The Comeback Pitcher

Hey all, sorry for the lack of new content on this page for a while, I've been distracted by "prior engagements" and the other writers don't have an excuse.  I haven't been able to follow baseball as well as I typically do this month, mostly limiting my exposure to keeping tabs on my fantasy team and catching wind of interesting events in the baseball world.  For the first time in a little while I looked at my fantasy team in more depth to really get a sense of how things are going and I found myself coming to a very happy surprise.

Good thing I had a camera handy for it!

Here's some back story first, in my younger days I liked to separate myself from the pack, and to do that one time I had my parents get me a baseball jersey of a seemingly random player for a seemingly random team, for no reason better than my moderate taste for their uniforms.  I did this because I wanted to own something that nobody at my high school would have as well, and apparently I thought it would make me slightly more interesting.  Well anyways, because I had the shirt I started to follow the team as my third team of interest after my beloved Red Sox and Braves.  It was around 2004 at that point and as I started to take a liking in this team and they rewarded me by changing from a last place team to division champs in about 2 years.  In truth, they weren't a good team and just succeeded in a terrible division, but they had a bright spot in a young righty that I look a liking to.  A few years later he won a Cy Young award and that was that.  For a reason I can only speculate about that is when I stopped considering myself a "fan" of this team and went back to my 2 team format.

Now that I've told you this mediocre story, you may be able to see that the team I am talking about was the 2004-2007 San Diego Padres and the young righty I spoke of was none other than Jake Peavy.  Life after the 2007 Cy Young award seemed a little difficult for Peavy, whether the Padres were just never that good or they remained shaken up by their loss in their one game playoff against the Colorado Rockies for the wild card (one of the best games I ever watched) they didn't give Peavy any run support and he finished 10-11 with a 2.85 ERA.  Poor guy gets rewarded for pitching well with trade talks and even had to reject a trade to the White Sox in order to start the season with the Padres, take a second to think he intentionally rejected a trade to stick with the Padres, that doesn't happen in this day and age.  Eventually he tore a tendon in his ankle and the trade talks caught up with him and he accepted a trade to the White Sox.  The next year got even worse as he tore the damn muscles off his back.  It doesn't seem like coming back from a detached back is even possible for a pitcher but he did come back and had a 4.92 ERA.

You need to search "Jake Peavy partying" on Google images

That is where I stood on Peavy at the start of this season.  A sad story of a great pitcher who found his success then fate just decided to screw him over with one random injury after another, a slightly happier version of Brandon Webb's story if you will.  So now we look to a month ago when I got to fed up with Brandon Morrow's bullshit and decided to drop him, I was looking for another SP on the waiver wire and I was very pleased to see Peavy's name among the top pitchers hanging around.  I took a risk on picking up Peavy, telling myself  he would only serve as a stopgap until Fister comes off the DL.  He was 2-0 with a 2.75 ERA at the time and I had not expected that to keep up.  Well, the first start he had since I picked him up was a complete game shutout win over Oakland, then in his second start I got the best of both worlds as he was the tough-luck loser in a 1-0 game against my Red Sox in which he allowed 4 hits and struck out 7 in the complete game.  Needless to say by my writing this article, he did not slow down.  He is the standout guy in a staff that includes Justin Verlander and Gio Gonzalez, I simply love my pitchers this year!  In fear of being the straw that broke the camel's back in jinxing Peavy, I'll cut out here (hopefully that reverse jinx worked.)

Now he drinks Jager to celebrate!