Pat Combs pitched for the Phillies from 1989 to 1992. Unfortunately he is a now a case study in careers quickly careening out of control, as witnessed by his stats on baseball-reference.com. Check it:1989: 4-0, 38 IP, 30 K's, 6 BB's, 2.09 ERA. Good stuff! Future star!
1990: 10-10, 183 IP, 108 K's, 86 BB's, 4.07 ERA. Ok, decent year.
1991: 2-6, 64 IP, 41 K's, 43 BB's, 4.90 ERA. Umm, what's going on here?
1992: 1-1, 18 IP, 11 K's, 12 BB's, 7.71 ERA. Bottom hath fallen out. Sorry Pat.
According to his Wikipedia entry, Mr. Combs actually zoomed from Single-A Clearwater to Double-A Reading to Triple-A Scranton to the big show all in one year-- 1989. Dang! Too fast, I wonder?
I have a theory about pitchers. Well it's probably not just my theory, but for the sake of this blog post just roll with it. Anyway, a pitcher will often come flying like bats out of hell from the minors to the majors and then pitch about 3-5 games of stellar baseball. And then, the pitcher hits a critical point. Either other teams catch up to him and start shellacking him (perhaps a result of better scouting reports, perhaps from the pitcher getting worn out by throwing his best stuff in a short amount of time, perhaps something else altogether), or he hits his stride and becomes a genuinely high-quality pitcher for the long haul.
At least this is what seems to happen with Phillies pitchers, and Combs was a prime example. He came storming into the majors in his first year. And then hitters caught up to him. And the rest is fodder for blogs like this one...
2 comments:
Pat Combs was overworked in his first professional season at age 22 - 229 innings - including (obviously, but I'm not 100% sure) a major league stint which extended his season through September. He never recovered. He was lucky to have made it through his 1990 season as decently as he did with his complete loss of command.
Furthermore, Combs went to Rice - a school reknown for shredding the arms of prized Major League pitching prospects.
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