Phils' Baez seeks to put lost season behind him

CLEARWATER, Fla. - Sometimes, the season just has to end. Sometimes, it's best to forget what happened, go home, watch your 6- and 4-year-old daughters practice ballet and ride horses.

"You know, they're getting bigger," Danys Baez said. "I have to spend more time with them."

He did it to relax this winter. Last season forced Baez to question just about everything in his baseball life. He remembers frequently asking himself, "What else can I do? Who else can I talk to?"

A lot of people came to Baez, he said, with suggestions on how to stay sharp despite fewer opportunities. It's a vicious cycle: Baez does poorly, the chances for reprieve diminish. The longer he goes between outings, the more he thinks and the less confident he is. The worse it becomes.

"But that's not an excuse either," Baez said. "We're professionals."

The 33-year-old righthander enters the second year of his $5.25 million deal as a forgotten member of the Phillies bullpen; hardly a surprise since he went months without pitching in a relevant game. The season ended with Baez having logged 472/3 innings - a career low - and a 5.48 ERA. He was done before his teammates, excluded from the postseason roster in both rounds.

The role for Baez will likely be the same as in 2010, so there must be a learning curve or he will suffer a fate worse than irrelevancy in the Phillies' bullpen. Before the team acquired another ace pitcher, the bullpen already threw the fewest innings of any in the National League.

In other words, Baez must take advantage of those limited opportunities to survive.

"It was a big season, learning-wise, for me," Baez said. "Mentally, professionally and physically, it was a big lesson. I think it will help me a lot this year."

The problem, pitching coach Rich Dubee said, lies within Baez's fastball control. The velocity was not an issue; Baez threw it at an average speed of 93.9 m.p.h. according to pitch f/x data from Baseball Info Solutions.

Baez averaged 77 innings per season in his first nine seasons and traditionally worked the later innings of games. He was unprepared for his role with the Phillies, which usually came with irregular work. His command was what suffered most.

"You don't have the same confidence to throw the ball down or away," Baez said. "Most of the time, you want to be on top of the plate because you don't want to walk people either."

And even with that mentality, Baez walked 4.3 batters per nine innings, among the highest rates of his career. For Dubee, the solution sounds simpler than it actually is.

"He's got to get consistency in pitching down in the zone," the pitching coach said. "When he's down in the zone, you see him getting a lot of balls chopped back to him."

There was one piece of advice he's taking from the end of 2010 into 2011. When the gap between appearances lengthened, Baez tried to throw off a mound every other day instead of doing his side work on flat ground. The feel of the mound was something he lacked on a regular basis.

It's a small sample size, but after that adjustment, Baez appeared in eight games from Aug. 12 to Oct. 2 and allowed just one run while cutting down his walks.

But that was just a blip of success in what was a lost season. Baez takes solace in one fact.

"It's over," Baez said. "There's nothing I can do about it."