New Phillies reliever Adams says 2012 was a struggle
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New Phillies reliever Adams says 2012 was a struggle
Bob Brookover, Inquirer Baseball Columnist
The Phillies officially announced the signing of free-agent reliever Mike Adams to a two-year, $12 million deal Thursday. The contract also includes a vesting option for 2015, which is a lot of money for a guy who admits last season was a physical struggle.
Adams, 34, is expected to take the role as closer Jonathan Papelbon's setup man next season. He has been one of the best eighth-inning relievers in the game since 2008, posting a 1.98 earned run average while striking out 311 batters in 295 innings.
The veteran righthander posted a 5-3 record with one save and an uncharacsterically high 3.27 earned run average in his only full season with the Texas Rangers last year. He was shut down for the final week of the season and underwent surgery in October for a condition known as Thoracic Outlet Syndrome.
"Last year was a struggle for me," Adams said. "The TOS was something that kicked in in early April. I didn't know what was happening. I thought I was just having some shoulder discomfort issues. The majority of the season I battled not having the same stuff I had previously.
"I didn't have a good feel for the ball. There were times when I didn't know how to grip a fastball because I didn't have the feel. That's the symptoms of TOS. By the end of the year, it really caught up to me. My arm felt like it weighed five or six pounds more than it normally did. The ball felt like it weighed three pounds."
Adams surrendered three home runs in a five-batter span in his final appearance of the season against Oakland after allowing only one home run in his previous 60 games.
"My last outing, I felt like I was pitching a shot put," he said. "The toughest part was the mental part. I was trying to fix my mechanics and I was trying to fix everything. Once I knew that I had TOS, it was a huge relief after talking to (Rangers teammate) Matt Harrison and knowing that he told me I was going to feel great after (surgery). The trainer for Texas told me that once I get a few weeks into the rehab process I'm going to feel like I have a new arm."
Adams said the rehab process has gone well so far. He thought he'd be ready for the start of spring training. He admitted that he is more concerned about being ready for the April 1 opener in Atlanta. The surgical procedure involved removing a rib.
"It’s the first rib, which is below the clavicle," Adams said. "So what happens is that first rib starts squeezing the clavicle. You have a main artery and a nerve that runs through there, so when you start squeezing those, that nerve starts shooting pain through your body. I was having headaches constantly for three weeks. My trap was hurting, my pec, the middle of my back was hurt. I was having some numbness and tingling in my bicep and forearm and it was something that was pretty bad.
"Once I had the surgery to take care of it, some of the shoulder pain was gone within two days. It took a little while longer for a lot of the other symptoms to go away, but they said in time it will. They say the nerves have been so freaked out that they needed time to recover. It wasn’t until about three or four weeks ago that I really started to feel the symptoms go away."
Shortly after the winter meetings, the Phillies sent special assistant Charley Kerfeld to watch Adams throw. The righthander obviously passed the physical administered by the Phillies Thursday and general manager Ruben Amaro Jr. acknowledged the risk involved.
"There is no question that there is some risk involved," Amaro said. "As a group, we talked to our people about the TOS and how that might affect him short term and long term, but I think ultimately we feel comfortable enough and felt comfortable with the procedure and the follow-up information that we got. While there is some risk to it, it probably was a good risk. This is a guy who can solidify our bullpen."
i'd like to point out that this now makes two veteran players who agreed to come play for the phillies because they believe the phillies are a team that can compete for a championship. so who do you think knows more about baseball? baseball players or the doomsday squad who never stop barking about how much this team stinks— high water- @smoothelic -- you make a valid point --not really possible to quantify value of prospects -- I figured that it was 7 vs 1 (I don't count Rosin) and that future potnetial All-Stars like Singleton, Cosart and Sanatana are valued at 3 to 4 times a Josepsh, so somehow pulled a number out of my hat of 25 to 1, though it may likely prove to be 100 to 0 (if Singelton becomes an elite slugger abd Cosart and Santana aces, and Jospeh never makes it to the majors -- which is certianly a possible scenario) or it may be 3-1 if only 3 of the 7 ever become major leaguers and Joseph unexpectedly becomes a major leaguer too--I obvioulsy didn't do my own independent talent evaluations, and am just trying to see how other g.m.s and ratings like Baseball America generally value these prospects in comparable trades...in any event it is clear that the upshot of the Pence and Oswalt deals is they lost 7 prospects, got 1 back and Oswalt and Pence did not bring tham any post-season success --and only 1/2 season of regular season each— warbiscuit
- correction: the upshot of the Pence and Oswalt deals is they lost 7 prospects, got 1 back, and Oswalt and Pence did not bring tham any post-season success --and only 1/2 season of "good" regular seasons each— warbiscuit
- I've been first in line to criticize Amaro. Most of his moves don't put him in the class of better GM's.Revere, Young, Lannan, Adams. Mediocre at best. But I have to agree with his feelings on the corner outfielder quest. Why pay through the nose fr journeyman dreck like Cody Ross? Or give a crapload of money and draft pick for Swisher? he missed out on Hamilton for all the wrong reasons and gets a flunking grade there. But now let's go with Brown and hope he has laid the groundwork with enough experience to have a decent year...and Ruf WILL have a good year. Mayberry and Nix should be 240-250 hitters and combine for 15-20 home runs. let it be. Amaro is no great shakes but in this case, he's right.— gentian
- Gose and Villar (swapped for Wallace) and Happ have of course already started contributing at the major league level and have a quantifiable value— warbiscuit
- gentian -- I don't disagree with you -- he's basically messed up royally already and it's not clear what can be done to remedy this mess— warbiscuit
- Let's hope so, RAJ. To me the Phillies are making mistakes by evaluating what guys have done since '08 and projecting that forward for guys who are in their 30's. Hopefully this is a good one, at least it's just two years.— PhillySubsMac
- He's either Qualls or Madson. So bored that I want the season to start and find out.— jtcmine
- @zafan :
Oswalt went 10-11 with a 3.69 era in 2011 for a team that went 102-60 and thus went 92-49 if you compute their record without him ... in 2011 he was one of the worst players on the team and they carried him ... indeed in 2010 Brett Myers had a much superior season to Oswalt (and was winning for Astros, a team whom Oswalt couldn't buy a win for) so Phils could have just re-signed Myers and done much better than trade 3 prospects for 1/2 year of decent pitchign from Oswalt in 2010..
