White Sox Coach Gets Nothing but Results
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By MURRAY CHASS
The New York Times
May 14, 2006
nytimes.com
While the Yankees struggle with their aging, injured and flawed corps of starting pitchers, the Chicago White Sox flourish with theirs. And who can they thank for helping build their corps? The Yankees.
The Yankees, impatient and dissatisfied with what they had seen, traded José Contreras, their underachieving Cuban defector, to the White Sox at the trading deadline in 2004. They traded Javier Vázquez to Arizona before the 2005 season. The Diamondbacks then contributed to the pitching riches of the White Sox by trading Vázquez to them last December.
Contreras is on the disabled list with an aching back, but in his six starts before being injured, he compiled a 5-0 record with a nifty American League-low 1.41 earned run average. Vázquez entered last night's scheduled start with a 4-1 record and a 2.88 E.R.A., the league's fourth lowest.
Contreras, a 34-year-old right-hander, has compiled an even more impressive record over a longer period. In 21 starts since last year's All-Star Game, he has a 16-2 record and a 2.49 E.R.A. Those numbers don't include a 3-1 record that helped the White Sox sail through the playoffs and win the World Series.
The Yankees were unable to get that kind of pitching from Contreras, whose signing prompted Larry Lucchino to refer to the Yankees as the Evil Empire. They decided to trade him after he struggled with a 5.64 E.R.A. in the first four months of the 2004 season.
So why has Contreras pitched so effectively for the White Sox? Why has Vázquez pitched so effectively for the White Sox when he had a 4.91 E.R.A. for the Yankees? Don Cooper, the unheralded White Sox pitching coach, is a large part of the answer.
"I don't know what goes on in New York or any other team," said the 50-year-old Cooper, a New Yorker. "I've only been a coach with Chicago. I know what we do. I know my approach."
Baseball people don't mention Cooper when they talk about Leo Mazzone, the heralded Baltimore pitching coach, who became famous in Atlanta. But Cooper has earned his way into the conversation. Before Contreras and Vázquez, there was Esteban Loaiza.
In his first 10 major league seasons, Loaiza had a 69-73 record. With the White Sox in 2003, he had a 21-9 record, then was 9-5 before they traded him to the Yankees in 2004. Pitching for three different teams since the trade, Loaiza has had a 13-15 record.
Cooper, who began his playing career in the Yankees' system, doesn't take credit for the White Sox' pitching success, but it's obvious he has been instrumental in it.
"I look at guys, I look at films," Cooper said. "We know what their key is in their mechanics. Right away I knew what my key for Vázquez was, for Loaiza."
With Loaiza, Cooper said, "he was giving up hits earlier in the count, so we concentrated on being down in the zone."
"He was throwing too many strikes," Cooper continued. "If you're ahead in the count and giving up hits, you're making mistakes. We were able to cut down on a lot of hits with him."
Contreras presented a more complex case for reasons on and off the field.
"His family's with him, not in exile," Cooper said, referring to their separation after Contreras left Cuba. "He has got to have peace of mind. Maybe the pressure of New York — you've got to do it yesterday — was a factor. Maybe the hype. We had to do some things mechanically, more than you'd like to do, but we created an atmosphere for him to thrive and succeed."
From a purely pitching standpoint, Cooper said, Contreras has pitched successfully because of his ability to throw strikes. "He does it from a couple of different angles," Cooper said.
Generally, Cooper changed Contreras's weekly routine.
"He was throwing every day," Cooper said. "He'd pitch on Monday, come out and long toss Tuesday, throw on the side Wednesday, do flat work Thursday. I said: 'You're going to be pitching over 200 innings for us. I don't want you throwing 200 innings in the bullpen.'
"We got him to change from shooting himself in the foot. The other team wasn't beating him, but he was beating himself. He deserves the credit. He's an animal worker. I don't know why the Yankees traded him, but I'm glad we acquired this guy."
The White Sox didn't get Vazquez from the Yankees, but they got him because the Yankees had given up on him.
"With Vázquez," Cooper said, "he's always throwing 200 innings. Walks have never been a problem. We're focusing on the hit column and, more importantly, the home run column, because that's what bit him in the butt. If he keeps the ball in the park, it's almost impossible not to have a better season."
