Jamie Moyer
If you're not a baseball fan, that name likely doesn't mean anything to you, although maybe it should. If you are a baseball fan, you probably know that name well. And if you are a baseball fan in Seattle you know that name well.
(Even if you're not a baseball fan, stick around.)
Jamie Moyer is a left-handed pitcher, a sought-after commodity in baseball. He was playing for the Boston Red Sox when the Sox and the Seattle Mariners made a trade in 1996, sending Moyer to the Mariners in exchange for outfielder Darren Bragg. Bragg turned out to be a middle-average outfielder, nothing special by any means as either a batter or a fielder. Moyer stayed with the Mariners for parts of 11 seasons, and all he ever did was win 145 games, striking out 1,239 batters along the way. He is one of only two Mariner pitchers to win 20 games in a season, the other being superstar Randy Johnson.
Moyer and Johnson couldn't be more different in their pitching. Johnson was a fastball pitcher, throwing close to 100 mph and daring you to hit the ball. Moyer was once described as having three speeds, slow, slower and slowest. Where Johnson relied on powering the ball past you, Moyer was more of a finesse pitcher. Even though he threw the ball much slower than Johnson, his range of speeds kept hitters off guard.
And Moyer does his homework. He keeps a record of every batter he's ever faced, how they react to pitches and the result of every at-bat, so he knows how to approach the hitter the next time they face off.
Moyer was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in the middle of the 2006 season, where he won another 56 games and was in a couple of World Series, something he never got to do as a Mariner (but then, neither has any other Mariner). Even so, until recently he continued to live in Seattle, sponsoring a children's charity and doing commercials for a local windshield repair company.
Why did the Mariners trade Moyer? He was getting up in years is my guess. At the time he was about 43 years old; he's 49 now and remember, he won a Major League game in April, the oldest pitcher ever to do so. An interesting aside: the Mariners released Johnson after the 1997 season because of his age (34 is fairly old for a starting pitcher) and they were worried about his back giving out. He played for about 12 more years, getting World Series rings with Arizona and the Yankees. Sometimes you have to wonder . . . )
Anyway, so why am I bringing up Jamie Moyer to an audience that is used to me going on about grandkids, radios and banjos?
Well, a couple of reasons. Up until yesterday Moyer was still pitching, albeit at the AAA level, one step below the major leagues. In fact he recently won a game against Seattle's AAA team in Tacoma and a phenom up-and-coming pitcher the M's have high hopes for. But yesterday, he was released by the Toronto Blue Jays organization and is currently without a team.
I would like to see the Mariners sign him. For one day, anyway.
Last year the M's signed a short-term contract with Ken Griffey, Jr., the player who put the Mariners on the map by spearheading the 1995 team, leading them from a 13 1/2 game deficit against the California Angels to tie the Angels, forcing a one-game playoff that the Mariners won to get to the postseason for the first time. They then went on to perhaps the most exciting division series in MLB history, beating the Yankees in the last at-bat of the last possible game of the series. Griffey scored the winning run on an Edgar Martinez double that's as famous in Seattle as anything Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter ever did for the Pirates or Blue Jays.
Sorry for the baseball speak. Anyway, Griffey left the team in 2000 to play for Cincinnati, the team his father had played for, but returned for a short time and retired as a Mariner. Then last year the Mariners signed Mike Cameron, Griffey's replacement in center field and a fan favorite in his time in Seattle, to a one-day contract so he could also retire as a Mariner.
I would like to see them do the same for Moyer, assuming Moyer is ready to retire.
Not only that, I would like to see the Mariners hire Moyer as a pitching coach. Moyer has two things going for him when it comes to pitching: his command of the baseball (being able to put it where he wants it to go at the speed he wants to throw it at) and his discipline in keeping track of the players he's faced and knowing how to approach them. Seattle is notoriously hard on pitchers. I don't know whether it's because they rush pitchers through the system or there's some flaw in the training process, but we seem to have an inordinate number of injured pitchers. And those who meet with early success (for instance Joel Pineiro) don't always do so well after they move on to other organizations. I can't say whether Moyer's slowhand delivery is responsible for his longevity as a baseball player, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt, and in any event our pitchers could benefit from learning how to finesse the ball.
Will they do it? Will he do it? Who knows. But I'd like to see it. Moyer has done what he does well, with class, for a very long time. That's the sort of thing that should be rewarded.
This entry was originally posted at http://banjoplayinnerd.dreamwidth.org/16803.html. Please comment there using OpenID.
