The Arm (36 page)

Patterns could emerge, and even if they don't, the league's open-mindedness toward third-party vendors like KinaTrax and Motus and other emerging technology companies could promote innovation. Baseball needs whatever it can muster. Average fastball velocity continues to rise toward 93 mph. Velocity exists because velocity works. And because velocity works, ridding the game of it will be far more difficult than the other deep-seated issues. So as noble as it is for ASMI to suggest young pitchers learn to throw at less than 100 percent, it is not realistic. Velocity is here to stay. The only sane option is to train pitchers' arms to handle it without harming them through overtraining.

The truest sign of MLB's long-term commitment—and the hardest to imagine because of baseball's institutional stubbornness—would include a think tank where the game houses its research, explores the novel training modalities championed at
places like Driveline, and prepares the next generation of trainers and other medical personnel. This is the village's hub in Billy Beane's it-takes-a-village approach. This is where top amateur players come for pre-draft physicals, where athletic trainers and PTs and masseuses get specialized on-the-job educations, where curious, interested, or desperate players can go to participate in studies about weighted balls, electrical stimulation, and the technological advances that lie ahead. It finds minds like James Buffi and hires them for the good of the whole sport. It is baseball's chance to build a culture of knowledge and bury its culture of fear.

All of that knowledge eventually would wend its way throughout teams' systems and into the minor leagues, where today every team treats players in whom they've invested tens of millions of dollars—and on whom they'll spend hundreds of millions more—with all the solicitude of a goldfish getting a sprinkle of its daily flakes.

“We just have so far to go in this sport,” Boddy said, and it's from the rec-league fields where my son plays to the festivals of nine- and ten-year-olds getting radar-gunned at Perfect Game events to the showcase circuit on steroids to colleges that major in moral hazard to behind-the-times pro ball and all the way to North Carolina, where Todd Coffey just wanted to prove he still belonged.

January 7, 2015

Late at night, Todd Coffey sat in the dark with a flashlight and his fish. The LED display on the sixty-five-gallon tank automatically shut off at 11:00 p.m., at which point the blue hippo and clownfish retreated to the corners of the tank while the shrimp and crabs and snails came to life. They would dance around the coral and plants, regal and beautiful, seduced by the beam Coffey held. And when he finally tired around 3:00 a.m. and decided to pop his Ambien, Coffey clicked off the flashlight and the show was over.

January 8, 2015

Baseball's offseason calendar consists of two distinct periods: before and after Christmas. Almost every notable transaction takes place prior to the holiday, at which point the industry shuts
down for a week. Come the New Year, those still unemployed find a job market that registers somewhere between unfriendly and hopeless.

Todd Coffey needed a team. “I thought I had him jobs back in December,” said Rick Thurman, his agent, “and all the clubs went AWOL.” Baltimore, Houston, Tampa Bay, Texas, Colorado, and Pittsburgh had shown slivers of interest. “I'd prefer it to be Pittsburgh,” Coffey said. “I don't like American League–style baseball. And it's not because they hit better. So that cuts it to Colorado and Pittsburgh. And if I don't even like to play catch when I go to Colorado, why would I go there to play?”

He harbored no expectations of a major league contract, even though he still saw himself as a big leaguer. Coffey felt that his 1.83 ERA in the Pacific Coast League at least merited a minor league deal. “My arm feels freaking phenomenal,” Coffey said. “Way better than it did last year.”

Earlier in the week, a team from Japan called Thurman, whose contacts there go back decades, and asked for Coffey's medical records. The team never followed up.

January 30, 2015

With pitchers and catchers reporting to their teams in less than three weeks, an email popped into Coffey's AOL in-box at 10:10 a.m. on an otherwise uneventful Friday,

Hi Todd—this is Terry Reynolds with the Reds. Will you be working out for teams? If so when and where? Good luck and thank you.

Terry Reynolds

Reynolds was director of pro scouting for the Cincinnati Reds, the team that had drafted Coffey back in 1998. This was
the perfect circle. Kismet. Coffey wrote back with his cell phone number and said he would love to chat. They connected, and Reynolds said he would reconnect with him Monday.

Hi Todd—We would like to have one of our scouts come over and see you this week. Can you give me the exact date, time and location of your next bullpen session? Are you throwing at 100% in your sessions?

Thanks for your help,

Terry

Coffey was throwing at about 90 percent, and he had a bullpen later that week. The Reds were sending Cam Bonifay, the former Pittsburgh Pirates general manager who was now a special assistant to Reds GM Walt Jocketty.

“It tells me something that they reached out to me personally,” Coffey said. “They know me. They know what I can do. That's why there's pressure on it. They just want to see what my arm looks like. I don't think they're worried about whether something is perfect. They know me.”