Cooper's work with Vázquez has produced remarkable results. In eight previous seasons, Vázquez gave up 1,653 hits in 1,643 innings, allowing more hits than innings pitched, or nearly as many hits as innings pitched, in every season. This season he has permitted 30 hits in 40 2/3 innings.
His reduction in home runs allowed is even more impressive. He has gone from giving up one home run every seven innings in his career to allowing one this season.
Their pitchers took the White Sox all the way last season, and they're threatening to do it again this season.
Reliving and Relieving
Don Cooper described his tenure with the Yankees' 1985 pitching staff as brief, but he was around long enough to witness five of Ron Guidry's 22 victories that season and three of the 16 victories that carried Phil Niekro to a career total of 300. He saw the first of Ed Whitson's 10 victories.
He was around long enough to be John Montefusco's teammate but not Rod Scurry's. And he was around long enough to see Yogi Berra fired as manager and Billy Martin hired.
"Yogi got fired two days after my call-up," Cooper said of Berra's dismissal only 16 games into the season after George Steinbrenner had declared in spring training that Berra would be the manager the entire season no matter what.
Cooper, then 29, relieved in seven games for the Yankees during the 37 days he spent with the team. He had a lot of time to recuperate between appearances.
"That was Billy," Cooper said. "He'd go with the starter until he dropped. I was like the 13th man on a 10-man staff. Billy needed only seven guys — five starters and two relievers."
Al Goldis, who is now a special assistant to the Mets' general manager, has known Cooper since he was a high school pitcher in New York and has been responsible for Cooper's career.
When Goldis coached the New York Tech baseball team, he recruited Cooper to pitch, and when he directed the White Sox' scouting and player development, he hired him to be a minor league pitching coach.
When he recruited Cooper for college, Goldis said: "My No. 1 and 2 qualities were, does this guy have a brain and does he have the makeup to compete? He had them. Plus he had a loose arm."
Goldis had not forgotten Cooper when Cooper's playing career ended. Cooper spent 15 years as a pitching coach in the White Sox system before becoming the major league pitching coach in 2002.
"He had the ability to communicate," Goldis said. "He was able to get to all the players, no matter what their culture."
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Not All 1-0 Games Are Alike
Eight games have ended in 1-0 decisions this season, but that's about as far as the similarity in the games went. Despite having only one run scored, the times of the games ranged from 2 hours 14 minutes (Athletics-Angels) to 2:43 (Reds-Cardinals).
It would seem that the number of pitches would explain the difference in the length of the games, but not in this instance. The Reds and the Cardinals (272) combined for only seven more pitches than the Athletics and the Angels (265). Nearly a half-hour longer for seven pitches.
The Mets and the Braves threw the most pitches (285) in their 1-0 game, and it lasted 2:39, meaning they threw 20 more pitches in 25 minutes longer than the shortest game. The Phillies and the Rockies threw the fewest pitches (236) and took 10 minutes longer than the fastest game.
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A Question for the Ages
When he was young, Felipe Alou said: "I used to worry about age and dying. Once I got old, all of those worries were behind me."
Alou, who turned 71 Friday, is the oldest manager in the major leagues. His age prompts people to ask him how much longer he expects to manage. How often do they ask?
"Almost daily," said Alou, the San Francisco Giants' manager. "That's the one question that I really don't like to hear because I don't know. It's up to me and my employer also. I signed a two-year contract to manage this team and I'm in the fourth year now."
Has anything changed from year to year? "Not a thing," Alou said, then added, "I'm drinking a lot more green tea again like I used to do years back."
What does green tea do for him? "I don't know," he said. "They say it's good for you. I don't know, but I'm drinking it."
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Investigation Continues
The George Mitchell commission, which is investigating steroid use in the major leagues, has contacted a New York lawyer, Martin Garbus, because it wants to talk to Kimberly Bell, the former girlfriend of Barry Bonds. Garbus, her lawyer, said it's "not clear right now" if she would talk to investigators.
Bell has testified twice before a federal grand jury and has said in interviews that she saw Bonds use steroids and that he gave her $80,000 from autograph shows to use as a down payment on a house in Arizona. She said Bonds instructed her not to write checks for $10,000 or more so banks would not have to report the sums to the Internal Revenue Service, as the law requires.
Bonds is being investigated for having possibly perjured himself in his grand jury testimony and may also face charges of money laundering, tax evasion and avoiding banking laws. |
