It is the third inning Saturday, and Kerry Wood has a problem.
Two runs in, one out, bases loaded. The streaking Arizona Diamondbacks are about to seize upon Wood’s greatest weakness this season: the big inning.
It always happens, it seems. Wood gets wild. He loses control of his control, throws a lot of pitches and walks a lot of hitters when he isn’t watching his 98 m.p.h. fastball get whacked 100 m.p.h. with runners in scoring position.
The previous outing in St. Louis, for instance. First inning, Wood goes 1-2-3. Second inning, three walks, a bases-clearing triple, four runs. Next inning, three walks, two homers, buh-bye.
The start before that in Milwaukee, Wood took a no-hitter into the fifth inning. In the sixth, he threw a wild pitch on strike three. A stolen base, error, single and home run later and Wood loses despite allowing only two hits and fanning 12.
One inning. One big inning. Wood had given up three runs or more in an inning in half of his eight starts and here he was Saturday, bases loaded, one out, two in, personal three-game losing streak and the team’s eight-game losing streak being fitted for a new length.
But no. Wood would gather himself like he has not been able to this season when in trouble. He would stay on the rubber and not wander around the mound as he had this year. He would find his elusive release point and get a grip on his command to blow three strikes past David Dellucci and follow that with a ground ball to the hole that shortstop Ricky Gutierrez would turn into a brilliant inning-ending force play.
The inning would not explode all over Wood’s legend. A couple of hours later, the losing streaks would end, as well.
Kerry Wood, the event, is becoming Kerry Wood, the pitcher.
“It has been more losing sight of things–losing concentration for a second and not being able to get it back,” Wood said. “I was trying to get back on the mound and throw my next pitch and not really concentrating on hitting a spot instead of stepping back off the mound and saying, `I’m going to go low and away here.”‘
Wood says he doesn’t believe he is learning how to pitch all over again. He says he went through that last season after missing all of 1999 because of a torn ulnar collateral ligament in his right elbow. This year, Wood says he is “fine-tuning, trying to make a little adjustment here and there and trying to get everything back in order.”
By Wood’s count, he has had only two terrible outings in his nine starts, a week ago Sunday in St. Louis and April 9 in Montreal. Wood is not happy being 2-4 with a 4.94 ERA, but he will not beat himself up over his high number of walks. Besides, for all his overpowering prominence in his short career, he is still only 23 and would be learning how to pitch at this age anyway.
Cubs pitching coach Oscar Acosta, however, says Wood indeed is learning how to pitch again this year.
“He has to,” Acosta said. “That involves being able to locate his fastball on both sides of the plate, pitching inside to both left-handed and right-handed hitters, and having command of his second-best pitch, which is his curveball or his changeup. But he has to have command of his fastball and that comes with repeating the same mechanics 110 times.
“There’s no pitch he can’t throw. The curveball has never left him. The change has never left him. The fastball has never left him. The slider has never left him. He’s still throwing the same as he always did.”
The problem is, he is throwing those pitches too often. An examination of Wood’s pitch counts shows he can’t close the deal efficiently, which further taxes a power pitcher who normally throws more pitches because that’s what strikeout pitchers do.
Wood is throwing first-pitch strikes 56 percent of the time this season, the best of his career. He is throwing a strike on 0-1 counts 58 percent of the time, which is better than his comeback season of 2000, but not as good as the magical year of 1998, when he did it 61 percent of the time.
Where he gets in trouble is when he gets two strikes on a hitter, a time when he really should be at a big advantage. When he has gotten to 0-2 this season, he has thrown a strike only 46 percent of the time, compared with 51 percent last year and 59 percent in ’98.
When he has a 1-2 count, he throws strike three only 55 percent of the time, compared with 61 percent last season and 63 percent in ’98.
On 2-2 counts, he throws a strike 58 percent of the time after doing it 70 percent of the time in 2000 and 71 percent in ’98.
When he runs the count full, he throws a strike 75 percent of the time, compared to 73 percent last year and 76 percent in ’98. So, he is better when it gets to 3-2, but he is worse off because he gets to more three-ball counts this year than at any time in his career–about 32 percent this season compared with 25 percent in 2000 and 24 percent in ’98.
It is why he leads the league in pitches thrown per batter at an average of 4.28, about one pitch per batter more than major-league leader Greg Maddux.
“I didn’t know that, but it doesn’t surprise me,” Wood said. “I’ve been a little erratic around the zone.”
Cubs catcher Todd Hundley said Wood’s high pitch counts are not so much the location of his fastball as the feel of his off-speed pitches–the slider that he didn’t throw much last year and his “12 (o’clock)-to-6 (o’clock)” curveball that is difficult even for veterans to control.
“A lot of it is, first pitch, bad slider,” Hundley said. “So, what you do with a guy who throws a bad slider is you come right back with it so he can get the feel of it. Another bad slider. You say forget it and come back with a fastball. He misses with a fastball. Three-and-0. Now you dig down with a fastball. Three-and-one. Dig down again. Three-and-two. Now you move outside. Ball four. So he adds up pitches like that just trying to get the feel of a slider.”
Hundley also said Wood is the type of pitcher who induces a lot of foul balls.
“He’ll get a guy 3-2 and keep pumping 98-m.p.h. fastballs and it’s foul, foul, foul,” Hundley said. “That’s why he throws a lot of pitches. Guys never put the ball in play easily against him. With a guy like [Kevin] Tapani or [Jon] Lieber, guys put the ball in play, a little ground ball. Off Woody, it’s tough to put the ball in play off a 98-m.p.h. fastball.”
Wood contends his command problems are not a result of worrying that he’ll blow out his elbow again. He, however, does admit the ball doesn’t necessarily feel the same in his hand one day to the next.
“Some days the ball comes out of your hand good and the next day the ball’s just not going where it’s supposed to,” he said. “I really don’t know the solution to it. That’s why we’re trying to correct it and make everything the same.”
One thing Acosta did recently was change Wood’s schedule. He used to pitch, then take two days off, throw on the side, take another day off, then pitch again. Last week, Acosta added an extra day of throwing off flat ground as a way of “trying to keep the ball in my hand, trying to throw to spots, working on mechanics and keeping everything sound,” Wood said.
Another thing Acosta and manager Don Baylor have done is raise Wood’s pitch count to 120 or so, as long as his mechanics are good. They also are working on confining Wood to the mound between pitches instead of wandering around the infield and wasting time and energy.
Many of the changes are a result of Baylor getting former Angels teammate Nolan Ryan on the phone with Wood and Acosta. After all, who would know better about the care and feeding of a power pitcher?
“We talked about pitch to pitch and what are you going to do the next pitch,” Wood said of conversations with a fellow Texan and idol. “I lost sight of that for a while. Somebody hits that pitch; that pitch is over. Now I have to worry about my next pitch. We talked about pitching ideas. I hope we can keep in touch and try to pick his brain.”
For now, he will pick himself up and face Milwaukee on Friday. His goal is not to become Kerry Wood, the event, the way he was on that magical 20-strikeout afternoon of May 6, 1998. His goal is to become Kerry Wood, the pitcher.
“I’m not trying to go out there and shock the world,” Wood said. “I’m going out there and trying to give up less than two runs and give the team a chance to win.”
