Hanging with the big guys
Jeff Samardzija will temporarily be on equal footing with his fellow Chicago Cubs starting Thursday when spring-training camp opens.
He'll work out, throw and pitch in spring-training games and maybe even be invited to hang out after hours by a big leaguer or two.
But Jeff Samardzija knows all of that won't last. A member of the Cubs' 40-man roster, the former two-sport star knows that he'll have to resume his minor-league apprenticeship sooner rather than later if he ever wants to be a one-sport ace.
"The high expectations for me, I've got to set them a little higher than that," Valparaiso's Jeff Samardzija said of starting his first full season in pro baseball in big-league camp in Mesa, Ariz.
"I'm not impatient at all," he said. "I understand the situation. I understand the talent they already have at the big-league level, for one. All I'm trying to is get ready and make an easy decision for them to where they don't have any worries when they decide to make a move."
But before that "move," Jeff Samardzija's promotion to the majors, is acted upon, he'll have to work as hard as any time in his already storied athletic career.
Jeff Samardzija will first need to make up for the lost time he spent away from baseball with football. He'll need to amass innings, smooth out his mechanics and master a breaking pitch to go along with a fastball Cubs scouting director Tim Wilken rated every bit as good as the heaters thrown by pre-injury Kerry Wood and Mark Prior.
Jeff Samardzija had a 2.70 ERA in seven starts at low-A level Boise and Peoria last summer, before reporting to Notre Dame training camp. The Cubs project he'll begin at high-A level Daytona of the Florida State League, a pitching-oriented circuit with big ballparks and sopping humidity knocking down a lot of long drives.
The big challenge will be Jeff Samardzija proving he'll be ready for Double-A Tennessee, which can be a heartbeat away from the majors for a fast-track pitcher.
"We don't want him to rush himself," Cubs farm director Oneri Fleita said. "Let's see where's he at physically and get through the season healthy. Get through all the work between starts, pitch every fifth day. It's more along the lines of getting to know himself, and getting to know us."
Jeff Samardzija will take to the minors the recommendations for improvement from Cubs pitching coach Larry Rothschild, a Homewood-Flossmoor alum, after the two work together early in big-league camp.
"My biggest thing personally is I just can't walk guys," Samardzija said. "I've got to get consistent early in counts. I've got to throw strikes early and make the guys hit it. People say I have good stuff. I don't know what that means. I just want to force the action early. I get into trouble when I walk the leadoff guy, the second guy."
How will the Cubs know when Samardzija is ready to be promoted to Double-A -- or even higher?
"We'll have seen him a number of times, or a number of rovers (instructors) will have seen him," Fleita said. "We can't get entangled in stats. It will be the quality of performance, where he throws fastball at two sides of the plate. Those are things that aren't measured in stats.
"If we see a guy having success, we might let guy have success start to finish (in the same league). He goes up to next level, he might be the victim of errors, his team not scoring runs for him. Then all he remembers is how he finishes, not how well he pitched earlier."
See more at http://nwitimes.com
|
