Brave New World

Mike Hampton, whose career fell to pieces in Colorado, begins reconstruction with Atlanta pitching guru, Leo Mazzone

By Tom Verducci

The last time lefthander Mike Hampton started a game, he buzzed through the first inning with three strikeouts. Then, after the batter leading off the second inning had the temerity to put the ball in play, albeit on a harmless grounder to second base, Hampton redlined his intensity. That's it, he told himself, I'm going to strike out the next two guys.

And that's what he did. No matter that this happened two weeks ago against high school kids in an otherwise friendly exhibition game at the field named for Hampton at his alma mater, Crystal River High, in Citrus County, Fla. Hampton had a baseball in his hand, and somebody was keeping score. That's all he has ever needed to make him pitch as if it were the last game of his life.

You don't have Florida State asking you to play defensive back (coming out of Crystal River in 1990), don't become the first man in more than a quarter of a century to win 20 games and bat .300 in the same season (with the Houston Astros in 1999) and don't score the richest contract ever for a pitcher (eight years, $121 million from the Colorado Rockies in December 2000) without a major attitude as your business partner, especially when you stand only 5'10". Yet when Hampton took his trademark sinker and intensity to Colorado -- not just to pitch, mind you, but to defy gravity -- his career turned to quicksand. The more he fought, the deeper he sank. His 6.15 ERA was the worst in the majors last year among qualifying pitchers.

The Braves are counting on Mike Hampton to return to his pre-Coors Field form, when he had a 3.66 ERA with the Astros and Mets. AP

"I was going to prove it could be done," Hampton says about pitching at an elite level in Colorado, "or I was going to die trying right there on the mound. I almost died trying."

Hampton, 30, spoke last week in the clubhouse of the Atlanta Braves, still smiling in wonder over the Nov. 20 trade that moved him from the Rockies to the Braves via the Florida Marlins. Linebackers have Penn State, pianists have Julliard and pitchers have Atlanta. No other organization knows pitching as well as the Braves, who have ranked first or second in the National League in ERA for 12 years running.

The remaking of Hampton began last week at Camp Leo, the annual weeklong, invitation-only minicamp for Braves pitchers run by pitching coach Leo Mazzone, the Richard Feynman of the campus, only with a cherubic face and a longshoreman's tongue. Brilliant without airs, a disciple of like-minded pitching gurus Johnny Sain and George Bamberger, Mazzone immediately began fixing Hampton, just as he had Chris Hammond, John Burkett, Mike Remlinger, Rudy Seanez, Kerry Ligtenberg, Steve Bedrosian, Jay Howell, Mike Bielecki and the many others who found new life on the mound under his tutelage. This year's crew at Camp Leo included newcomers Hampton, Paul Byrd and Chris Haney as well as several highly regarded prospects.

The first time Hampton stepped on a mound in front of Mazzone, on Feb. 3, there was an ah-ha! moment. Mazzone immediately noticed that Hampton threw his two-seam fastball, or sinker, differently than his four-seam fastball. Hampton's release point (where the ball leaves the pitcher's hand) was much lower on his sinker. Further, as Hampton let go of the ball, he pulled his left elbow in toward his body rather than extending his arm straight out as if shaking someone's hand. Hampton was also rotating his wrist slightly inward upon release rather than keeping his fingers on the top of the ball.

Mazzone knew exactly what the diagnostic evidence was telling him: This is a pitcher who has lost confidence in his sinker. Instead of trusting the natural movement on the pitch, Hampton was trying to manufacture movement.

Hampton had built his riches upon the sinker, which pitching coach Mel Stottlemyre had shown him when they were together with the Astros in 1994. Hampton used it only occasionally and without confidence until 1997, when Houston manager Larry Dierker told him, "You can continue to be a .500 pitcher, but I know how you can become a better pitcher." He told him to feature the sinker.

"I got waffled the first half of '97," Hampton says. "But I stuck with it and developed a real feel for it."

When Hampton took the Rockies' money as a free agent, most baseball observers thought his style of pitching -- he threw almost 2.5 ground balls for every fly ball and had that feistiness -- would be relatively unaffected by the altitude of Denver. "It was easy to question the length of the contract and the money," Rockies general manager Dan O'Dowd says. "But no one questioned whether he was the right type of pitcher."

On Opening Day 2001 at Coors Field, Hampton debuted with 8 1/3 shutout innings. When he woke up the next morning, however, he began to understand the enormity of what he was trying to do. Though he had thrown only 98 pitches the day before, "I felt like I had been hit by a truck when I got up," Hampton says. "When I got to the park, I asked the strength trainer [Brad Andress], 'What's going on?'"

Andress explained that the reduced oxygen level at altitude taxed the body more than at sea level. Hampton also began to understand that because pitches don't break as sharply at altitude, he had to strain more to impart the precise snap and follow-through in finishing a pitch. (In two years with the Rockies, Hampton would win only six of the 26 starts he made following a Coors Field start; he lost half of them.)

