I'm super late to this, but a few weeks ago, Heath (@DempseysArmy) and I got into a bit of a Twitter spat with Matt Gardner about Erik Bedard. Short story: Matt called Bedard lazy, we said he was hurt, but awesome. Matt responded with an allegation that Bedard told O's (I think) minor league pitching coach Scott McGregor that he would throw 100 pitches or 6 innings, whichever came first. I can't find any link to this, but that, of course doesn't mean it didn't happen (Matt obviously heard this from somewhere). Setting aside whether or not he actually said this, Bedard did not face this limitation in 2006 or 2007 (the two years he was mostly healthy and largely excellent). Those links above are to his game logs.
2006: 24 of 33 starts with more than 100 pitches, with five of 110 or more in June, July and August.
2007: 21 of 28 starts with more than 100 pitches (one with 120), including 105, 109, 112, 115, 114, 113, 104 and 116 in his final 8 starts of the season, after which he got hurt and didn't pitch again for the Orioles. In that last start, he allowed 5 walks, struck out just 3, and gave up 6 ER in only 6 innings. Was he hurt then?
Mr. Bedard certainly did not have a sterling reputation among the fans and the media; I have no idea what other players thought of him. Regardless of that reputation, though, when Bedard was healthy he took the ball and pitched. Perhaps so much for a 69-93 Orioles team in 2007 that he's thrown just 164 Major League inning since.
2 comments:
Well, said. If Bedard actually did say what McGregor said he did, looks like he was right anyway!
O's handled his development really strangely too. Although he had a history of injury, he only had 5.0 IP at AAA before he was promoted to the bigs. 5.
Another odd thing, he only appeared on Baseball America's Top 100 list once, #90 in 2002. And Andy MacPhail flipped him for 5 guys including Adam Jones and Chris Tillman. Not too shabby.
He didn't like the press, press didn't like him. However, I have heard no stories of the guy being rude to fans and his teammates have only had good things to say about him. The "bad attitude" rep is largely disseminated through the press, who definitely got that side of him.
The O's handled everyone's development strangely in the those days. Look at Matt Riley (pitched in Baltimore at age 19 and not again until age 23), Hayden Penn, Adam Loewen... Sigh.
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