Switch-pitcher Venditte to get a shot against Atlanta today?

Word is that the switch-pitcher with the six-fingered glove, Pat Venditte, will actually get a look, a serious look supposedly, from Yankees manager Joe Girardi during a split-squad game against the Braves later today.  Good Lord, what took the Yankees so long?

Actually, that's one of those questions to which you know the answer before you ask the question.  First, he doesn't have the physical appearance or tools of a super stud like Tommy Hanson, nor does he have a funky appearance with a freaky arm that doesn't match like Tim Lincecum (or as my friend and Altoona Curve play-by-play man Mike Passanisi calls him, 'Jesus's son').  Pat looks ordinary, like you or me unless you don't look ordinary, and his baseball abilities are rather hum drum to the naked eye.  Oh, did I mention he can pitch with both arms?

A fluke, a gimmick you may say.  But it is a gimmick that has struck out 11.7 batters per nine innings and walked fewer than two batters per nine in two minor league seasons.   His career ERA, 1.53.  Career WHIP?  0.950. You won't find too many 45th round draft picks with those numbers.  But Venditte can't be for real, can he?  Evidently, not many people in the Yankees organization believe so.

Having seen Venditte pitch a few times last season, I understand why.  While Venditte was the closer for the Yankees' South Atlantic League team in Charleston (SC), he walked a batter during a ninth-inning appearance against the Mets' farm team, the Savannah Sand Gnats (full disclosure, I am employed by the Sand Gnats). Yes, that was remarkable because it was one of only two batters Venditte walked in 30.2 innings with the Riverdogs before the Yankees promoted him to high-A Tampa.  What was also remarkable was that Venditte got left-handed batters out even though his velocity as a left-handed pitcher was akin to some of those 12-year-olds you see in the Little League World Series every year.

Venditte barely hit the low 70's with his fastball as a lefty.  He basically has two pitches as a southpaw, the slow fastball and an even slower slider.  Yet the Sand Gnats' lefties, or most other lefties in the league for that matter, couldn't touch him.  Perhaps they had trouble adjusting to the drop in speed, but the bottom line is Venditte got lefties out with his batting-practice speed southpaw stuff just as effectively as he did with his mid-to-upper 80's stuff from the right-handed side.  The fact that none of those numbers is located in the 90's is, I think, the main reason so many at the big league level are skeptical of Six-Finger Pat.

Sure, "conventional wisdom" tells us that a pitcher who throws less than 90 won't make it in the show.  If you don't have a fastball in the low 90's, big league hitters will smoke you, the experts say.  Oh, and if you are a normal-sized human being, you better throw in the mid-to-upper 90's, because I suppose you can get away with lobbing softballs if you look like Paul Bunyan or Charlie Kerfeld.  It makes me wish I were a fly on the wall in the Chicago Cubs' organization offices in 1986, as a conversation like this must have taken place at least once:

"He's getting a lot of people out in the minors."

"Yeah, but he doesn't throw that hard."

"So, he was 10-1 at Iowa after we promoted him."

"Yeah, but that's Iowa.  Your grandma could walk out of the corn fields over there and get people out in that league.  Okay, maybe that's a stretch, but his ERA went up from where it was at Double-A."

"Sure.  All the way up to 3.02.  This kid is almost ready.  And he doesn't walk a whole lot of people either"

"He'll never make it in the majors.  Big League batters will see that 88-90 'heater' and kill it, especially at Wrigley.  Besides, he looks like those dweebs whose heads we used to stick down the toilet.  He'll be done in five years."

That conversation, if it took place, would have been about Greg Maddux.   Now, before you think I am comparing Mad Dog to Venditte, the comparison is not even close.  Maddux was drafted in the second round as opposed to the 45th round, so someone must have seen something in the guy who looked like he was the captain of the high school chess club.  Still, both Maddux and Tom Glavine in their minor league days hardly fit the profile of a "can't miss major league prospect (trademark pending)", and all they did was win well over 600 games.  I doubt Venditte would be that successful, but good gracious, shouldn't mowing down everyone in your minor league path at least get you a shot to show what you can do?

As Rob Neyer points out, Venditte is now 25.  Why wait until he is 27 to see if he is ready for the show, or perhaps if the show is ready for him?  At a time when Major League Baseball is desperate for attention-getting stories that don't involve pills, needles, lying players or clueless commissioners, why look at one of those stories straight in the eye and dismiss it as a freak that will never work?

Braves musings at Braves Lifer.