Those of you who are unfamiliar with the Braves machine of the 1990's may not recognize the name "Mark Wohlers" right off the bat.Those of you who consider yourselves Bravos faithful, on the other hand, can only shake their heads at the mere mention.
First, a bit of background. Mark was a young fireballer out of Holyoke, Massachusetts, signed fresh out of high school by the Braves in 1988. He spent three years in the minors honing his craft: relief pitching.
Now, not every young pitcher dreams about eating up late innings, waiting on the closer to get loose. But Wohlers thrived, in no small part because he was surrounded by (and you can argue with me on this, but you'll never convince me otherwise) the best pitching staff ever assembled by mortal men. Wohlers was a fantastic setup man from his callup in 1991 until he was promoted to closer in 1995. He showed he was a puppy with big paws just a month after his major league debut when he pitched two innings between starter Kent Mercker and closer Alejandro Peña, combining for a no-hitter against the Padres.
Wohlers earned his keep with just a handful of pitches: an average slider and a good split-finger fastball.
Oh, and the fastest fastball in the league, regularly crossing the 100 MPH mark, and reaching 103 MPH in a spring training game in 1995.
Mark's position in the Braves roster of pitchers was a unique one. Surrounded by control and finesse, Wohlers was the quintessential power pitcher: who cares if it's right down the middle as long as it's too fast to hit?
Fast forward to the 1996 World Series. Mark made his first All-Star team as a closer, using his skills to their maximum potential. His 39 saves (combined with his 100 strikeouts) proved he was just as valuable to the team as Smoltz, Glavine, Maddux, and the rest. He helped the Braves make it back to the Fall Classic, facing the resurgent New York Yankees. The significance of the South's premiere team facing the "Yankees" was not lost on the news media, resulting in more than a handful of headlines intimating that the South would rise again after the World Championship run the previous year.
Game 4 rolls around. The Braves won the first pair in New York by a combined 15-1, but Game 3 in Atlanta went to the Yanks 5-2.
The Braves lead after the seventh, 6-3. The eighth begins, and the beloved Bobby Cox decides to put his best late-game pitcher in to preserve the score. Wohlers comes in to cover two innings.
An inauspicious start as journeyman Charlie Hayes and walking-endorsement-of-clean-living Darryl Strawberry both reach on singles. Hayes advances to third due to a bad play on Mariano Duncan's hit by Pacman Rafael Belliard. Jim Leyritz comes to bat, and here is where things get a little bit fuzzy.
Six pitches later and Leyritz sends one over the left field fence, accomplishing three things: scoring three runs, tying the game, and shattering the confidence of what had been one of the most dominant closers over the past three years.Wohlers muddled through the ninth, but he was pulled at the end of regulation baseball. Once-great starter Steve Avery came in to mop up in the tenth and promptly gave up three wallks and a single, giving the Yanks a one-run lead. Brad Clontz, who none of you will ever hear of outside of this article, then gave up a fly ball dropped by poster-child-for-wasted-potential Ryan Klesko to cement the win for New York.
The Braves lost the next two games, and have yet to win another World Series game.
Back to Mark Wohlers, after the horrid end of the season in '96, 1997 was a minor hiccup. He doubled his walk ratio (a harbinger of things to come), but still recorded 33 saves.
1998. Mark Wohlers, previously a reliable flamethrowing closer, forgets something. Something important. Namely, how to throw a fastball for a strike.
It has many names. The Yips. Dartitis. Steve Blass Disease. But what it boils down to is an inability to do what once came as naturally as breathing.
It has happened before. Not just to the aforementioned Steve Blass, who couldn't perform in 1973, but to many pitchers. Kevin Saucier. Clay Kirby. Randy Jones. Sam Mitiello.
It happened after. Rick Ankiel, perhaps the most famous of the recent sufferers, transitioned to an outfielder once he came to terms with his malady.
Mark walked 33 batters in 21.1 innings. Such a performance led to Triple-A Richmond, where he walked 36 batters in 12.1 innings.
Finally, the Braves put Wohlers on the disabled list. Everyone knew why. Nothing was physically wrong with him. But they had to put something down on the form. They finally decided on the three harshest words ever uttered in baseball history: inability to pitch.
Wohlers stuck around for a few years, bouncing around the league to the Reds, the Yankees, and the Indians. But he was never the same after that fateful day in Atlanta in 1996.
