OAKLAND, Calif. (AP) -Excuse Brad Ziegler for being slightly overwhelmed by all the attention.
Two months ago, the Oakland reliever was barely a blip on baseball’s radar, so frustrated at Triple-A that he was ready to ask the Athletics for his release.
Now, the 28-year-old rookie has set a pretty impressive major league record: Most consecutive scoreless innings to start a career.
Ziegler extended his string to 27 Sunday, breaking a 101-year-old mark. His shutout streak was intact going into Tuesday night’s game against Kansas City.
Not bad for someone who recently fractured his skull – for the second time in three years – in a freak accident. That came a while after his A’s bosses told him he’d probably need to move to the bullpen and drastically change his delivery to ever reach the big leagues.
The righty sidearmer is still working each day to perfect his mechanics.
“It’s crazy. It is. It almost seems kind of movie-ish: The guy who goes through all the trouble to get there, but at the end he has all the positive things happen to him,” Ziegler said, sitting in the dugout for one of many interviews Monday.
“Not that everything’s going to be peachy the rest of my career, but at this point it’s tough to complain about anything,” he said. “It’s bizarre. I don’t feel like I’ve done anything extraordinary.”
His path would certainly qualify.
Released by the Philadelphia organization at the end of spring training in 2004, he spent a few months in the independent Northern League before signing with Oakland in June. That September, while playing in Class A, he was hit in the right temple by a line drive off the bat of current Giants outfielder Fred Lewis.
This past January, Ziegler had finished working at youth baseball camp back home in Springfield, Mo., and was throwing hard with a friend from 120 feet. Suddenly, a kid jumped out and tried to catch the ball – instead, it deflected off the boy’s glove, hit Ziegler square in the middle of his forehead and opened a bloody gash.
“But it wasn’t nearly like the first one, not nearly as severe,” Ziegler said. “I just knew by the feeling that I got that I’d fractured the skull again. I got up and started to try to drive home but I was in too much pain.”
Somehow, he showed up at spring training in February ready to go. He wore a plastic protective insert inside his cap most of the spring before doctors cleared him to get rid of it a month later.
They also advised him to avoid getting hit again.
Ziegler couldn’t get out of the way when Lewis’ liner caught him during a playoff game.
“He threw a pitch for a strike and then I swung at the second pitch and lined it up the middle,” Lewis recalled. “It was a fastball inside and went up the middle off his head and I couldn’t get out of the batter’s box. And, man, it was like, I’d never seen anything like that. It went off his head and went into the third baseman’s glove for an out.
“I just stood there, worried about the guy. I didn’t know what was going on. Nothing like that ever happened to me before. He got up and they walked him off the field. He was walking and it was, man, people told me I didn’t do anything wrong and don’t be worried about it, but I was,” he said.
All of that seems so long ago now.
Ziegler recorded six outs against Texas on Sunday to break the previous record of 25 scoreless innings set by the Phillies’ George McQuillan in 1907.
Ziegler started this season at Triple-A Sacramento and did well there, too, allowing only one earned run in 24 1-3 innings. The Athletics promoted him May 30.
“What’s impressed me from a mental side is he showed no intimidation or fear from the first day,” A’s manager Bob Geren said. “From the physical side, his ball has great sink and great late sink and he’s throwing strikes and producing groundballs at a high rate. All of those are a good combination.
“And then his confidence, each time he went out, kept growing and now he’s extremely confident in what he’s doing. As a reliever, when you come in for one inning and are in tight situations, obviously confidence in that situation is probably No. 1 and the extra stuff like throwing the ball is a close second. He has both of those going right now,” Geren said.
Initially, Ziegler wasn’t thrilled about being asked to switch to a sidearm style. But he took on that challenge the way he’s approached so many other things in his eventful life.
Ziegler was a late bloomer in pro ball. He redshirted one season at Southwest Missouri State and opted to stay in school and earn his math degree so he would have something to fall back on if baseball didn’t work out.
He acknowledges he didn’t throw hard and had mostly average stuff before changing deliveries.
“I always threw strikes and I always got guys out, but it was never anything real flashy out on the mound,” he said. “They wanted to do something that might separate me a little bit from other right-handers.”
He’s seemingly done that now. Injured A’s slugger Frank Thomas has taken notice.
“It’s weird to break a record that’s been there a lot of years,” Thomas said. “The record has been there that long for a reason. Good for him. As a young guy, to be that focused mentally is great. And he’s coming from a funky angle with good velocity. That’s very difficult to do when you’re down that low.”
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