Dunedin, Fla — It’s an inspirational story in search of a happy ending, and no one would like to write the final chapter more than the Toronto Blue Jays’ Dustin McGowan.
But now the only club that the big, hard-throwing, always injured right-hander has ever known is sending a message — start typing.
“We want him in the mindset of let’s go, compete. See what you’ve got,” said Blue Jays manager John Gibbons Tuesday. “I know he’s tired of being on the DL and wants to get off, so let’s go for it.
“I want his mindset to be: ‘I’m here to help this team. I still have a career left. Sometime you get in that rut, you’re on the DL and that’s all you know. We still like him, he’s not a forgotten guy …he can help us.
McGowan, who turns 31 later this month, took a small, yet significant step to being pitcher again on a bright Florida morning when he made 20 throws — mostly easy fastballs in the 85-mile-an-hour range with a few changeups mixed in — to Blue Jays bullpen catcher Alex Andreopoulos under the watchful eye of pitching coach Pete Walker and bullpen coach Pat Hentgen.
And the good news?
His electric right arm didn’t short circuit. He did his work, pitching off a mound for the first time in 12 months after having last season end early due to a foot injury and a third shoulder procedure.
He kept the ball down and one more time teased everyone who watched with what could be if he could just repeat his powerful, easy motion for a few seasons without something fraying or going snap, crackle or pop.
“I went after it a little bit,” he said afterwards. “You gotta kind of do it to see how you recover.”
That will always be the measure for McGowan. If he can come out Wednesday and play a comfortable game of catch with just normal soreness, that will be a good day. That will allow him to be scheduled for another bullpen session and then maybe a simulated game and then maybe a minor league appearance and then — maybe — a chance to step in against major leaguers.
He’s had three shoulder operations, an elbow reconstruction and a knee surgery interrupt a professional career that has yielded a 20-24 big-league record and 4.80 ERA in 80 appearances over five seasons, 60 of them starts.
“I was nervous going up there to throw, but once you start doing it, it’s like riding a bike,” he said. “You’ve been doing it your whole life, it’s like riding a bike again.”
But in McGowan’s case the bike’s rims are warped, there’s a headwind and a hill ahead that looks more like a cliff.
He’s been here before, whether it was coming back from Tommy John surgery in 2004 or his first shoulder surgery in 2008 or knee surgery in 2009.
How long has McGowan been rattling around the Toronto Blue Jays organization as bundle of raw pitching potential held together by sutures?
Walker and McGowan were teammates in 2005. When Hentgen was making his comeback in 2004 with the Jays they were in training camp together.
McGowan’s path has been so long and winding since the Jays drafted him in the first round in 2000 that the last time he was deemed on his way — the summer of 2008 — John Gibbons was about to get fired.
Now Gibbons is trying to fire McGowan up. The pitcher is out of options — he’s either going to make the club out of spring training, get traded or make a return to the disabled list where the Jays may be able to stash him until he can push for a job on a crowded pitching staff in a relief role.
But Gibbons is clear that he wants McGowan to push himself and push others.
If it means that some other hopefuls in what is going to be a very competitive battle for perhaps two middle-relief spots get their games in gear — Brett Cecil and Jeremy Jeffress take note — so be it.
If it means that the door is open for a guy with talent but so far little in the way of luck, even better.
The Jays have treated McGowan well. He’s in the first year of a two-year contract extension worth $3 million while the club has an option for 2015 for $4 million that includes a $500,000 buyout.
The security for a guy who has never been up to the physical part of the job is partly because he’s a good citizen and a great example of perseverance, but in larger part because he can do things that other guys can’t, like hit 97 on a radar gun one moment and yank a change-up like it’s on a string the next.
And if they ever need a reminder of the risks of giving up on a talented, injury-prone pitcher too soon, they can watch video of Chris Carpenter winning the World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals.
“Stuff-wise — fastball, curveball, change — he was one of the best I’ve ever caught,” says Andreopoulos who has seen a lot of talent come and go in his 10 years as the Jays bullpen catcher. “Obviously Doc is one of the best pitchers of all time and A.J. Burnett was good and B.J. Ryan was good — we’ve had a lot of guys. But on pure stuff Dustin is probably No. 1.”
His gifts come from another place, but McGowan’s been chasing them for most of his professional career. This is the year he and the Blue Jays hope he can catch them.
“Thirteen years went by pretty quick,” McGowan said of a career that’s had a novel’s worth of minor tragedies already, but is in need of an uplifting ending.
“It’s been good but a lot of bad mixed in there with it,” he says, with no choice but to be philosophical.
“It’s life.”