offseason of rest will allow him to return in 2009. There’s no way of knowing that right now, or even knowing how much Smoltz is thinking beyond this season or wants to think beyond this season.
As he’s said several times since last fall, he’s going year-to-year at this point, and now perhaps even day-to-day. He wants to make the most of what he’s got left.
With setup man Peter Moylan likely headed for season-ending surgery, and closer Rafael Soriano dealing with recurring elbow soreness and still not ready to return from the DL, the bullpen needs Smoltz as bad as he might need it.
”BLAZE OF GLORY” by The Alarm
It’s funny how they shoot you down
When your hands are held up high
And you open up your heart and soul
I remember this much
There is nothing
You shouldn’t speak of
If you got something to say
And there is no one
To be scared of
Just get them out of the way
Going out in a blaze of glory
My heart is open wide
You can take anything that you want from me
There is nothing left to hide
Going out in a blaze of glory
My hands are held up high
I’m learning how to hit back
I’m learning how to fight
The law of the jungle says
You look after yourself
But I remember this much
I love as I’ve been loved myself.
Don’t forget what I told you now
When the question keeps on coming
And it’s how much more can you take
When they’ve ripped your clothes to pieces
Shouldn’t you be gone by now
But you keep on
Going out in a blaze of glory
Setting your sights for the sky.
They can offer you anything at all
But your dreams must not be sold.
Going out in a blaze of glory
No price is high enough
I’m fighting back with feeling
I’m fighting back with love
When the nails are biting into your hands
And the cross is heavy on your heart
Now is the time to really make a stand
My hands are held up high.
Going out
In a blaze of glory
Going out
In a blaze of glory
Going out
In a blaze of glory
Going out in a blaze of glory
My heart is open wide
You can take anything that you want from me
But you cannot take my soul
Going out in a blaze of glory
My hands are held up high
I’m learning how to hit back
Yes I’m learning how to fight
Going out in a blaze of glory
Going out with my heart wide open
Going out with my hands held high
Going out in a blaze of glory
Going out in a blaze of glory…..
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