admin
Within the past couple of days, two former West Virginia University pitchers made returns to the major leagues after battling injuries with results as divergent as are their pitching styles.
We noted John Means returned to the Baltimore Orioles on Saturday with seven innings of 3-hit shutout ball, striking out eight after missing nearly two seasons recovering from Tommy John surgery.
A day later Alek Manoah returned for Toronto for his first appearance on a major league mound since last Aug. 10 when he was shut down after lasting only four innings against Cleveland, taking the loss to see his record fall to 3-9 with a gaudy 5.87 earned-run average.
He was ailing with shoulder problems after becoming one of the great stories in the major leagues, a first-round pick out of West Virginia who broke in as a rookie with a 9-2 record that included a 3.22 ERA while allowing only 77 hits in 111.2 innings while striking out 127.
The next season saw him become an All-Star pitcher and Cy Young Award finalist by going 16-7 with a minuscule 2.28 ERA and giving up 144 hits in 196 innings of work with 180 strikeouts.
If there is a truth to be found in all of this it is that pitching is an art but fixing a pitcher is science.
Like artists, pitchers come in all different personas.
They can be Norman Rockwell or Salvador Dali, DaVinci or Picasso.
They paint right-handed and left-handed, just as pitches do their task, and their approach can be as different as the left-handed Means’ crafty approach and Manoa’s right-handed power approach.
Yehovah Kelvin
