Time at plate can feed anxiety
As Dodgers’ Kazmir and other pitchers discover, hitting is often a real pain.
Clayton Kershaw lugged a bucket of balls in one hand and two bats in the other as he led a procession of starting pitchers into the on- deck circle at Dodger Stadium last Friday. Trailing behind were Kenta Maeda and Scott Kazmir. A pitching machine resided near the mound.
“Get this bunting machine out of here,” Kershaw said. “Let’s hit.”
The group waited for Ross Stripling to f inish an interview in the dugout — “Strip, stretch with the relievers,” Kershaw called to him. “You don’t get to hit” — before continuing its regular routine before home games. The pitchers convene to practice hitting on a daily basis, with only that day’s starter exempt.
When Stripling arrived, the quartet took turns laying down bunts. Then Kershaw received his wish, the pitchers got to swing away and the group thinned to three. Kazmir stood behind the cage,
protecting the left arm he damaged while practicing a skill he had not utilized in a decade.
After 11 seasons pitching in the American League, Kazmir did not transition smoothly to the National League last month. He posted a 5.76 earned- run average in April, worst among the Dodgers starters. He also dealt with soreness in his left wrist and thumb caused by hitting during spring training.
To protect his arm, Kazmir has been restricted from swinging a bat for the next two weeks. So he limited himself to bunting during drills. In the on- deck circle during his last outing, he warmed up with his right hand. He tried to bunt even when the bases were empty.
Kazmir will get a reprieve when he starts Tuesday. The Dodgers ( 13- 13) play the Tampa Bay Rays at Tropicana Field under American League rules, meaning a designated hitter will be used. But f ive months of hitting still awaits Kazmir, a 32- year- old who signed a three- year, $ 48- million contract last winter.
“Knowing now how my body’s going to react to stuff like that,” he said, “maybe I should have done a little more in the off- season to prepare myself for spring training. Because we just got right into it, and everyone else was fine with it, and I was struggling a little bit, day to day. With everything, not even just the wrist, but everything, obliques, everything gets tired.”
Brett Anderson can empathize. As a kid, he explained, “I was one of the best hitters in the country when I was 12.” But he couldn’t handle off- speed pitches and found his calling on the mound.
He never hit in the minor leagues and swung a bat only sporadically during f ive seasons with the Oakland Athletics.
Then the A’s traded him to the Colorado Rockies in 2014. In his third game, Anderson fought off a 93- mph sinker from San Francisco Giants starter Matt Cain and “hit it off the end of the bat,” he said. The reverberation fractured his left index f inger. He was sidelined for three months, part of a chronic history of injuries that includes back surgery this spring.
Anderson did not suffer a similar catastrophe with the Dodgers last season. But he did feel discomfort in his right wrist “from the torque of hitting,” he said.
He finished the season with four hits in 47 at- bats.
“There was like a two- week stretch where I was like, ‘ This isn’t so bad. I feel mildly comfortable up here,’ ” he said. “And then that dissipated and it was like, ‘ This is back to sucking. I don’t like this anymore.’ ”
As group, Dodgers pitchers rank seventh in the National League in on- base plus slugging percentage.
During a miserable stretch of offense last week, the pitchers actually provided some of the team’s better at- bats. Kershaw drove in the only run in Sunday’s victory. Stripling walked and scored a run Saturday. Alex Wood had a hit and a walk Friday.
Now in his fourth season in the National League, Wood has grown comfortable with the routine of batting. But he never hit during three seasons at the University of Georgia and took only 17 at- bats in the minors before the Atlanta Braves promoted him to the majors in 2013.
His f irst time up, Wood faced the heat of New York Mets starter Matt Harvey. He required 39 atbats to notch his first hit. In the interim, he struck out 26 times.
“It’s hard, man,” Wood said. “If you don’t do it [ regularly], it’s impossible.”
Stripling presents an even more unusual case. As a senior at Carroll High in Southlake, Texas, he suffered a broken leg playing basketball. When he debuted for the varsity baseball team that spring, he never played the field.
He did not swing a bat during four seasons at Texas A& M. His minor league resume consisted of six hits in 22 at- bats.
“It’s been something that I just don’t try too hard at,” Stripling said. “Like, I go and get the work done. But I’m not going to hit jacks. I’ve never hit before.”
Kazmir lamented his own overzealousness during the spring. He tried to hit home runs during batting practice, hoping to show his skills after the long layoff. His body did not appreciate it.
So Kazmir intended to downscale his aggression at the plate.
But even as he grappled with the injury, he remained firm on one issue facing the sport: He would not support the implementation of the designated hitter in the National League.
“No. No. No, I won’t,” Kazmir said. “I like to hit too much. Even though I’m probably not the best at it, based on the evidence.”