Their bullpen coach, Mack Jenkins, had been the Triple-A pitching coach when Coffey was called to the big leagues for the first time. Jim Riggleman, the Reds' third-base coach, had managed Coffey in Washington. The last time they'd seen each other, Riggleman had shaken his hand and said: “If you ever need anything, give me a call.”

Coffey didn't. His arm would take care of this.

February 6, 2015

On the poster she made for her father, fourteen-year-old Hannah Coffey wrote “Me and Daddy” above a drawing of Coffey in a
red jersey and gray pants next to her. Both were smiling. The sun glistened. The sky was blue, the grass green. Next to the picture, Hannah wrote a message.

Dear Daddy

I wanted to say good luck today! And to take a deep breath. Just have fun! Please have the
spark
today.

Love,

Hannah Nicole Coffey

Hannah had moved in with Coffey during the early stages of his rehab because she and his ex-wife fought too much. Together, Hannah and Coffey watched history shows. He taught her that if a book is good enough, they'll make a movie or TV program out of it.

Around three p.m., Hannah showed up to the field at nearby Chase High in Forest City, North Carolina, along with Jennifer and Coffey's father. Coffey had arrived about a half hour earlier, carrying his gear in a Los Angeles Dodgers bag. The day didn't match Hannah's picture; it was partly cloudy, light wind, 45 degrees. Coffey stalled for a few minutes and chatted up Bonifay, telling him about signing with the Reds for a thousand bucks. It was a typical warm-up, darts delivered from progressively longer distances until his arm loosened up and he took to the mound. Bonifay used only his eyes. No radar gun. No notepad. Just the instincts of a scout who had seen enough thirtysomething pitchers trying to make it back to the big leagues to know which might succeed and which would struggle. Coffey spun his fastballs and sliders, finished strong, and bid Bonifay adieu, figuring he would hear from the Reds soon thereafter to formalize a deal.

“They said they wanted to see I was healthy,” Coffey said. “Obviously, I showed I was healthy. I'm ready to roll. He didn't have a gun. He didn't care about velocity.”

When the bullpen ended, Hannah ran into the dugout. She hadn't gotten a chance to give him one last piece of paper before he threw. It wished him good luck. To the right, she drew a baseball that said “MLB” in tiny letters.

February 7, 2015

Like every free agent in baseball desperate for a job, Todd Coffey clicked on MLBTradeRumors.com daily. Less than twenty-four hours after his showcase, he read the news: Cincinnati signed reliever Burke Badenhop and gave reliever Kevin Gregg a minor league deal. The circle wasn't perfect after all.

February 10, 2015

The Atlanta Braves called. It was John Coppolella, the assistant general manager in name but in reality the puppeteer for most of the Braves' offseason maneuvers. They'd dismantled the team, trading star outfielders Justin Upton and Jason Heyward, all with the expectation of rebuilding by the time they moved into a new stadium in 2017.

Coffey regretted not having signed with the Braves the previous season, and this was his opportunity to rectify the mistake. Coppolella was offering the opportunity, only with a catch: “He wants me to do a minor league deal with no invite,” said Coffey, who couldn't remember a scenario in which a player with more than six years of service time did not receive an invitation to major league camp. Neither could Thurman. Coppolella explained to Coffey that the Braves had signed so many players their complex at ESPN Wide World of Sports near Disney World simply didn't have the locker space for him.

Coppolella promised Coffey that he could attend the late-
February minicamp for some of the Braves' top prospects, so he wouldn't need to report in early March with the rest of the minor leaguers. He would pitch in five to eight major league spring-training games, too. The short-term opportunity was no good, Coppolella admitted. This was a long-term play.

“I don't know,” Coffey told me. “I really don't know. I'm trying to process it.” He'd have to dress with the minor leaguers and practice with the minor leaguers. “Straight off the top of my head, I'm like, ‘Hell no,' but I didn't have any time in the big leagues last year,” Coffey said. “Part of me says to sign with 'em, but not being there in big league camp sucks. It really does. You don't really hear of too many people who get into the big leagues without being in big league camp. He says there's opportunity there, but is there?” If Coffey did agree, he wanted some guarantees. No roommate on the road. That was a deal breaker. And opt-outs. Lots of opt-outs. Like, one a month, or an immediate one if another team wants him in the big leagues.

The larger truth of his situation remained unspoken: there were no opportunities elsewhere, either.

Coffey told Coppolella he would sleep on it.

February 11, 2015

From the transaction wire:

Atlanta Braves signed free agent RHP Todd Coffey to a minor league contract.

I
'VE SEEN THE AGONY OF
an elbow that won't get better. It's ugly on the body and the psyche and the soul. There will be more players like Daniel Hudson in the coming years, ones whose arms simply won't relent. It's why I can't say it surprised me when I received a text message from Hudson on March 14, 2015.

