SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. - On the same day you were forced to wonder if
Joba Chamberlain’s career had been diminished forever,
Ian Kennedy was asked to reflect on a not-so-distant time when he, Joba, and
Phil Hughes formed a golden-armed trio that seemingly defined the Yankees’ future.
Remember 2007? When Chamberlain came out of nowhere to throw 100 mph?
When Hughes was the can’t-miss kid who was no-hitting the Rangers in the second start of his career before he popped a hamstring in the seventh inning?
When Kennedy’s precision was being likened to
Greg Maddux?
Together they were going to take the Yankees back to the promised land.
“I believed that,’’ Kennedy was saying at the Diamondbacks’ camp on Friday. “I think we all did. When you’re caught in the middle of it, you think about all that. At the time, I wanted it. It sounded awesome.
“When you’re that young you don’t think about how the business of baseball gets the best of a lot of us. You don’t think about getting traded. You don’t think about getting injured. But things happen.’’
Things have happened, all right.
Somehow Chamberlain lost his howitzer, even before he needed Tommy John surgery last year, and who knows what Thursday night’s gruesome ankle injury, the result of a freak accident while playing with his son, means for his future.
Hughes went from 18-game winner one year to the mysterious case of his missing velocity the next, and now is fighting for a spot in the Yankees’ overcrowded starting rotation.
And then there’s Kennedy. His ceiling was supposed to be the lowest of the three. He was the only one the Yankees were willing to trade.
Now, well, he may just turn out to be the best of the three, if his spectacular 2011 season proves to be more than some crazy career year.
Kennedy, after all, went 21-4 with a 2.88 ERA, leading the Diamondbacks to the NL West division title. He allowed only 186 hits in 222 innings, remarkably dominant for a guy without an overpowering fastball.
Baseball people don’t necessarily think he’ll be a perennial 20-game winner, but the consensus seems to be that he’s the real thing.
“He’s just got an instinctive feel for how to get guys out,’’ one NL scout says. “His stuff is good, not great. But he commands his fastball on both sides of the plate and he’ll throw his change-up in any count.
“He can’t make the ball move as much as Maddux did, but he does have some Maddux in him. The Yankees didn’t give him enough time to develop.’’
Perhaps not, but it’s hard to criticize the Yankees for trading Kennedy since the three-way deal with the Diamondbacks and Tigers did bring
Curtis Granderson in return.
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And there is also the matter of whether Kennedy could have dominated in such fashion as a Yankee, pitching many of his games in the rugged AL East rather than the pitcher-friendly NL West.
Kennedy scoffs at such a notion.
“It’s still the big leagues,’’ he said. “The big leagues is the big leagues. I’m pretty sure (Clayton) Kershaw and (Tim) Lincecum would say the same thing.
“I agree the AL East is the toughest division in baseball but I’d like to think I could have the same success with the Yankees.’’
Kennedy made his case matter-of-factly, in keeping with his laid-back, Southern California-influenced personality. He is enjoying life in the desert, says he loves the lower profile that comes with playing for the Diamondbacks.
Still, as the Yankees’ first-round draft pick in 2006 out of USC, Kennedy said he’s grateful for the chance his first organization gave him, and made a point of saying he was unfairly perceived as being a questionable fit for New York, based on what seemed to be a ho-hum attitude toward his struggles in 2008.
“Sometimes if you beat yourself up and take the blame,’’ he said, “you get the label that you don’t have confidence. So I turned it the other way and tried to look forward, keep moving on. That turned into ‘he doesn’t care.’
“That’s where I learned really early, if you’re pitching good everbody loves you. But if you’re pitching bad, no matter what you say, it’s going to be turned against you. So I learned to be true to myself, and don’t listen to people’s opinions.
“But I’m glad I got to pitch for the Yankees. Everybody in the organization was awesome toward me, and pitching in New York made me grow up faster.’’
Now, at age 27, Kennedy has what sounds like a wordly perspective. Like Chamberlain and Hughes, he had his own injury to overcome, a shoulder aneurysm that required surgery, sidelining him for nearly the entire 2009 season.
In addition, he said he has grown to know what works for him as a pitcher, particularly throwing less between starts than he did in his days as a Yankee.
Whatever he’s doing, Kennedy has blossomed, perhaps even more than the Yankees once imagined. Though he was selected ahead of Chamberlain in the 2006 draft, he understood that by 2007 he was considered the No. 3 phenom.
“I knew that’s how it was,’’ he said. “I couldn’t throw 100 like Joba. And Phil had been in the system before me. I wasn’t trying to be those guys. But I did want to be the guy you could count on to be consistent, to go deep in every game.
“I think what I’ve done the best since I came (Arizona) is learn how to make immediate adjustments during the game. I used to watch (Andy) Pettitte do it all the time. He wouldn’t have his best stuff, and the next thing you know, he’s pitching into the seventh inning, either in a really close game or with a lead. That’s the kind of pitcher I wanted to be.’’
These days Kennedy stays in touch with a couple of his former Yankee pitching coaches, and texts Hughes occasionally, but those are his only ties to his old club.
He was saddened to hear of Chamberlain’s injury, said he wished him the best, but it was clear the news didn’t resonate the way it would have back when the three young guns were linked together.
“Since the trade I’ve pretty much moved on,’’ Kennedy said with a shrug. “Now people are talking about me, (Daniel) Hudson, and (Trevor) Cahill. It’s a different story now.’’ In so many ways.
I still have love for IPK.
