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Kazmir Turns Disaster Into Solid Outing

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By JOE HENDERSON | The Tampa Tribune

Published: October 4, 2008

ST. PETERSBURG - As the fourth hitter came to the plate in the first inning Friday night for the White Sox, Scott Kazmir looked around the infield at Tropicana Field and, yeah, it was pretty bad. There were runners at every base. He didn't yet have an out.

And to most of the 35,257 in attendance, it looked like he didn't have a clue.

As he glanced over his left shoulder, he could see David Price starting to stretch in the bullpen. He was one or two pitches from a meltdown.

"It seems like lately I have to start the bases loaded, nobody out, 20 pitches in, and then go get 'em," Kazmir joked afterward, because he can laugh about that mess now.

He did, indeed, go get 'em.

Instead of a monster inning, Chicago got just two runs. How huge was that?

"It seemed worse," Rays left fielder Carl Crawford said. "But then I looked up at the scoreboard and, oh, only two runs."

Instead of being in a cavernous hole before they even had a chance to bat, the Rays knew their left-hander had given them a chance. And after the Rays' eventual 6-2 victory, in which Kazmir was the winning pitcher, White Sox manager Ozzie Guillen knew it too.

"We got Kazmir on the ropes," he said, "and we let him go."

More accurately, Kazmir wouldn't let himself give in. He turned potential disaster into a solid 51/3 innings, and by the time he left the Rays had taken the lead and would never give it up.

"Be patient," Rays manager Joe Maddon said. "That was my thought - be patient. It's really important that we get him going. And be patient. That's what I kept telling myself. If he was able to get through that, I thought he might be able to settle in. And he did."

Answered The Questions

The Rays need Kazmir to be the horse he can be if they want to keep this magic season running. We all saw the inconsistency in September, when he was just 2-2 with a 5.19 ERA. With a chance to clinch the division title last week at Detroit, Kazmir instead gave up four home runs in a 7-5 loss.

Two starts before that, he also gave up four homers - that time to Boston. So you can imagine the high anxiety Friday night when he hit Orlando Cabrera with his second pitch, walked Nick Swisher, and gave up a single to Jermaine Dye.

Here we go again? That thought was in his head.

"Definitely," he said.

It was only his fourth hitter and already the game seemed headed for the cliff with the brakes out.

"You're one swing of the bat away from a double play and you're one swing of the bat away from a five-run inning," pitching coach Jim Hickey said. "You're kind of curious to how it was going to turn out."

It took 37 pitches but Kazmir avoided carnage. Then he did something else - he steadied. You could see the confidence growing with each pitch. He was working faster. He was working cleaner.

"We can come back from a few runs but you don't want to give up five or six runs. He sucked it up," Crawford said. "He did a good job if you ask me."

Gut Check Time

Inside the Rays' clubhouse afterward, Kazmir was offering technical reasons that he pitched better. He did, indeed, adjust his delivery as the game went on and it obviously worked. But he adjusted something else, too.

Considering the circumstances, this might have been as large a gut check as Kazmir has ever shown.

"The easiest thing in the world would have been to fold the tent in the first inning," Hickey said. "That kind of separates the teams that win and the pitchers that win from those who don't."

The stuff is always there with Kazmir; electric, dominating, raw material that can reduce opposing hitters to child's play. It seems like there's always drama with him though and you're never quite sure which Kazmir is going to show up. A game like this can go a long way toward changing that perception.

"After I got those first two innings out of the way it felt like everything started coming together. Maybe I could salvage this outing," he said. "When you have bases loaded and there's nobody out and you've got 20 pitches already ... you can't give up."

He didn't. And now the Rays lead 2-0 in this series and one win away from playing in the American League Championship Series.

"All we ask of our pitchers is to give us a chance to win," Hickey said. "He did that."

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