[新聞] NYTimes: From Small Field to Major L …
※ [本文轉錄自 NY-Yankees 看板]
作者: xiemark (aisinjuro) 看板: NY-Yankees
標題: [新聞] NYTimes: From Small Field to Major Leagues
時間: Mon Aug 7 17:11:45 2006
紐約時報專文介紹雙城投手Liriano的成長故事。
似乎紐約人對這位強力三振型投手也有極大的興趣。
From Small Field to Major Leagues
The New York Times
In this coastal fishing town about a 90-minute drive from Santo Domingo, the
nation’s capital, a current major league baseball player made local history
when he was 14, when he became the youngest player to hit a home run over the
cement wall.
People here said he was one of the best outfielders the area had ever seen,
but he does not get to swing the bat much anymore. His days playing the
outfield are probably over.
This is because that young slugger, Francisco Liriano, has blossomed into a
left-handed pitching phenomenon in the United States.
In his first full season in the majors, Liriano, 22, has the lowest earned run
average among starting pitchers. He has won 12 of his first 14 starts for the
Minnesota Twins and could become just the second pitcher to win the Cy Young
and rookie of the year awards in the same season. (Fernando Valenzuela did it
with the Dodgers in 1981.) He is 12-2 with a 1.96 earned run average and has
struck out 137 batters in 115 innings.
After missing his most recent turn in the rotation because of soreness in his
pitching arm, Liriano will try for his 13th victory Monday, when the Twins face
the American League Central-leading Tigers in Detroit.
Before he broke through in the majors, Liriano lived in a small house here with
his parents and nine siblings, where a donkey, like clockwork, snarls at 6 p.m
. every day and there is a constant clatter of small motorcycles. Liriano’s
father, Francisco Sr., who has diabetes, had not worked in several years, and
money was scarce. When Liriano signed his first professional contract, with the
San Francisco Giants in 2000, he sent almost all of the money he received from
the Giants home to his family. His
relatives did not want to move out of the house where they had spent almost the
ir entire lives, so the money went toward remodeling the house. They added two
stories, marble tiles and an iron fence to enclose their property.
“It was the first present,” his mother, Paula Casilla, said in Spanish as she
sat in the refurbished living room, which has just two photographs, both of
Liriano, the youngest child. “It was the house he was born in.”
The Twins have gotten quite a gift in Liriano as well. Since his first start
May 19, the Twins have made a drastic turnaround. [They were 17-24 at the time,
but have gone 48-21 to improve to 65-45. They are tied with Boston, a
half-game back of Chicago in the wild-card race and are nine and a half games
behind the Tigers, whom they trailed by as many as 11? earlier this season.]
Liriano’s slider — diving or cutting under the hands of right-handed hitters
— has helped get the Twins back in playoff contention. But he has been
throwing that pitch — and the rest of his repertory — for only six years.
Before the Giants signed him at 17, he said he had never pitched.
“The Giants told me they would give me more money if I pitch, so I said I
would,” Liriano said in Spanish in a telephone interview. “But they had
never seen me pitch. I didn’t like it, but all I wanted to do was play. I want
ed to make money for my family. I was young.”
So he came to the United States as a nondrafted free agent and started throwing
bullpen sessions. After four months of practicing off a mound, he started his
first game in the minors in 2001. Liriano was a largely unknown player when he
was folded into a trade between the Giants and the Twins after the 2003 season
. He had spent most of 2003 on the disabled list with a shoulder injury. The
Giants gave up Liriano, reliever Joe Nathan and the pitching prospect Boof
Bonser for catcher A. J. Pierzynski, who
was going to be a free agent after the 2004 season.
Pierzynski signed with the White Sox when he became a free agent, and the Giant
s were left with nothing for Liriano, Bonser and Nathan, who has become an
All-Star closer in Minnesota.
Liriano joined the Twins’ farm system in 2004 and continued his development.
His statistics rapidly improved. In 2004, he struck out 174 batters in 156 2/3
innings. In 2005, he had 204 strikeouts in 167 2/3 innings in the minors
before making his major league debut Sept. 5.
Guided by General Manager Terry Ryan’s philosophy of bringing young pitchers
along slowly, Liriano followed the path of the Twins ace Johan Santana and was
groomed in the bullpen before being turned loose as a starter. Santana won the
Cy Young award in 2004 and has a 71-30 career record and 3.30 career earned
run average.
Unlike Santana, who spent parts of three seasons in the bullpen, Liriano
progressed quickly. He joined the starting rotation this season after 12
appearances out of the bullpen.
Even though the approach seemed to work, Liriano said he had mixed feelings.
“I liked it because I didn’t want to be in Triple-A, but it wasn’t good,”
he said. “I didn’t like it because I wasn’t used to coming out of the
bullpen. It wasn’t great, but it worked.”
Besides the way they were developed, Liriano and Santana have other
similarities. Both are left-handers who throw hard sliders, fastballs and
changeups — although Santana’s changeup, possibly the best in the league,
is more polished. And both know how to swing the bat.
In preparation for interleague play this season, Liriano and Santana took
batting practice. They each drove several balls over the right-field fence,
according to a Twins spokesman.
Liriano joked that he could still play the outfield in the majors and credited
his ability to hit so well to a game called vitilla, popular among children
in Latin America. It is a modified version of baseball, using a broom stick
and a bottle cap. The cap swerves and swoops like a slider or knuckleball.
“I played all the time when I was a kid — every morning and afternoon from
when I was 5 until I was 15,” Liriano said. “It taught my eyes and my hands
to move faster.”
Liriano honed his baseball skills on the lone field in his hometown, where
about 60 children were playing at sunset one day last week. One game was being
played on the diamond, and two others were being played using the right-field
and left-field corners. The field has produced other major leaguers, including
Juan Uribe, Timo Perez and Jose Vizcaino. And, Liriano’s cousin Santiago
Casilla is a pitching prospect in the Oakland Athletics’ system.
A few barefoot children, too young to play with the older boys, wandered
between the games with their vitilla bats in hand.
Before the sun set, the day’s last games ended and the children walked in a
large pack toward town. The next day, many of them would wake up, work in the
nearby fields that run up to the edge of the Caribbean Sea, before spending
their afternoon playing baseball, just like Liriano did.
The odds may be against them making it to the majors, but Liriano’s sudden
stardom at least presents the possibility.
“Liriano is one of the best pitchers, and he comes from our part of the
country,” said Miguel Omar, a 13-year-old third baseman. “It makes us feel
better and that we can succeed like him.”
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