How Nolan Ryan and Randy Johnson are Impacting 2020 A's Starting Rotation
In September of 1992, Randy Johnson was a hard-throwing beast of a man, an imposing 6-foot-10 but with no evident control of the strike zone. He’d finish the season having pitched in 130 career games, 129 of them starts.
He came out of the year just 49-48 with a 3.95 4.01 ERA for the Expos and the Mariners. In 818 career innings, he had 818 career strikeouts. And a ghastly 519 walks.
Clearly, he wasn’t going anywhere fast.
Then he sat down one September day to talk baseball with the Rangers’ Nolan Ryan. Two days earlier, Johnson had just walked eight and given up six runs in 6.1 innings to the A’s in the Coliseum. He was 11-13 with a 4.09 ERA and floundering.
Ryan had just finished his workout and was walking by when Johnson reached out. Ryan, and later Rangers’ pitching coach Tom House, both talked about mechanics, about the mental game, about workouts and about success.
It was as if the seas had parted and the blinders had been lifted. Baseball would never be the same. Johnson went on to pitch another decade and a half, going 254-118 with a 3.13 ERA and 4,057 strikeouts. Oh, yeah. He won five Cy Young Awards between 1995-2002.
Without Ryan’s help, Johnson probably never would have gotten there, or anywhere close to there.
<blockquote class="twitter-tweet"><p lang="en" dir="ltr">Randy Johnson and A.J. Puk having a chat <a href="https://t.co/pHhpbs0dPQ">pic.twitter.com/pHhpbs0dPQ</a></p>— Martín Gallegos (@MartinJGallegos) <a href="https://twitter.com/MartinJGallegos/status/1229108534568050689?ref_src=twsrc%5Etfw">February 16, 2020</a></blockquote> <script async src="https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js" charset="utf-8"></script>
Fast forward to 2020, where it’s time for Johnson to pay it forward. He dropped by the A’s spring camp last week and spent time with some of the A’s kiddie corps – pitchers A.J. Puk, Sean Manaea, Jesus Luzardo and Frankie Montas.
Who knows who will profit the most, but Puk, looks the part. He is also left-handed, also throws bullets and is 6-foot-7 with long shaggy hair. It’s worth noting that one of his nicknames is Andy Johnson (for A.J. and for the fact that he looks a whole lot like a young Big Unit.
(Before you ask, the nickname “Little Unit” was already taken, given to 6-foot-11 lefty Ryan Anderson who was with the Mariners just after Johnson left the Mariners in 1997 and who reminded everyone of the Big Unit both in size and style).
A’s manager Bob Melvin worked with Johnson with the Diamondbacks in 2007-08. The two have remained close; this is the second time in three years that Melvin has invited Johnson to talk. Two years ago, it was mostly just with Puk. This time around, Johnson seemed more than happy to spread the wealth.
“He’s eager to give,” Melvin said of Johnson. “Maybe [he isn’t] the most open guy in the world. But he couldn’t be more open than he is right now. He obviously sees the comparisons, he loves left-handed pitchers. He understands how to work hard, because it wasn’t easy for him.”
After the Sunday workout, Johnson had a long chatting session with the three A’s lefty starters – Puk, Manaea and Luzardo, all of whom were frankly thrilled for the time and attention. And there’s a chance that what they’ve learned will be part of success for the young A’s going forward. That’s the hope, anyway.
And that’s the point of the pay-it-forward part of baseball. It was almost three decades ago that Johnson felt that thrill learning from Nolan Ryan. Now it’s his turn to give back. And in two decades or so, maybe one of the A’s starters will be able to follow suit by passing along the inner game to a new generation.
