Starting Over: Back From Elbow Woes, What Will Athletics' Mengden's Role Be?
Daniel Mengden has made 47 starts for the Oakland A’s over the last four seasons.
For a little perspective, that’s more than any other A’s starter other than Sean Manaea, who has 85 starts for the A’s in that period.
Mike Fiers (43), Chris Bassitt (37) and Frankie Montas (29) have fewer Oakland starts than Mengden over that span, and A.J. Puk and Jesus Luzardo have exactly none.
Heading into the 2020 season, however, it’s up in the air if Mengden will get even one start.
Part of that is because of health – surgeons performed an elbow debridement and he had a small bone spur shaved at the beginning of spring training. He would have started the season on the injured list had the season begun on time, but he’s had time to recover.
Mostly, however, it’s about the turnover in the staff. Montas is back from suspension. Manaea is back from injury. For Puk and Luzardo, a pair of hard-throwing left-handers ranked among the best prospects in the game, it’s their time, although Luzardo’s time had been on hold by testing positive for the COVID-19 coronavirus, but he was cleared to rejoin the team Friday.
So Mengden is going to have to do what Bassitt has done. That’s to make peace with being used as a starter or a reliever. It’s paying off for Bassitt, who started 25 times for the A’s last year with the rotation a patchwork quilt, and who could begin the 2020 season in the rotation until Luzardo is back and ready to go.
“Daniel is going to have to go through that, and have to accept that if he wants to excel,” manager Bob Melvin said with full confidence that Mengden is on board with that.
So when Mengden says, “I’d much rather be a starter,” believe him. But he wants to contribute to a Major League winner, and if that means following in Bassitt’s footsteps and accepting the dual role, so be it.
“I always try to view it as, `How can I help my team win a championship this year?'” Mengden said. “So, for me, it doesn’t matter what my role is. If I’m a starter, that’s great, I want to be a starter. But if my role is in the bullpen as a long guy, bridge guy, whatever you want to call it, that’s something I am willing to do, sacrifice for the team and eat innings.”
The man with the mustache is not going to make it easy on any of the pitchers in front of him. He spent his recovery time tweaking his delivery, opting for a more compact delivery and release. And the results in workouts so far have been positive.
“The motion is more conducive to throwing strikes and being around the plate,” Melvin said. “and I think that’s what Daniel is trying to create.”
Mengden won’t promise that A’s watcher won’t see him double pump during his delivery, but its going to be less of a feature than it’s been in the past.
“Now the elbow feels good,” he said in a video conference call Thursday. “Y’all can clean up mechanics to be a little more fluid and not have as much movement back and forth, trying to keep it smooth and repeatable.
“On the windup and delivery, it was just cleaning up the motion a little bit and making it a little shorter, a little cleaner.”
Pitching coach Scott Emerson noticed. He couldn’t help it. Mengden repeatedly sent his coach video of his workouts to let him know how he was doing.
“He did it through the whole process,” Emerson said. “His delivery looks a little different, but his timing his mechanisms are pretty much the same. But it’s a little quicker pace.”
Now it remains to be seen if that pace will be seen coming out of the bullpen or making the occasional start.
Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3
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