GaryMrMets
01-03-2005, 02:02 PM
http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/mets/story/267413p-229081c.html
Total K-atastrophe
Former Met Bill Pulsipher went from phenom
to grounds crew and now is trying to make most of a ...
BY E.J. CRAWFORD
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Bill Pulsipher was out of baseball and out of options. It was the summer of 2002 and Pulsipher was back where he started in 1992, on the manicured lawns and well-tended mounds of the Mets' spring training complex in Port St. Lucie.
Only this time, the scouts weren't coming to see Pulsipher pitch, weren't coming to see his diving slider or darting fastball. In fact, there were no scouts at all. Just a rake, a lawnmower, the Florida sun and the rest of the tools Pulsipher would need to cut the grass and maintain the grounds where he first brushed stardom as a Met prospect in 1995.
But two years after retiring from his job as a grounds-keeper in Port St. Lucie, and nearly a decade after his major league debut, Pulsipher is showing flashes of his old form in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
Pulsipher is 5-2 for the second-place Mayaguez Indians and has allowed two runs or less in six of his eight starts to offset a mediocre ERA of 4.50, with 31 strikeouts and 14 walks in 40 innings. Remove the two bad outings and Pulsipher's ERA drops to 1.29.
"He's been our ace. When we have a bad streak Pulsipher comes in and stops it for us," says Mayaguez manager Mako Olivares, who also serves as a coach with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. "I had him and (Jason) Isringhausen back in the mid-90s, when he was an up-and-comer with the Mets. Then he was Wild Horse, throwing in the 90s and all over the place. Now he's Crazy Horse because he knows how to pitch. He changes speeds, location and planes. Now he goes out there with a plan, and he's been superb for us."
Pulsipher's run as a media darling peaked in '95, when he adorned back pages and magazine covers alongside fellow Met pitching prospects Isringhausen and Paul Wilson with the ubiquitous headline, "Generation K."
In the ensuing decade he has been relegated from phenom to afterthought, has undergone reconstructive elbow surgery, battled anxiety disorder and bobbed along the major league fringes.
With no suitors in line for 2004, Pulsipher signed with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. There he compiled a 9-4 record and a 2.95 ERA in 16 starts, striking out 78 and walking 30 to earn a contract with the Seattle Mariners' Triple-A squad in Tacoma. Pulsipher went 1-1 with a 2.92 ERA in Tacoma before asking for his release so he could pitch for the Ducks in the postseason.
"Things have come full circle," Pulsipher says. "I'm back to being the pitcher I can be."
That pitcher went a combined 15-8 this year and threw nearly 170 innings, a standard benchmark for major league starters and with the Winter League postseason still to come. He was the North starter at the Atlantic League All-Star Game in July and, in mid-December, was one of only three United States imports named to the 30-man Puerto Rican Winter League All-Star team.
"I think his stuff may not be like it was, but it's good enough to compete and he knows what it takes to be successful," Mayaguez pitching coach Rafael Chavez says. "In a perfect world, he's a winner."
That is what Mayaguez GM Carlos Pieve was looking for when he traveled to New Jersey last summer, searching for veteran pitchers to round out his club.
"I have a saying in Spanish: A lefthanded pitcher who throws strikes goes straight to heaven. A lot of guys who come here are very wild, but not him. He throws strikes, and a lefthander who throws strikes can pitch anywhere," Pieve says. "I am pleased not only with his pitching but with his attitude. He is one of those happy-go-lucky guys who make the clubhouse light up."
It wasn't always that way. After going 5-7 with a 3.98 ERA as a rookie with the Mets, Pulsipher's world collapsed.
The next season, in 1996, he underwent elbow ligament replacement (Tommy John) surgery that sidelined the former second-round pick for a full year and forced him to alter his delivery to place less stress on his arm.
Pulsipher began throwing again in 1997, and was ordered to the minors for a series of rehabilitation starts to recover his rhythm and test the surgically repaired elbow. His arm held up fine, but his psyche didn't. When he took the mound for his first rehab outing he was edgy, tense and uncertain, so terrified to make a mistake that he grooved fastball after fastball in a desperate attempt to throw a strike.
"That was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me," Pulsipher says, "and I didn't handle it as well as I would've liked."
Searching for an answer, Pulsipher went to his doctor and was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. He began taking Prozac but never felt fully settled, and over the next five seasons bounced from the Mets to the Brewers and back to the Mets before brief stints with the Diamondbacks, Devil Rays, White Sox, Red Sox, Rangers and Yankees.
