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As MiLB News: Guess Who’s Back?

By Wayne Cavadi|

Guess who’s back in town Oakland Athletics fans? Susan Slusser of the San Francisco Chronicle tweeted out:

Barry Zito is returning home to the place where he spent the best seven years of his career. He was signed to a minor league deal Monday night and received an invite to spring training. Should he somehow break camp on the major league roster, he will be set to earn a $1-millon pay day with approximately $175,000 more in incentives.

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Zito’s story is one of the most known in baseball over the past ten years. The 6 foot 2, 205 pound left-hander was the Oakland As first round draft pick, selected ninth overall in 1999. The very next season, he would make his big league debut and become a fixture in the As rotation that would dominate the American League West.

Zito would team up with Tim Hudson and Mark Mulder to form the A’s Big Three and they would make the playoffs for Zito’s first four consecutive seasons in the rotation. He would become one of the premier lefties in the game after winning the 2002 Cy Young Award. Zito was remarkable that season going 23-5 with a 2.75 ERA and 1.13 WHIP.

Zito’s seven year run in Oakland, which finished with a 102-63 record, a 3.55 ERA and a 1.25 WHIP, earned Zito a monstrous payday with the cross bay rival San Francisco Giants. The seven year, $126-million deal would be record setting at the time. It would become a very costly mistake for the Giants.

Zito led the league in starts in four of his seven years in Oakland and by the time he landed in San Francisco, you could see the toll had been taken. He would pitch seven years in San Francisco while earning a winning record just once. It got so bad for Zito that when the Giants made the World Series for the first time in 2010, he was left off the 25-man playoff roster in favor of Jonathan Sanchez.

He would bounce back in their next World Series run in 2012 with his best year as a Giant going 15-8 with a 4.15 ERA. That season, he did make the playoff roster and was sensational in the NLCS and World Series. He would blank the St. Louis Cardinals over 7.2 innings for a win in the NLCS and allow just one run over 5.2 innings for his lone career World Series victory. That would be the last highlight of his career.

Zito was abysmal in 2013 and did not pitch at all in 2014. He finished his seven year stint in San Fran at 63-80 with a 4.62 ERA, a 1.44 WHIP and a meager 6.2 strikeout per nine ratio. And now, at 37-years of age, Zito is attempting a comeback with the team that he prospered with so long ago.

This may be a nostalgia signing for the As, because there doesn’t seem to be much room in the As rotation right now. Sonny Gray is the well-deserved ace of the staff and should Scott Kazmir hold up for another season, he may be at his best in his twilight years. Jesse Chavez, Jesse Hahn and Drew Pomeranz are solid back-end rotation guys and don’t appear to be going anywhere. Zito, as the elder statesman, may find his ego too bruised should he be asked to serve as a long reliever, but if he is serious about a comeback, he would provide invaluable experience at Triple-A for the As always up and coming young pitchers. This will certainly be one of the more interesting story lines in spring training.

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