By Jon Weisman
Though the Dodgers ended up in a 3-3 tie at Camelback Ranch with the Padres, there was a clear winner today: Josh Beckett.
In his first game competition since surgery to remove a rib in order to mitigate thoracic outlet syndrome, Beckett faced seven batters over two innings, allowing one hit while striking out three.
From Ken Gurnick of MLB.com:
… “I didn’t sleep good [Saturday] night, knowing I was facing competition and wondering, am I going to do something different?” Beckett said. “I was definitely nervous and everything, but it went good. Mentally, I had to slow myself down. I was ready 25 minutes before the game started. Right now the big thing is to get over the mental thing.”
Beckett said he’s been a little surprised with his smooth recovery considering that few pitchers have returned from the rib procedure.
“I feel like I put in the work but, yeah, I am [surprised],” he said. “Some of it is the stuff I did physically in the offseason. I didn’t go to the beach. A lot of rehab for nine weeks after surgery, a couple weeks off, then back at it. It’s paying off, but there’s part of me that I can’t get out of my head, when will it recur? I kept waiting for a fallback and didn’t have one.
“Carpenter told me how invasive the surgery was. It is. They remove the rib from the spine. There was no position I was comfortable in and it takes a while to go away. It felt like somebody’s got a knife in your back.” …
Bill Plunkett of the Register has more:
… “I watched him warming up and it was crisp,” Dodgers manager Don Mattingly said. “He was kind of throwing the ball right where he wanted it and it looked like he went right out there with the same thing. I’m sure he was excited. It was exciting for us to see it. …
… Beckett was doing something different Sunday. He said he has looked at video from 2007-09 and compared it to 2012 when he was traded to the Dodgers. He could see his arm slot slowing dropping, most likely because “the higher I got, the less blood supply was getting to my arm and hands” causing the numbness and tingling that finally forced him to get surgery last year.
“You certainly create some bad habits,” he said. “I think I slowly started to creep down further and further, not knowing what the injury was. Two years ago when I first came over to the Dodgers, I think I was just a tick above where (Dodgers reliever) Chris Perez is and he’s a three-quarters (almost sidearm) guy.” …
Also happening today …
- Paul Maholm, another hurler coming back from injury and bidding for a spot in the starting rotation, didn’t have the strikeouts, but otherwise matched Beckett in allowing one hit in two shutout innings, and in fact got a double-play ball so that he only faced the minimum six batters. Eric Stephen of True Blue L.A. has more.
- Gurnick reported that Zach Lee threw two simulated innings to Matt Kemp, Carl Crawford and A.J. Ellis.
- Plunkett has a nice interview with Brian Wilson. An excerpt:
… “I just look at it this way,” Wilson said. “Do I want to have spring training in Florida? No. So those teams were out. Do I want to pitch in a garbage city? No. Those teams are out.
“I’ve lived in L.A. for the last seven years. The weather is great. As far as the medical side of things, everything is tangible. You go to a different city and you don’t have any hookups to go to a doctor’s office. If you have any problems, you can’t use the cryo-freeze kit. You can’t use the hyperbaric chamber. You can’t use any of those modalities. The whole moving-around thing has taken a toll on me. I’ve been moving around for 15 years. It isn’t any fun. I want to be able to live in my house. Leave for two months for spring training then stay for 10.”
Those quality-of-life issues and the “significant chance of winning the World Series” with the Dodgers trumped any need to wear the label of closer, Wilson said.
“I’d rather play in an environment that’s conducive to winning. Roles, to me, don’t matter,” Wilson said. …
- Ernest Reyes at Blue Heaven posted some videos including 1966 interviews of John Roseboro, Sandy Koufax, Don Drysdale, Maury Wills and Sweet Lou Johnson.
- Today in Jon SooHoo.
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