(Even if you're not a baseball fan, stick around.)
Jamie Moyer is a left-handed pitcher, a sought-after commodity in baseball. He was playing for the Boston Red Sox when the Sox and the Seattle Mariners made a trade in 1996, sending Moyer to the Mariners in exchange for outfielder Darren Bragg. Bragg turned out to be a middle-average outfielder, nothing special by any means as either a batter or a fielder. Moyer stayed with the Mariners for parts of 11 seasons, and all he ever did was win 145 games, striking out 1,239 batters along the way. He is one of only two Mariner pitchers to win 20 games in a season, the other being superstar Randy Johnson.
Moyer and Johnson couldn't be more different in their pitching. Johnson was a fastball pitcher, throwing close to 100 mph and daring you to hit the ball. Moyer was once described as having three speeds, slow, slower and slowest. Where Johnson relied on powering the ball past you, Moyer was more of a finesse pitcher. Even though he threw the ball much slower than Johnson, his range of speeds kept hitters off guard.
And Moyer does his homework. He keeps a record of every batter he's ever faced, how they react to pitches and the result of every at-bat, so he knows how to approach the hitter the next time they face off.
Moyer was traded to the Philadelphia Phillies in the middle of the 2006 season, where he won another 56 games and was in a couple of World Series, something he never got to do as a Mariner (but then, neither has any other Mariner). Even so, until recently he continued to live in Seattle, sponsoring a children's charity and doing commercials for a local windshield repair company.
Why did the Mariners trade Moyer? He was getting up in years is my guess. At the time he was about 43 years old; he's 49 now and remember, he won a Major League game in April, the oldest pitcher ever to do so. An interesting aside: the Mariners released Johnson after the 1997 season because of his age (34 is fairly old for a starting pitcher) and they were worried about his back giving out. He played for about 12 more years, getting World Series rings with Arizona and the Yankees. Sometimes you have to wonder . . . )
Anyway, so why am I bringing up Jamie Moyer to an audience that is used to me going on about grandkids, radios and banjos?
Well, a couple of reasons. Up until yesterday Moyer was still pitching, albeit at the AAA level, one step below the major leagues. In fact he recently won a game against Seattle's AAA team in Tacoma and a phenom up-and-coming pitcher the M's have high hopes for. But yesterday, he was released by the Toronto Blue Jays organization and is currently without a team.
I would like to see the Mariners sign him. For one day, anyway.
Last year the M's signed a short-term contract with Ken Griffey, Jr., the player who put the Mariners on the map by spearheading the 1995 team, leading them from a 13 1/2 game deficit against the California Angels to tie the Angels, forcing a one-game playoff that the Mariners won to get to the postseason for the first time. They then went on to perhaps the most exciting division series in MLB history, beating the Yankees in the last at-bat of the last possible game of the series. Griffey scored the winning run on an Edgar Martinez double that's as famous in Seattle as anything Bill Mazeroski or Joe Carter ever did for the Pirates or Blue Jays.
Sorry for the baseball speak. Anyway, Griffey left the team in 2000 to play for Cincinnati, the team his father had played for, but returned for a short time and retired as a Mariner. Then last year the Mariners signed Mike Cameron, Griffey's replacement in center field and a fan favorite in his time in Seattle, to a one-day contract so he could also retire as a Mariner.
I would like to see them do the same for Moyer, assuming Moyer is ready to retire.
Not only that, I would like to see the Mariners hire Moyer as a pitching coach. Moyer has two things going for him when it comes to pitching: his command of the baseball (being able to put it where he wants it to go at the speed he wants to throw it at) and his discipline in keeping track of the players he's faced and knowing how to approach them. Seattle is notoriously hard on pitchers. I don't know whether it's because they rush pitchers through the system or there's some flaw in the training process, but we seem to have an inordinate number of injured pitchers. And those who meet with early success (for instance Joel Pineiro) don't always do so well after they move on to other organizations. I can't say whether Moyer's slowhand delivery is responsible for his longevity as a baseball player, but I'm sure it doesn't hurt, and in any event our pitchers could benefit from learning how to finesse the ball.
Will they do it? Will he do it? Who knows. But I'd like to see it. Moyer has done what he does well, with class, for a very long time. That's the sort of thing that should be rewarded.
This entry was originally posted at http://banjoplayinnerd.dreamwidth.org/16803.html. Please comment there using OpenID.