Sources:
Wildly Out of Control
The Baseball Cube
Retrosheet
Baseball Reference
Wikipedia, because I'm a horrible person
I saw that fool in Richmond on his failed rehab. It was sad.
ReplyDeleteThe Mark Wohlers story is a story that needs to be told and here, you have told it, and told it well, and so I salute you.
ReplyDeleteHow did Ryan Klesko constitute a "poster-child-for-wasted potential"? In 1996, in fact, he led Atlanta with 34 home runs, and overall, Klesko finished a sixteen-year major league career with a slugging average of .500 and an on-base percentage of .370, making the All-Star Game in 2001 as a member of the San Diego Padres. Indeed, the Braves' trade of Klesko following the 1999 season turned into a disaster. Without his left-handed bat in the lineup, Atlanta never reached another World Series.
ReplyDeleteAs for Brad Clontz, he'd actually gone 8-1 with a 3.65 ERA as a rookie reliever on the 1995 Braves (who won the World Series), and he would go 5-1 with a 3.75 ERA for the 1997 Braves. Yes, his career proved unremarkable, but he certainly gave Atlanta a couple adequate seasons. Also of note, in 8 career postseason appearances for the Braves, Clontz posted a 1.23 ERA, allowing just five base runners in 7 and 1/3 innings.
Also, I wouldn't say that Steve Avery was in the game in the tenth simply to "mop up," for the score was still tied. Avery retired the first two Yankees in quick, impressive fashion, but then, for some strange reason, he started nibbling against Tim Raines with no one on base, walked Raines, allowed an infield hit to Derek Jeter (followed by an intentional walk to Bernie Williams), and then couldn't put Wade Boggs away after leaping ahead of him in the count, one ball and two strikes. The home plate umpire, Steve Rippley, may have squeezed Avery on a pitch or two (or three) that could have punched out Boggs. Certainly, Rippley's (believe it or not) strike zone became very, very small after Avery recorded those first two strikes.
Additionally, Bobby Cox possessed no choice except to remove Wohlers following the ninth inning, for the Atlanta closer had never thrown more than two innings all season long. In fact, only twice all season long did Cox ask Wohlers to record a six-out save or even more than a four-out save, and he failed both times (including Game Four of the World Series). In retrospect, Cox may well have erred by trying to force Wohlers to pitch two full innings, an unfamiliar and perhaps psychologically daunting task for him. A better option may have been to to use Clontz and Avery to record one out each and only require a four-out save from Wohlers. Of course, Rafael Belliard's bobble, right before Leyritz stepped to the plate, didn't help matters, either, given how it prevented the Braves from turning a double play.
Indeed, Cox should have started with the right-handed Clontz to face the right-handed Charlie Hayes leading off the eighth. Clontz had not pitched effectively that season, with a 5.69 ERA, but he'd delivered three (ultimately four) scoreless appearances in that postseason and he'd proved very tough for right-handed hitters to bat against that year, allowing just a .217 batting average, a .272 on-base percentage, and a .319 slugging average by right-handed hitters in the 1996 regular season.
Presuming that Clontz retired Hayes, Cox could have then brought in the left-handed Avery to face the left-handed Darryl Strawberry. Avery had allowed left-handed hitters to bat just .256 against him with a .299 on-base percentage and a .300 slugging average in the 1996 regular season, while Strawberry had been just a .208 hitters versus southpaws that year.
Playing the percentages, there's a good chance that Cox could have then brought Mark Wohlers in to attempt a more routine four-out save and that Jim Leyritz would have never stepped to the plate in position to tie the score.
Here's another point: Wohlers' control and effectiveness did not fully desert him in 1998 until after he'd spent about three weeks on the disabled list that May due to a strained oblique muscle. Therefore, to simply pin his downfall on the Leyritz home run nineteen months earlier seems dubious.
One night I saw this guy Wohlers: 100, 100+, 100, 100-, 99, 100+, etc. This isn't an exact sequence, just a sample of the kind of stuff he had, pitch after pitch. Yeah, he died of Steve Blass syndrome, but for a while, he was the Einstein of the fastball. The best ever. Why don't people talk about about him more. He's in my private hall of fame of memory. He deserves more.
ReplyDeleteI know what happened.
ReplyDelete