Pat Combs: Former Phils Phenom Faded Fast

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...

The Amazing Google Presents: Don Carman

For some reason, Don Carman's name popped into my head today. One of those bursts of disconnected thoughts while driving (yes, in my car, man) today. Yes, the unheralded Philadelphia Phillies pitcher of the mid-80s or so some how crept into my mind.

So I decided to put fingers to keyboard (the new version of putting pen to paper) and see what his name brought up in a Google search. Boy was I shocked when I saw so many occurences of his name (1,120,000 results to be exact)! Being the good guy that I am, here's a quick summary of what I found...

Take for instance, this news story from ABC in Philly. Apparently, Mr. Carman was going through his garage and found a box of 200 letters. He replied to all of them, and one happened to be to a kid who had requested an autograph on a baseball card. He courteously signed the card and sent it back to the guy... 16 years after receiving it. That's pretty cool!

I also like this list of cliches and wisecracks that Carman used when responding to questions from reporters. My personal favorite is: "We need two more players to take us over the top: Babe Ruth & Lou Gehrig." If you played for the Phils during the time that he did... I think even Ruth and Gehrig might have needed more help to get that team over the top.

And surprise, surprise... even Don Carman has his own Wikipedia page. He really must have made it big time! If the following statistic from that page is true, then I owe Carman some big props:

Carman held All-Stars Craig Biggio, Ken Griffey, Jr., Jeffrey Leonard, Pete Rose, Larry Walker, and Matt Williams to a .025 collective batting average (1-for-40)

And lastly, if this little anecdotee is true, then I'm about to go out and find where Carman lives and meet him at the bar...

Till next time, keep the Philly Sports Quest alive!