John Blanchette: Washburn money pitcher in Mariners debut
SEATTLE – For a day anyway, Jarrod Washburn looked like a million bucks. Or even 38 million.
It’s a shame that it always comes back to the price tag, but that’s the game these days. Before Jose Canseco and the intrepid sleuths in the Bay Area broke open the steroids story, the last baseball book to make the best-seller list was “Moneyball.”
Big bucks or bargains, there’s always a dollar sign on the muscle.
Now, the prevailing notion last December when the Seattle Mariners signed Washburn as a free agent to shore up their pitiful starting rotation was that they seriously overpaid. The 31-year-old left-hander was neither dominant (29-31 the last three years) nor durable (six trips to the disabled list in his career) enough to justify $9.5 million a season – especially when just a year and a half ago Seattle had traded away a bigger, more bullish winner making the same money.
But the Mariners’ own desperation and the rather depleted pool didn’t give them many options.
So why did Jarrod Washburn look like such a sweet deal Wednesday afternoon?
Well, probably because of the team that didn’t need him.
“I think,” said Los Angeles Angels manager Mike Scioscia before the game, “he’s had this date circled for a long time.”
It can stay that way in his scrapbook. In beating the Angels 6-4, Washburn not only did a little dignity dance on the face of the guys who’d signed his checks for 11 years, but he also allowed the Mariners to take two of three from the defending American League West champions – an early turn of events that couldn’t have been much anticipated.
“Every win is great,” Washburn allowed, “but I’d be lying if I said I didn’t want to win today a little more.”
This fact was not lost on the Angels or his new teammates, or even on another modest Safeco Field crowd – 21,394.
When he got his last out – in this case, a strikeout of Casey Kotchman on a “bad, hanging slider” to end the top of the seventh inning – Washburn shadow boxed an uppercut and roared as he hopped off the mound, then met catcher Kenji Johjima for a ceremonial slapping of the gloves. It may have been just one game out of 162 and one of the 2,187 outs the M’s will need to claw back to the respectability of .500 baseball, but it was fairly pregnant with purpose.
Thoroughly gassed, Washburn had been asked to hang around for a couple of extra batters because Seattle was short on relief. He got away with a mistake pitch. But mostly he’d cinched a tourniquet around an inning that looked to be a real bleeder.
Down 4-1, the Angels opened the seventh with a single by Vladimir Guerrero and a double by Tim Salmon. But only Guerrero made it home, Washburn inducing ground balls by Darin Erstad and Edgardo Alfonzo before Kotchman’s K.
“The biggest out was Erstad,” Washburn insisted. “To have him hit a ground ball to short so the guy on second couldn’t go to third was huge.
“In a situation like that, you’re not pitching not to let anybody score – you pitch to make outs. You have to get the outs. You have to bear down and not allow a big inning, because big innings kill you.”
This lesson in toughness should be required reviewing for the M’s younger pitchers, in particular Gil Meche and Joel Pineiro. Determination, will, focus – whatever you want to call it, Washburn summoned as much as he could to that moment. The kids haven’t demonstrated that strength.
Which is sort of funny.
Washburn doesn’t come off as a tough guy. If Jamie Moyer could pass for the club comptroller, Washburn is a ringer for the born-again outfielder in “Bull Durham” – or Tim the Toolman’s brother, if you prefer – and though he’s mostly a one-pitch pitcher whose one pitch is a fastball he throws at different speeds to different spots, he’s never regarded as overpowering.
“But I’m sure he was fired up,” laughed M’s first baseman Richie Sexson. “I saw fastballs 93 and 94 (mph) a couple of times and typically when I was facing him, it never got that high.”
Yet while he anticipated an emotional outing, Washburn insisted it wasn’t solely because the Angels made nearly no attempt to re-sign him. That’s business. Facing old teammates was mostly “just weird.” The real adrenaline came from the new uniform.
“I really wanted this bad, being on a new team for the first time in my career,” he said. “I wanted to make a good impression. You know guys are counting on you.
“I like this team. One of the reasons I came here was that I thought there was a lot of talent, a lot of possibility. I’m still convinced of that and I know all the so-called experts don’t think so, but hopefully we can prove them all wrong.”
That’s to be determined. But for a day anyway, it was Jarrod Washburn playing moneyball.
John Blanchette is a columnist for The Spokesman-Review.