Pitching prospect Davis gets and gives special Father’s Day gift

PHILADELPHIA » Austin Davis has been beating the baseball odds ever since the Phillies made him a 12th round draft choice four years ago.

The big left-hander out of Cal State-Bakersfield didn’t make it out of A ball until last season. He’d been tutored along the way by the late Roy Halladay, trains vigorously in the offseason and has never really disappointed.

He even was sent back recently from Triple-A Lehigh Valley to Double-A Reading for a week or so but pitched well enough to get right back to the IronPigs. That return was only 10 days or so before Davis got a call he didn’t expect from his IronPigs manager, Gary Jones. He was so excited he hung up on dear old dad.

“I was on the phone with my dad when I got the call,” Davis said. “I was wishing him a happy Father’s Day and I knew what the call was for. I saw Jonesy calling on 10 o’clock on a Sunday, so why else would he call? Or maybe it’s a trade or something? But something’s happening.

“So I said, ‘Dad I gotta go.’ He said, ‘You just called me!’ And then I just hung up.”

Davis got the news he longed to hear when he picked up on Jones’ call.

“He said, ‘Hey, you’re going. This is what’s happening, this is what’s going to go on...’ I’m like, yeah, yeah ... not trying to get off the phone but trying to get words out.

“Then I called my dad back. I said, ‘Hey sorry I had to go, but I’m going to the big leagues.’ He’s like, ‘Happy Father’s Day son.’ That was awesome. He’s pumped. He’s just a simple guy, a loving guy. He was just over the moon. It was really cool.”

Davis said he was demoted to Reading only via “a numbers thing,” since “we had like five relievers on the 40-man.

“I wanted to keep pitching, they wanted me to keep pitching and so it’s a demotion (to Reading), but at the same time you get to go down there and I got to throw seven or eight innings in a week,” Davis said. “So it was good to keep working.”

Once he got back to Triple-A, he was on his way. And he even found a way to fly in his father from Arkansas, along with his mother, sisters and agent to join his wife for Tuesday night’s game.

The 25-year-old comes to Philly with a 1-2 mark and a 2.70 ERA and 48 strikeouts in 36.2 innings this season in 26 games, 22 of them with the IronPigs.

“He’s here because he’s left-handed, he’s got plus stuff and he’s having a great year,” Phillies general manager Matt Klentak said. “Sometimes the hot hand in Triple-A can just as easily be the hot hand up here. He’s been on a really good roll down there. He’s missing bats, he’s throwing strikes, he’s left-handed, which is helpful for our current construction, and he’s earned it.

“It’s a successful organizational story. He was a 12th rounder who has worked his way all the way to the big leagues. Great story.”