Pitcher Chavez sees the light in second stint with Blue Jays

DUNEDIN — Four years ago Jesse Chavez passed through Toronto on his challenging journey of personal discovery.

He’s back this spring, still searching for that Holy Grail of pitching, but this time, at the age of 32, he’s a much more fully formed student of his craft, ready to contribute in any way possible to a championship season.

After career stops in Pittsburgh, Atlanta and Kansas City, Chavez came to Toronto in 2012 and while he made only nine Blue Jay appearances with mixed results, it was a stepping-stone.

“When I was here the first time, I was learning how to be the pitcher I am now,” said Chavez Thursday, a day after tossing two hitless innings in his Blue Jay spring debut — a 10-8 victory against the Pittsburgh Pirates. “That’s the only difference between then and now. It takes time.”

Chavez began his career as a hard thrower and, like most young hard throwers who start to lose something off the fastball, he had to reinvent himself.

“Early on in my career I would just rear back and throw it as hard as I could,” said Chavez. “With velocity, you can get away with that for a while. Then there was a stretch where everything ended up in the middle and you have to stop embarrassing yourself and embarrassing your team. You want to be that guy who the manager calls because he’s got confidence in you. It took a couple of years to find what I wanted to be for that next step.

“The velocity isn’t going to stay forever. Once it goes, you have to learn how to pitch. That was something I had to learn. Once I dropped my arm angles, I never got my velocity back to where it was before. So I had to learn to pitch. That was a tough adjustment because my first thought was always to reach back and let one go, just to see if it was there. And that was always a mistake. It was something I had to get out of my head real quick.”

In 2011, he dropped down to throw sidearm in Kansas City and when that didn’t work, he went to winter ball in 2011 to get his conventional mechanics back. That was where he was in his redevelopment when he came to the Blue Jays as a waiver claim.

FRANK GUNN/THE CANADIAN PRESS Toronto Blue Jays pitcher Jesse Chavez stretches at spring training last week in Dunedin, Fla. He says his first tour with the team was a stepping-stone to how he performs today.