and I can say with all certainty that getting into a "debate" with anyone who would defend the Howard contract is like debating whether the earth is round or square, and anyone who insists in defending the indefensible is indeed a hopeless sanctimonious moron. I would also say that if you asked any baseball sportwriter, journalist or commentator (outside of Phila), and any person who works in any front office in baseball (outside of Phila), he/she would call the Howard contract one of the worst in the histroy of baseball, inexplicable, without any semblance of logic and that any blogger who would defend such a contract is full of Sh#$— warbiscuit - Thank you for proving my earlier point. You are incapable of a debate without name calling which leads me to believe you are a juvenile. As well, you refer to stats in bits and pieces that help to prove a completely useless point. I stand by my comment that the Oswalt trade was a good one. I don't need stats to tell me Oswalt helped the Phils win major league games in 2010 and 2011. This is kinda fun. My Howard argument is coming soon. Headed out to catch some football. — vafan
- and @zafan you sanctimonious moron: since you like to take my quick reference list of 40 errors of commission and omission that Rube did or did not do --that caused them to have post-season failure and become an irrelevant team, and boil my list down to my mocking the signing of Willis, once again here is what I said about the pointless Willis signing: "1/16/12 yes inconsequential deal-- problem is NOT that they got Pineiro (or Willis for that matter)..problem is what they did NOT do -- all these meaningless bullpen and bench deals for low-cost garbage generally result in useless garbage (see,e.g. Baez, Schneider, Bruntlett, Herdon, Gload, etc) and Amaro has still failed to improve offense, bench and bullpen in 3 1/2 yrs - an intelligent g.m. does NOT max out his budget (as UncleStosh is correct on this score) by putting ALL his reliever budget into a single overrated and overpaid closer but instead gets multiple quality relivrs .. an intelligent g.m. does not put all his "offense" budget into a non-slugging so-called slugging 1st baseman with the rest of the offensive positions at best avg or below avg offensively and then can't afford a decent hitting 3rd baseman or any real quality on the bench, and major q's in the bullpen ... yes a team can get to the post-season just on the strength of its starting pitching but the Amaro method is 0 for 3 in October and I doubt the numbers will improve as the team is actually getting worse---meanwhile he has also squandered the Phils quality prospcts in his reckless manner of overspending for a few players, trading away all his prospects, while neglecting depth, balance, bench and bullpen ,etc and the proof is in the pudding as he has never won squat"— warbiscuit
- Again proving my point that nobody is gonna reply to a 40 point post. Well, almost nobody. I think it was smoothlic that had you at 50%. So, you're average. I stopped reading after that since everything you say is a repeat. — vafan
- when Rube gave Howard the extension, there were 2 more years to go in his contract -- the only reason to do an early deal is to get some kind of salary discount in return for the player gaining security... not only didn't Rube get a discount but he paid a premium ridiculously assuming that Howard would hit over 45 hrs and 140 rbi's for another 7 years through 2016- an "assumption" that would more likely be made by an 11-year old gawking fan than an intelligent objective adult... any objective observer would expect that Howard would do exactly as he has done given his age, body type, skills, etc --decline, suffer injuries, etc -- and never come close to repeating his early year success when teams didn't yet know how to pitch to him (no fastballs, nothing in strike zone, lefty reliever in any big spot),,,the contract was indefensible not only becuase it was too much money but because it wasn't even necessary for Rube to do any deal yet instead of waiting another 2 years (at which time Howard indeed had a torn achilles and wasn't worth much of anything)— warbiscuit
- I think Amaro is much smarter than you, me and every other poster here. You can second guess his moves after the fact, it's what these boards, in part, are here for. Amaro saw the market 3 years down the road and realized that 8 and 10 year deals were on the horizon. He locked a very good player up for 5 years past his remaining 2 years. Howard was killing it at the time. You say Amaro expected 48 hrs and 140 rbis every season but nobody, not even the most optimistic, would "expect" that kind of production. But, that's what you do - exaggerate to the point where you lose credibility. What Amaro expected was high production. Look at the deals Fielder and Pujols signed this year. Compared to these deals, Amaro got Howard locked up for a relatively short time frame and there is value (higher salary) in that. We all know Howard has not lived up to the new contract, so far. A healthy Ryan Howard changes the Phils lineup in a big way. If you can't admit that than you have zero credibility. I look forward to a 2013 lineup with Young or Ruf or a TBD slugging hitter in the on deck circle behind a healthy Howard. We have not seen the last of Ryan Howard. Flame away. — vafan
- Oswalt went 10-11 with a 3.69 era in 2011 for a team that went 102-60 and thus went 92-49 if you compute their record without him ... in 2011 he was one of the worst players on the team and they carried him ... indeed in 2010 Brett Myers had a much superior season to Oswalt (and was winning for Astros, a team whom Oswalt couldn't buy a win for) so Phils could have just re-signed Myers and done much better than trade 3 prospects for 1/2 year of decent pitchign from Oswalt in 2010..
BETTER YET, they wouldn't have needed to make a costly trade for Oswalt had they simply not given Lee away for nothing 1/2 a year earlier!— warbiscuit