By mid-June, Hampton was 9-2 with a 2.98 ERA, but like a virus whose symptoms were not yet in evidence, Coors Field was wearing him down. "You'd make a great pitch on the outside corner, knee-high, and the guy would hit a double off the wall," Hampton says. "So you'd go, Oh, man, let me make the next one a little better."

Every pitch was nitroglycerine, every rally a riot. Because Hampton had been so successful -- he won 22 games in 1999 and won 15 and led the Mets to the World Series in 2000 -- he could not stomach the idea of lowering his standards. "People would say I had to swallow my pride, that six innings and four runs was good enough," Hampton says. "I couldn't do that. I never wanted to do anything but put up zeroes for as long as I could. If there were guys on second and third, most pitchers would give up the run to get an out. I tried to throw a shutout every time. You're beat if you accept an ERA in the high fives. You're trying to be among the elite."

In the quicksand he flailed. The more he tried to make his ball sink, the less it did, and the less it sank, the less he threw it. At his best in Houston and New York, 85% of his fastballs were sinkers, 15% four-seamers. In Colorado those proportions were reversed. With the Rockies his ratio of grounders to fly balls fell by almost 30%. Hampton threw his sinker so infrequently that one day he was shocked to look down and see that he was gripping the ball with two fingers and his thumb on the seams; he had always thrown it with his fingers and thumb inside the horseshoe of the seams. He had literally lost the feel for the pitch. Hampton became a grunt, a maximum-effort pitcher who would hit 95 mph on the radar gun, a robust number that assured the team he was healthy but confused those who knew him best.

Brad Ausmus, his former catcher in Houston, told him last season, "Mike, you're changing so many things, you don't even look like the same person out there."

What confounded the Rockies was that Hampton would often look sharp during his bullpen sessions between starts. But nobody kept score in the bullpen. He was so bad last season that his father, Mike Sr., greeted him in his home after one game by saying, "Son, you ready to quit?"

"Quit," Hampton snapped, "ain't in my vocabulary. I'll never quit."

The Rockies did quit, at least on the idea that a star pitcher can come to Colorado and accept that his ERA will be blown to bits. "I don't think we'll ever chase that type of free agent again," O'Dowd says. "We have to develop our own or get the free agent who is a one-year guy with a lot to prove. I have to say I'm more encouraged by having the rookie of the year, Jason Jennings, a guy who we developed, than I am discouraged about Mike's failures."

Atlanta general manager John Schuerholz says he pursued Hampton without reservation because the late Darryl Kile was a 20-game winner the first year he escaped Colorado. "And Darryl Kile didn't have the same track record before going to Colorado as Mike did," Schuerholz says.

Further, Schuerholz says, the Braves foster great pitching because of four components: their trainers; their medical professionals; manager Bobby Cox, who "handles pitchers better than anybody I've ever seen in the game," says Schuerholz; and Mazzone, whose imprint on the organization is unmistakable. Atlanta's pitchers, for instance, throw twice between starts rather than once, as virtually every other staff in the majors does. They zealously adhere to Mazzone's first commandment: Master the down-and-away fastball. They also pitch with an ease of motion, cruising at about 80% to 90% of available effort.

Under Mazzone pitchers also get special attention. While many clubs, for example, have three, four or even five pitchers throwing off mounds at the same time during spring training, Mazzone has only one pitcher throwing at a time except for the first week of camp, when a second pitcher is within his sight. "How the hell can you watch five guys warm up?" Mazzone says. "And if I'm watching one guy, what are the other guys I'm not watching supposed to think?"

That's how Camp Leo ran too, with more than a dozen pitchers each day -- many of them new to the Braves -- waiting like acolytes for their mound time with Mazzone. Atlanta must replace eight pitchers who accounted for 66% of the team's wins and 64% of its innings last year, including Tom Glavine and Kevin Millwood. On Wednesday of last week, the third straight day Hampton threw, Mazzone showed him how he could change the location of a pitch by simply moving his position on the rubber by an inch or so. About an hour later on the same mound Mazzone was prodding Rule 5 draft pick Chris Spurling. "Lock in on his crotch!" he yelled, giving Spurling a target on the catcher for that down-and-away fastball.

Says Hampton, "I'm putting my faith in Leo." Each day after camp Hampton would return to his hotel room, stand before a mirror and repeat what he had learned that day. And when he looked into the glass, he saw something else newly gained: a smile. Here was one happy camper.

"You know what?" Hampton says. "I'm going to enjoy every win I have for the rest of my career. If I pitched a good game before, well, that's what I was supposed to do. You won? Big deal. I took everything for granted. Not anymore. I'm going to have fun. I'm going to enjoy this game."

Issue Date: February 17, 2003

 

Related information

Stories

Verducci: Is Smoltz being penned in? Under the microscope: Five more pitchers to watch

Multimedia

Visit Video Plus for the latest audio and video