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On the road to "The Show" |
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Thursday, 01 May 2008 |
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By TERRY NAU Sports editor Living in Pawtucket the past 26 years and occasionally reporting on a PawSox game, I’ve always been fascinated by the process that separates big league baseball players from top prospects who never quite make the giant leap from Class AAA ball to “The Show.”
Why do some players succeed in their first attempt? Talent is surely the answer to that question.
Why do a few more players make it on their second or third try? This has something to do with getting acclimated to the big leagues, to becoming comfortable with your new teammates and showing them you can help the team win – which is all anyone cares about at the big league level.
And why do some players get to Triple-A and hit a road block when they get called up to the big leagues? To succeed at such a high level and then fail at the top level must be extremely frustrating to professional ball players who have experienced success at every level of their baseball careers, from Little League on up.
That’s why it was good to read about local product Chris Iannetta’s breakthrough game on Tuesday night for the Colorado Rockies. A backup catcher in his second year with Colorado, Iannetta picked up an infielder’s glove and played third base when shortstop Troy Tulowitzki became injured in the first inning.
That should have been nerve-wracking enough for Iannetta, playing third base with all that entails after catching for most of his life. So how did he respond? By homering off San Francisco’s hard-throwing Tim Lincecum in the top of the second inning and then scoring the winning run in the 7th inning on a balk.
Surely, Iannetta proved to his teammates, his manager and general manager that he belongs in the big leagues for good after this performance. And it’s really not about one game this season. The former all-stater from St. Raphael Academy here in Pawtucket is batting .324 after 34 at-bats with two homers, six RBI and an excellent slugging percentage of .618. His on-base percentage is a healthy .395. Those stats were prior to Wednesday afternoon’s game against the Giants, which Iannetta started behind the plate.
Last year at this time, after being handed the catcher’s job in spring training, Chris got off to a slow start and eventually forfeited the position to veteran Yorvit Torrealba. The Rockies ended up in the World Series and Iannetta was right there on the bench, watching. You can’t say he felt secure in his position on the team after batting .218 for the season. Clint Hurdle couldn’t be blamed for going with a veteran catcher over the much-hyped Iannetta last season. But Chris’s performance thus far in 2008 could force the manager to re-think the way he’s handling his two catchers. All of those doubts that Iannetta carried with him would seem to have been erased by Tuesday night’s events. Just look at the smile on his face in the photograph taken of Chris in the dugout after scoring the go-ahead run. Nothing succeeds like success in the elite world of major league baseball, a profession that weeds out prospects from suspects all over the country, in every minor league town where pro ball is played.
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Which leads us to Pawtucket’s Jay Rainville, who is struggling mightily at Class AA New Britain this spring. The former first-round pick of the Minnesota Twins is 1-3 with a 10.29 earned run average in his five starts. It is almost painful to print those stats in Jay’s hometown paper because this is a young man that the whole community is rooting for. But he has to work things out on his own, trying to build up the arm strength he lost after suffering a nerve injury behind his right shoulder and missing the entire 2006 season.
There is still plenty of time for Rainville, who is just 22 years young, to turn things around. The Twins have plenty of patience with their young prospects, especially former No. 1 draft choices. At the minor league level, it’s never about wins and losses. So a manager isn’t going to sit a struggling prospect down to win games. He’s under orders from the farm system director to keep playing a guy like Rainville.
If the Twins think Jay has lost his confidence and needs to drop back to Class A ball, that’s about the only move they will make. But make no mistake: Jay Rainville is pitching for his professional future this season.
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Ironically, the New York Yankees had shown serious interest in Rainville prior to the 2004 draft. When it came time for the Yankees to exercise their first-round pick, they chose Philip Hughes, who is now struggling mightily at the big league level and could be farmed out to Scranton in the near future.
All the scouts claim Hughes is a can’t-miss prospect. Once again, we are seeing the impact of that weeding-out process mentioned at the beginning of this piece. As good as Phil Hughes is, he can’t succeed without executing his pitches, and he can’t do that if he lacks confidence in himself.
When big league hitters like Curtis Granderson take your best fastball and knock it off the black behind the CF fence in Yankee Stadium, that can be sobering medicine for a young pitcher to absorb. When Gary Sheffield then golfs a good curveball over the LF fence two batters later, that can really get a young pitcher thinking about whether he belongs in the big leagues. That’s what happened to Hughes in the third inning of Tuesday night’s 6-4 loss to Detroit.
Like I said at the start, the whole process fascinates me. I’m sure the people involved have an entirely different word to describe the road from the minors to the major leagues. |
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Last Updated ( Saturday, 03 May 2008 )
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