May 17, 2014; San Francisco, CA, USA; San Francisco Giants shortstop
Brandon Crawford(35) warms up behind a baseball resting on the pitcher
For most pitchers, four shutout but wild innings in A ball is nothing to boast about, but for Frank Viola III, those four innings were nearly ten years in the making.
Pitching for the Lansing Lugnuts, the Class-A affiliate of the Toronto Blue Jays, Viola struck out four and walked four over four scoreless frames in his first start of the year. According to BlueJaysFromAway.com writer Chad Hillman, he needed 79 pitches to get through the short start, or just under 20 pitches per inning, a relatively high number.
But those were the first professional pitches Viola has tossed in five years, the first he’s thrown in affiliated baseball in seven. Indeed, last night’s Lansing starter has probably had as unique a career path as any pitcher in professional baseball.
The son of former Twins star and Cy Young Award winner Frank Viola, he was drafted by the White Sox in the 29th round of the 2004 draft. He made 12 decent starts for the Sox rookie affiliate in 2005, but blew out his elbow and needed Tommy John surgery the following Spring Training. After a brief, 16 innning comeback attempt in 2007, Viola, sufferred a knee injury and was promptly released.
Viola, now 29, made another comeback attempt in 2010 with the Independent St. Paul Saints, but flamed out after 37 1/3 unremarkable innings. And that was it, for a while. He was repeatedly turned down at major league tryouts and he took up a job selling timeshares in Florida to make ends meet; this wasn’t the path of a player headed to the big leagues.
That’s when he found the knuckleball. At the playful suggestion of one of his father’s former Twins teammates, he began working on the elusive and wild pitch. By day, he would sell timeshares and when his shift was over, he drove down to Dr. Phillips High School where he trained with big leaguers Johnny Damon and A.J. Pierzinski and began to practice with the knuckleball. Initially, it was not a success.
“It was terrible,” Viola told MLB.com’s Anthony Dicomo in March of 2012, “”I threw one out of 100 that actually knuckled. “
But slowly he began to improve. “within two months or a month and a half, I started throwing it where I could get like two out of 10. I was like, ‘Wow, this is kind of cool,” Viola reflected.
He started off by just emulating footage of Phil Niekro and R.A. Dickey, but in the spring of 2012 the pair of flutterballing elders took note and began to mentor Viola. Not that either were incredibly enamored. Dicomo reported that when a Mets front office official inquired of the young knuckleballer’s ability, Dickey was reluctant to give anything more than tepid support.
Viola’s here now, though. After nearly two years of work, he finally manage to impress a major league team, the Blue Jays, and they signed him in March. After two months of extended spring training , they promoted him to the Class A Midwestern league, where at 29 – he turns 30 on June 19th – he stands as one of the oldest players in the league. The age gap doesn’t seem to bother him, though.
“I get called ‘Old Man’ a lot,” Viola told MILB.com’ Tyler Maun after the game, laughing. “It’s great. It keeps you young. You see these kids, they’re hungry, they want to make it real bad, and they work hard. They’re excited to be out here. That’s fun for me, because it brings back when I was that age.”
Lansing went on to defeat the Great Lakes Loons by a score of 9-1, with Yeyfry Del Rosario earning the win in relief.
Although Viola routinely hit 90 MPH on the gun when he was a younger, the “old man’s” fastball hovered around 85 for most of the game, according to Hillman. His knuckleball, meanwhile, was generally clocked at about 70 MPH, although he did ocassionally reach back and throw a harder one in the 75-76 range.
It’s not yet clear what Toronto’s plans are for the 30 year old starter, but they have shown a slight affinity for knuckleballers in recent years. Their opening day starter was R.A. Dickey, for whom they traded two of their top prospects, and they signed Japanese flutterballer Tomo Ohka last December, although he was ultimately released at the end of Spring Training.
For Viola’s part, he just seems happy to be pitching again after all these years.
“It was exciting to get back out here,” the right-hander gleefully told Maun. “I was a little nervous, like always. I’m glad I was nervous because that means I care. It was just exciting because all the hard work paid off.”