In between he nearly lost his life. Pulsipher collapsed during spring training in 2000 and had to be resuscitated. The episode was linked to ephedra, a supplement linked to the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler in February 2003. While it remains legal in Major League Baseball, ephedra has since been banned in the minor leagues and by most other major sports.
"It was like, any time you didn't think you could get any lower you get another dose of it," Pulsipher says.
Salvation arrived in two steps.
The first came after Pulsipher was cut by the Yankees in the summer of 2002. Longtime friend and head groundskeeper Tommy Bowes offered him a job working with his crew at the Mets' complex in Pulsipher's hometown of Port St. Lucie - on Bowes' terms.
"He did me a favor," Pulsipher says, "but he did it on one condition: If I worked there I had to go every morning and work with the strength and conditioning coach."
That brought Pulsipher back to competitive baseball, and he signed a minor-league contract with the Orioles in 2003. He says his body felt stronger than it had in years, although he knew his mental approach still wasn't right.
In an attempt to get the pitcher back on track, the Orioles placed Pulsipher in Major League Baseball's Employee Assistance Program. It was during his participation in that program that Pulsipher's medication was switched - he began taking Paxil, an alternate form of medication used to control serotonin levels and combat anxiety, instead of Prozac.
The effects were immediate, and Pulsipher credits the switch with saving his career. Able to stay loose on the mound, Pulsipher regained velocity and movement, mixing all three of his pitches - fastball, slider, changeup - and pitching with a confidence he had lacked for the past six years.
"You can only perform as well as your focus," says Dr. Bill Roberts, the president of the American College of Sports Medicine in Minneapolis. "And if you can't focus it's hard to pitch effectively, especially at the major league level."
Says Pulsipher: "I feel like a completely different person. For years I pitched as well as I thought I could. But now I'm so relaxed, and I feel like I'm learning things again. I'm not worried just about throwing strikes, but I'm feeling my way through (the outing). My body feels calm and my mind feels calm and I can let my ability take over."
Whether that ability can deliver Pulsipher back to the major leagues remains uncertain. Pulsipher was not re-signed by the Mariners, who decided to promote young players from Double-A rather than offer a contract to the 13-year veteran.
Moreover, despite Pulsipher's recent successes, there are reasons for trepidation. His injury history is a liability, and while his results in 2004 were impressive, they came against largely Triple-A-level competition. Pulsipher last pitched in a major league game in 2001 with the White Sox.
Pulsipher's inconsistency in Puerto Rico - 15 runs allowed in two starts, five allowed in the other six - reinforces those fears: that type of unpredictability raises eyebrows among scouts already concerned about a balky back that sidelined Pulsipher in Tacoma. Pulsipher maintains that his back is 100% and that all of his bad starts have come with extenuating circumstances - bad weather or a return from injury.
Chavez, who was also Pulsipher's pitching coach in Tacoma, agrees that Pulsipher is healthy but says the 6-3, 220-pounder needs to lose some weight and dedicate himself to getting in peak physical condition if he wants to regain his place at baseball's highest level.
"He's definitely pitching well enough to get another shot," says Mayaguez reliever Lance Davis, who pitched with Pulsipher in Long Island. "It just comes down to finding a team who's willing to give him that shot."
Until then, Pulsipher will wait, somewhat impatiently, knowing there is a resounding upside to his winding story. For all he has endured, Pulsipher is only 31 and is trying to make it in a league where lefthanded pitchers hang around into their late 30s and early 40s. And most importantly, Pulsipher says he is pitching better than he has since 1995.
"I'm not going to say I can go out there and be a No. 1 starter or whatever, but I think I can do it," Pulsipher says of succeeding in the majors. "If I proved one thing to myself over the last year, it's that I can pitch.
"There were years when I wondered."
Originally published on January 2, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/989-pulsihper_flexes.JPG
Bill Pulsipher ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/825-ground_crew.JPG
... hit rock bottom in 2002 when he was forced to take job mowing field at Mets' spring training complex in Port St. Lucie.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/377-mets_trio.JPG
It's been 10 years since Generation K debuted with the Mets. Jason Isringhausen developed into a top-notch closer with the A's and Cardinals, Paul Wilson became a mediocre starting pitcher for the Devil Rays and Reds ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/433-pulsipher_bill.JPG
... and Bill Pulsipher, who hasn't pitched in the majors in three years, spent last season with the Long Island Ducks of the International Atlantic League.
Total K-atastrophe
Former Met Bill Pulsipher went from phenom
to grounds crew and now is trying to make most of a ...
