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Mending Wood Velocity down, Cubs pitcher struggling to regain form
Posted: Wednesday June 21, 2000 02:40 PM
When Kerry Wood showed up at the Cubs' clubhouse the day after he turned 23, somebody asked him, "How was your birthday?'' The Chicago righthander responded, "I didn't do a whole lot.'' You can say that again. Wood threw only four sloppy innings against the Montreal Expos on his birthday last Friday, showered, dressed and beat a hasty retreat -- Chuck Knoblauch -like -- out of the clubhouse before the game ended and reporters could quiz him on what went wrong. Wood returned from reconstructive elbow surgery with a gem on May 2 against the Astros, an 11-1 win in which he also hit a home run. But ever since then, the National League has been knocking on Wood. In seven starts since that return, Wood is 1-4 with a 6.59 ERA and a whopping 30 walks and 35 hits in 41 innings. The Expos tagged him for five runs. Half of the 20 batters Wood faced reached base. So what's wrong? It depends on whom you ask. Manager Don Baylor: "His arm is fine. His confidence right now just is not there. It's no different than a hitter going 1-for-30. It's just a confidence problem.'' Cubs first baseman Mark Grace: "I don't think he's lacking with his confidence. It's a command thing. He doesn't have command of his fastball right now.'' The facts are that Wood's fastball, while still potent, has lost a few miles per hour from his pre-surgical days. It's often in the low-to-mid-90s now rather than the upper 90s. Moreover, he cannot throw the same nasty slurve -- that hard, big-bending breaking ball -- that helped him strike out 20 Astros in 1998. Even so, his pitches remain above big league average, if not unhittable. The problem is that Wood never has had to deal with reduced stuff. He's never struggled like this in his life. "For him to throw fastballs and not be able to get it by hitters consistently, that's something new to him,'' says Cubs GM Ed Lynch . Welcome to Year One of life after surgery. Just ask the Phillies' Curt Schilling about it. It's not reasonable to expect that a pitcher can maintain consistently good stuff in his first year back from an operation. Schilling looked great in his last outing against Atlanta, topping out at 96 mph in his eighth and last inning of work. But in several starts before that a frustrated Schilling was having a hard time dealing with getting hit hard. "With Schill and with Kerry, that's going to happen in your first year back,'' said Grace. "There are going to be good days and bad days." Wood clearly is frustrated about getting hit, but on the day after the Montreal game he admitted for the first time he might have to accept that this season is going to be a struggle. "I've never had to go through anything like this,'' said Wood. "I've got to be a little more patient. My arm feels great. I watched a tape of the game when I got home. I don't think mechanics are the problem. I've got to be more patient.'' Said Lynch: "He's got a new arm. It's almost literally like having a new arm. And now he's got to learn how to pitch again with a new arm. It's going to take time.'' The Cubs toyed with the idea of skipping Wood's next start, simply to allow him to relax and work the frustration out of his system. But if his arm is fine -- and everybody in the Cubs system insists that's the case -- Wood's recovery requires nothing more than getting on the mound every fifth day and further removing himself from the surgery. Privately, Cubs officials concede they must chalk up this year as a rehab season for Wood. They expect to see him improve in inconsistent increments over the course of this year -- good games and bad games popping up intermittently -- and be at full physical and mental strength next year. As for why Wood, normally a stand-up guy, buzzed out of the clubhouse Friday without facing the media, the pitcher explained the next day, "I just wanted to get away from everything, rather than listen to 75 people tell me what's wrong.'' Sosa updateOne of the common perceptions about the Cubs' shopping of Sammy Sosa is that they are demanding lots of pitching back in a trade. Not true. Here's one NL GM's assessment of the Cubs: "They need position players. I think their pitching actually is in decent shape. Wood can still be an ace, [Kevin] Tapani and [Jon] Leiber are both signed long term and are as good as most teams have in the middle of the rotation, and I think Scott Downs has a chance to be pretty good. And they have [Ismael] Valdes [a potential free agent] whom they can trade. They need more help with position players.'' Other than Double A centerfielder Corey Patterson, Chicago has nothing exciting coming up immediately in their system. Meanwhile, give Chicago credit for stabilizing its bullpen, a unit that had been horrendous at the start of the year. Only Felix Heredia and Rick Aguilera remain from the corps that began the season. Todd Van Poppel and Tim Worrell have been huge surprises. Revising the closer roleThe reasons keep piling up about why you shouldn't pay closers huge money on multi-year deals. Rare is the pitcher who can perform the tightrope-walking job with consistency year in and year out. One year Matt Mantei and Billy Wagner are dominating fireballers who shut down games, the next they've lost their closing jobs because they can't get anybody out with the same stuff.(Now it looks as though Wagner could be lost for the year after a magnetic resonance imaging test revealed a partial tear of the flexor tendon in his throwing elbow). Likewise, Billy Koch, Robb Nen, Kazuhiro Sasaki, John Wetteland, Jeff Shaw and Troy Percival haven't exactly been automatic this year. Think the Devil Rays would like a do-over on the Roberto Hernandez contract? A better bullpen formula is the one used by the Reds, White Sox and now the Indians, who made the smart move by passing on bringing back a fragile Mike Jackson. Unless you have Mariano Rivera or Trevor Hoffman -- the real exceptions to the rule of the inconsistent closer -- it's better to share the load among two or three pitchers. That way you can go with the hot hand or pick and choose depending on how the matchups work out against the opposing hitters. It's also much cheaper, as Reds GM Jim Bowden once pointed out, to split up the saves rather than having one guy pad his numbers with cheapies (of which there are many) and have to overpay a guy just because he "saved'' 30-40 games. Florida might find this out with Antonio Alfonseca, who leads the NL in saves, but rarely has been asked to protect a one-run lead. He's eligible for arbitration, which means the Marlins might have to trade him in the next six weeks rather than see him get a huge raise. Despite this ever-specialized evolution of relief pitching, leads are preserved and blown with essentially the same percentages as before anyone ever heard of Tony La Russa and Dennis Eckersley. Case in point: the Montreal Expos. They have used three closers this year because of injuries: Ugueth Urbina (who is close to returning from an elbow injury), Dustin Hermanson and Steve Kline. You might think a team like that might have trouble protecting leads without that one, dominant arm at the back end of the bullpen, right? Well, Montreal began this week 30-0 when it took a lead into the ninth inning, not to mention 22-1 when it was leading after six innings.
Sports Illustrated senior writer Tom Verducci covers baseball for the magazine and is a regular contributor to CNNSI.com. Click here to send a question to his mailbag.
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