At this point, Kameron Loe is the quintessential journeyman, having pitched for four major league teams in the past 12 months and spent much of this season as a 31-year-old in Triple A.
But it was only a couple of seasons ago when the towering right-hander excelled in the throes of a playoff race for a 96-win, division champion Milwaukee team.
After being brought up from Triple-A Gwinnett by the first-place Braves on Monday, Loe hopes for a chance to show he can still perform on a big stage in games that matter. He’ll get his first chance Wednesday when he makes a spot start in place of rookie Julio Teheran in the Braves’ series finale against the Mets.
Teheran’s next turn will be pushed back to Sept. 10, to help keep his innings total to a level the Braves are comfortable with. He has already thrown 161-1/3 innings this season, after totaling a career-high 168 last year, which included 30-2/3 innings during the Dominican winter league.
“I’m really pumped,” said Loe, who was told Monday morning, shortly after arriving at Turner Field. “This is my first start in the big leagues since ’07, so I’m really excited.”
He spent some time before Monday afternoon’s game against the Mets getting reacquainted with Braves teammates, most of whom he hadn’t seen since making two appearances in late July with the big-league team.
“It’s a real privilege for me to come up here and help this team out, to be with a first-place team,” said Loe, whose 3.50 ERA in 72 relief appearances for the Brewers in 2011 included a 1.44 ERA in his final 22 games, with 24 strikeouts and three walks in 25 innings.
He also made five postseason relief appearances that year, allowing four runs in one and no runs in the others. Now he’ll be thrust back into another playoff race.
“It’s exactly why we play,” Loe said.
After giving up four hits, three runs and two walks in 1-2/3 innings against the Mets on July 25, he was dropped from the Braves’ 40-man roster, cleared waivers and went back to Gwinnett. He returned to the Triple-A team’s rotation and went 0-2 with a 2.91 ERA in six starts before summoned again to the majors.
Loe allowed one or no runs in four of his last five starts at Gwinnett.
The Braves opened a spot for his return to the 40-man roster by transferring pitcher Tim Hudson from the 15-day disabled list to the 60-day DL. Hudson is recovering from season-ending surgery for a broken ankle.
They brought up Loe to have another long reliever/spot starter available, after Freddy Garcia pitched 4-2/3 scoreless relief innings Sunday in his first game after being called from Triple-A.
Manager Fredi Gonzalez said Garcia might have started Wednesday if he hadn’t been needed for so much of Sunday’s game after rookie starter Alex Wood’s early exit.
Loe said orders from Braves officials upon returning Monday were simple: “Be ready,” he said, smiling. And soon after he said that to reporters, he was informed of his Wednesday starting assignment.
Loe, a 6-foot-8 Californian with a deep, rumbling voice and a shaved head, has a 33-42 career record and 4.48 ERA in 315 major league games (47 starts) over parts of nine seasons — five with the Rangers, three with the Brewers, and parts of this season with the Mariners, Cubs and Braves.
He has an 8.15 ERA in 13 major league appearances this season, and was waived by the Mariners in April and released by the Cubs in May before signing a minor league deal with the Braves and working his way into the Gwinnett rotation.
“When I came over here I asked them if I could start (at Gwinnett),” he said. “They said they didn’t really have a spot for me to start, that they would give me some long relief appearances. I ended up talking my way into the starting rotation down there. I wanted to do that so I could work on my change-up and cutter and a couple of other things that I felt like I needed to do. They gave me a chance to get a lot of repetitions, which was good.”