Kazmir Goes From Alabama to New Jersey to Rejuvenated in Anaheim

Scott Kazmir's journey from Tampa Bay to Anaheim has been successful only because of stops in Alabama and New Jersey.

Kazmir, scheduled to start Tuesday against the Yankees in Game 4 of the ALCS, went from the Rays to the Angels in a late-August trade. And in six starts for the Angels, the lefty went 2-2 with a 1.73 ERA.

"When he became available," manager Mike Scioscia said, "he became really a good fit for what we thought that we needed. He really threw the ball well for us since we got him through the month of September. And hopefully he'll come up big in the playoffs, too."

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But just five months ago, Kazmir was 4-4 with a 7.63 ERA for the Rays. He went on the disabled list with what Tampa Bay called a right quadriceps (thigh) strain.

"I had to take a step back," Kazmir told FanHouse.

"They put him on the disabled list," Rick Peterson told FanHouse, "but he wasn't injured. He was just ineffective."

In an effort to find out what was wrong, Kazmir went to Birmingham, Ala., to visit the American Sports Medicine Institute, a creation of famed sports doctor James Andrews.


Kazmir had first gone to ASMI in 2004, when he was a Mets prospect. And by once again wiring him up with sensors -- similar to how sports video games are made -- his 2009 delivery could be compared to his 2004 delivery with more detail than simple video.

It turns out Kazmir's problems dated to the beginning of the 2008 season, when he was on the DL with a sore forearm. When he came back, he "kind of manipulated my delivery just to throw strikes."

By February, his arm felt good. But ...

"I'm thinking coming into spring training," Kazmir said, "everything's going to be just fine -- my arm feels great, I can pick up where I left off in 2007 [as the AL strikeout leader]. In spring training I start throwing, and I still have those bad habits in my mechanics. I can't get out of it. It feels like I have so much power, but I don't know how to use it any more."

Thus the trip to ASMI, where Kazmir was handed a printout with statistics such as angles and torque.

"I got the readings," he said, "and basically, it was just numbers to me."

"[The Rays] put him on the disabled list, but he wasn't injured. He was just ineffective.
-- Pitching coach Rick Peterson That's where Peterson came in. The former A's and Mets pitching coach (and reportedly the new Brewers' new pitching coach) knew Kazmir from their Mets days.

Just as importantly, he knew ASMI. In 1999, Peterson was the pitching coach for the White Sox' Double-A team in Birmingham, and the Chicago front office told him to take some players over to Andrews' new place.

"I was the first person to ever walk in that lab," Peterson said. "Once I walked in that lab, my whole career totally changed."

So Peterson knew how to read Kazmir's numbers and saw things "out of normative ranges," as Peterson put it.

"If you're talking about a high-performance car, " Peterson said, "and your front end's out of alignment and you need new brakes, you need new shock absorbers, it's not a complicated thing to do that. But until you do that, the car's not running very efficiently.

"He had some subtle things that he needed to get back in check."

Kazmir visited Peterson in New Jersey for "a little three-day workout, and I felt like I was fixed right after that."

With the drills Peterson suggested, Kazmir was throwing 93-95 mph, with the command he had been missing.

"Right away, everything was perfect," he said.

Kazmir came off the DL on June 27 and made 11 starts before the Rays sent him to the Angels.

There he was reunited with another former mentor: Mike Butcher, who was Tampa Bay's pitching coach in 2006.

Butcher has reinforced Kazmir's corrected mechanics by encouraging Kazmir to make them instinctive.

"I don't want him to be mechanical," Butcher said. "I want him to get away from thinking mechanics and just focus in on the glove -- really, execution of pitches. Really, what I work with him on is rhythm and timing -- rhythm, timing, correction and feel and being able to articulate back to me what it feels like to him.

"If you understand what you do right, you're going to be pretty damned good. That's what I talked to him about here. Just know what you do right, understand what you do, and ultimately you'll be your own best coach. And I think he's becoming that. He's 25 years old. He's young, man. He's figured out a lot of things."

And it could pay off for the Angels for a while; Kazmir (already established, but just 20 months older than Joba Chamberlain) is signed through 2011 with a team option for 2012.

Oh, and one other person benefited from Kazmir's summer vacation.

Peterson had been out of baseball since the Mets fired him along with manager Willie Randolph in June 2008. So he started a company, 3P Sports, to offer amateur players the same diagnostics he gave Kazmir, and Peterson sunk his passion into that.

But Peterson's time with Kazmir made him come to a realization.

"After the first day we spent together," Peterson said, "I came here [to his house] and looked out over the ocean. I took a deep breath and said, 'Wow, do I miss coaching.' It was probably a better day for me than it was for him."