What's your take on my situation? You're an expert, and I have zero clue what I want to do and what's best for me.

In the midst of trying to figure out whether he wanted to be a starter or reliever, Hudson's arm started to hurt. I went to Diamondbacks camp to see him. He pointed to the painful area: above the elbow and down to the tip, on the back of his upper arm. The weird part: It felt fine when he was throwing. Then he picked up a sock and lofted it toward a laundry basket, like he was shooting a free throw. That caused the discomfort. Extending his arm at thousands of degrees per second didn't bother him, and neither did internally rotating his shoulder even faster. Something harmless made him wonder if it was betraying him again.

I wasn't sure what to say. I wasn't a doctor, a trainer, a physical therapist, a strength-and-conditioning guru, a biomechanist. Like Hudson, I simply wanted to decipher as much of the arm's mystery as I could. Of the little bit of anatomy I picked up, I knew a tiny muscle called the anconeus wrapped around the back of the elbow. Perhaps that was tugging? Far more likely was a strained triceps or triceps tendinitis. And that was fine. Triceps issues never corresponded with UCL troubles.

“Darvish?” Hudson said.

He was right. The Texas Rangers did suggest publicly that Yu Darvish's injury during the spring of 2015 was to the triceps, though privately the team understood he needed Tommy John surgery. It still gave Hudson pause. His unsettled standing made for an even odder spring than it already was. In September 2014, Arizona fired manager Kirk Gibson and GM Kevin Towers, Hudson's two greatest advocates. When the Diamondbacks traded Miguel Montero to the Cubs in the offseason, Hudson became the longest-tenured player on the roster. Most of his friends and confidants were gone. The Diamondbacks wanted to start him. Hudson feared his arm wouldn't hold up to it.

One day during batting practice, Hudson was shagging balls in
the outfield and crossed paths with pitching coach Mike Harkey, a holdover from the previous season. The fourth overall pick in the 1987 draft, Harkey was the Chicago Cubs' ace-in-waiting. At twenty-four, after a fantastic rookie season, he underwent shoulder surgery. Harkey was never the same and threw his last pitch at thirty.

“I was like, ‘Did you ever get to a point where you kind of just realize that you're never going to not feel something in your arm?'” Hudson said. “And he goes, ‘Yeah, I did. I kind of realized that it wasn't going to feel a hundred percent every single day, so I just stopped worrying about it.'”

For the rest of his career, Daniel Hudson will live in fear. Every little twinge, every slight tingle, every tiny jolt, and he'll wonder: Again? And he'll take that thought, bury it, and throw another pitch, because the alternative is a worse fate.

“I've put in all the frickin' work that I can. I completely changed the way I throw, you know? What else can you do?” Hudson said. “If it goes again, it's gonna go again.”

O
N HIS FIRST DAY OF
minicamp in the shadow of Disney World, Todd Coffey was told he needed to pull his pant legs up and get rid of his beard. He had spent half of his thirty-four years in professional baseball; he knew some organizations still believed clean-shaven cheeks and showing off socks instills some sort of lesson in players. The Atlanta Braves were one such team, though the rules applied only to players in minor league camp and not those on the major league side. Already the day felt odd enough for Coffey. He was the oldest player in the nine-pitcher minicamp by nearly a decade. Most of the other players knew one another and caught up on their offseasons. Coffey was thinking about his stupid pants.

“I don't know why it bothers me that much, but it does,” he said. “It really, really bothers me. I think because I felt like I've
earned the right to wear my uniform any way I want to.” Because Coffey loved baseball and refused to disrespect it, the next morning he jogged onto the field with his pants pulled midcalf, his socks yanked high, and a vestigial red mustache adorning his upper lip. It was the least he could do after the previous day, when Braves manager Fredi González walked up, introduced himself, and shook his hand.

“I saw him go by and I made a point to come say hi to him,” González said later. “Just respect. He was a guy that pitched in the big leagues, I don't know how many years? Top of my head, seven? He signed a minor league deal. He wasn't even a nonroster invitee, and I think Coppy called him and said, ‘Hey do you want to pitch?' And he didn't bitch or moan or anything. He goes, ‘Yeah, I'd love to pitch.' And he's out here with the early camp with the young guys and is, ‘Why not?' I respect that a lot. I just wanted for him to feel comfortable.”

Now, on the second day—after a morning in which Braves trainers asked for Coffey's weight, only for him to say: “Nah, I'm good”—he threw a bullpen in front of Coppolella, Braves president of baseball operations John Hart, and the brains behind Atlanta's century-spanning run of dominance, team president John Schuerholz. Coffey fired fastballs and sliders for fifteen minutes, shook the hands of the brass, and headed to the boredom of pitchers' fielding practice and running drills. He made good time on his first sprint and asked a strength-and-conditioning coach how quickly he ran it.