BY E.J. CRAWFORD
SPECIAL TO THE NEWS
SAN JUAN, Puerto Rico - Bill Pulsipher was out of baseball and out of options. It was the summer of 2002 and Pulsipher was back where he started in 1992, on the manicured lawns and well-tended mounds of the Mets' spring training complex in Port St. Lucie.
Only this time, the scouts weren't coming to see Pulsipher pitch, weren't coming to see his diving slider or darting fastball. In fact, there were no scouts at all. Just a rake, a lawnmower, the Florida sun and the rest of the tools Pulsipher would need to cut the grass and maintain the grounds where he first brushed stardom as a Met prospect in 1995.
But two years after retiring from his job as a grounds-keeper in Port St. Lucie, and nearly a decade after his major league debut, Pulsipher is showing flashes of his old form in the Puerto Rican Winter League.
Pulsipher is 5-2 for the second-place Mayaguez Indians and has allowed two runs or less in six of his eight starts to offset a mediocre ERA of 4.50, with 31 strikeouts and 14 walks in 40 innings. Remove the two bad outings and Pulsipher's ERA drops to 1.29.
"He's been our ace. When we have a bad streak Pulsipher comes in and stops it for us," says Mayaguez manager Mako Olivares, who also serves as a coach with the Tampa Bay Devil Rays. "I had him and (Jason) Isringhausen back in the mid-90s, when he was an up-and-comer with the Mets. Then he was Wild Horse, throwing in the 90s and all over the place. Now he's Crazy Horse because he knows how to pitch. He changes speeds, location and planes. Now he goes out there with a plan, and he's been superb for us."
Pulsipher's run as a media darling peaked in '95, when he adorned back pages and magazine covers alongside fellow Met pitching prospects Isringhausen and Paul Wilson with the ubiquitous headline, "Generation K."
In the ensuing decade he has been relegated from phenom to afterthought, has undergone reconstructive elbow surgery, battled anxiety disorder and bobbed along the major league fringes.
With no suitors in line for 2004, Pulsipher signed with the Long Island Ducks of the independent Atlantic League. There he compiled a 9-4 record and a 2.95 ERA in 16 starts, striking out 78 and walking 30 to earn a contract with the Seattle Mariners' Triple-A squad in Tacoma. Pulsipher went 1-1 with a 2.92 ERA in Tacoma before asking for his release so he could pitch for the Ducks in the postseason.
"Things have come full circle," Pulsipher says. "I'm back to being the pitcher I can be."
That pitcher went a combined 15-8 this year and threw nearly 170 innings, a standard benchmark for major league starters and with the Winter League postseason still to come. He was the North starter at the Atlantic League All-Star Game in July and, in mid-December, was one of only three United States imports named to the 30-man Puerto Rican Winter League All-Star team.
"I think his stuff may not be like it was, but it's good enough to compete and he knows what it takes to be successful," Mayaguez pitching coach Rafael Chavez says. "In a perfect world, he's a winner."
That is what Mayaguez GM Carlos Pieve was looking for when he traveled to New Jersey last summer, searching for veteran pitchers to round out his club.
"I have a saying in Spanish: A lefthanded pitcher who throws strikes goes straight to heaven. A lot of guys who come here are very wild, but not him. He throws strikes, and a lefthander who throws strikes can pitch anywhere," Pieve says. "I am pleased not only with his pitching but with his attitude. He is one of those happy-go-lucky guys who make the clubhouse light up."
It wasn't always that way. After going 5-7 with a 3.98 ERA as a rookie with the Mets, Pulsipher's world collapsed.
The next season, in 1996, he underwent elbow ligament replacement (Tommy John) surgery that sidelined the former second-round pick for a full year and forced him to alter his delivery to place less stress on his arm.
Pulsipher began throwing again in 1997, and was ordered to the minors for a series of rehabilitation starts to recover his rhythm and test the surgically repaired elbow. His arm held up fine, but his psyche didn't. When he took the mound for his first rehab outing he was edgy, tense and uncertain, so terrified to make a mistake that he grooved fastball after fastball in a desperate attempt to throw a strike.
"That was the first time anything like that had ever happened to me," Pulsipher says, "and I didn't handle it as well as I would've liked."
Searching for an answer, Pulsipher went to his doctor and was diagnosed with general anxiety disorder. He began taking Prozac but never felt fully settled, and over the next five seasons bounced from the Mets to the Brewers and back to the Mets before brief stints with the Diamondbacks, Devil Rays, White Sox, Red Sox, Rangers and Yankees.
In between he nearly lost his life. Pulsipher collapsed during spring training in 2000 and had to be resuscitated. The episode was linked to ephedra, a supplement linked to the death of Baltimore Orioles pitcher Steve Bechler in February 2003. While it remains legal in Major League Baseball, ephedra has since been banned in the minor leagues and by most other major sports.
"It was like, any time you didn't think you could get any lower you get another dose of it," Pulsipher says.
Salvation arrived in two steps.
The first came after Pulsipher was cut by the Yankees in the summer of 2002. Longtime friend and head groundskeeper Tommy Bowes offered him a job working with his crew at the Mets' complex in Pulsipher's hometown of Port St. Lucie - on Bowes' terms.
"He did me a favor," Pulsipher says, "but he did it on one condition: If I worked there I had to go every morning and work with the strength and conditioning coach."
That brought Pulsipher back to competitive baseball, and he signed a minor-league contract with the Orioles in 2003. He says his body felt stronger than it had in years, although he knew his mental approach still wasn't right.
In an attempt to get the pitcher back on track, the Orioles placed Pulsipher in Major League Baseball's Employee Assistance Program. It was during his participation in that program that Pulsipher's medication was switched - he began taking Paxil, an alternate form of medication used to control serotonin levels and combat anxiety, instead of Prozac.
The effects were immediate, and Pulsipher credits the switch with saving his career. Able to stay loose on the mound, Pulsipher regained velocity and movement, mixing all three of his pitches - fastball, slider, changeup - and pitching with a confidence he had lacked for the past six years.
"You can only perform as well as your focus," says Dr. Bill Roberts, the president of the American College of Sports Medicine in Minneapolis. "And if you can't focus it's hard to pitch effectively, especially at the major league level."
Says Pulsipher: "I feel like a completely different person. For years I pitched as well as I thought I could. But now I'm so relaxed, and I feel like I'm learning things again. I'm not worried just about throwing strikes, but I'm feeling my way through (the outing). My body feels calm and my mind feels calm and I can let my ability take over."
Whether that ability can deliver Pulsipher back to the major leagues remains uncertain. Pulsipher was not re-signed by the Mariners, who decided to promote young players from Double-A rather than offer a contract to the 13-year veteran.
Moreover, despite Pulsipher's recent successes, there are reasons for trepidation. His injury history is a liability, and while his results in 2004 were impressive, they came against largely Triple-A-level competition. Pulsipher last pitched in a major league game in 2001 with the White Sox.
Pulsipher's inconsistency in Puerto Rico - 15 runs allowed in two starts, five allowed in the other six - reinforces those fears: that type of unpredictability raises eyebrows among scouts already concerned about a balky back that sidelined Pulsipher in Tacoma. Pulsipher maintains that his back is 100% and that all of his bad starts have come with extenuating circumstances - bad weather or a return from injury.
Chavez, who was also Pulsipher's pitching coach in Tacoma, agrees that Pulsipher is healthy but says the 6-3, 220-pounder needs to lose some weight and dedicate himself to getting in peak physical condition if he wants to regain his place at baseball's highest level.
"He's definitely pitching well enough to get another shot," says Mayaguez reliever Lance Davis, who pitched with Pulsipher in Long Island. "It just comes down to finding a team who's willing to give him that shot."
Until then, Pulsipher will wait, somewhat impatiently, knowing there is a resounding upside to his winding story. For all he has endured, Pulsipher is only 31 and is trying to make it in a league where lefthanded pitchers hang around into their late 30s and early 40s. And most importantly, Pulsipher says he is pitching better than he has since 1995.
"I'm not going to say I can go out there and be a No. 1 starter or whatever, but I think I can do it," Pulsipher says of succeeding in the majors. "If I proved one thing to myself over the last year, it's that I can pitch.
"There were years when I wondered."
Originally published on January 2, 2005
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/989-pulsihper_flexes.JPG
Bill Pulsipher ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/825-ground_crew.JPG
... hit rock bottom in 2002 when he was forced to take job mowing field at Mets' spring training complex in Port St. Lucie.
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/377-mets_trio.JPG
It's been 10 years since Generation K debuted with the Mets. Jason Isringhausen developed into a top-notch closer with the A's and Cardinals, Paul Wilson became a mediocre starting pitcher for the Devil Rays and Reds ...
http://www.nydailynews.com/ips_rich_content/433-pulsipher_bill.JPG
... and Bill Pulsipher, who hasn't pitched in the majors in three years, spent last season with the Long Island Ducks of the International Atlantic League.