PHOENIX — Last summer, he was pitching in a pop-up league against hitters whom, for the most part, you haven’t heard of. You probably don’t know the league — the Constellation Energy League — either.
Sunday it was a bit more familiar. There were Mookie Betts, Corey Seager and A.J. Pollock at the top of the Dodgers lineup. It kept going with Cody Bellinger and Max Muncy.
If you want to test your stuff, test whether you can still do this at 37, test whether an arm that hasn’t pitched in the big leagues in nearly five years has juice, the defending World Series champs are not a bad barometer.
“It speeds up the learning curve, I guess you could say,” Scott Kazmir said after he mostly passed that test. “Just being out there and facing these hitters, you get a lot of feedback on how your stuff plays. Looking at the outing, there’s a couple of pitches that I feel like I wanted back. … But I felt good today.”
The outing was mostly encouraging and, again, familiar. He was facing the same Dodgers that he last pitched with, in 2016. He and Seager exchanged some friendly words when Kazmir was slow to cover first, Tommy La Stella’s dive and sprint to first bailing him out.
And he was facing that team while wearing the familiar label of “starter.” It was Kazmir’s first start of the spring league, and while he’s a candidate as a bullpen long man, it’s expected he will open in Sacramento and continue to stretch out as a potential rotation answer.
The results were mixed. He went three innings and went over 40 pitches, with a fastball that the stadium gun registered at 90-92 mph. His cutter may have been his best pitch, although a backed-up four-seamer sat Betts down. And he left a few changeups up in the zone, without his best command.
Seager crushed a homer to center in the first, and Keibert Ruiz jumped on a hanging change for a second-inning RBI single. Those were the only hits and only runs he allowed in his three frames while striking out four and walking one.
“I thought he made some good pitches and moved the ball up and down well,” said Buster Posey, who returned to the lineup and was behind the plate. “… All in all, I thought he looks pretty good.”
Gabe Kapler was tempted to let him go out for the fourth and face Muncy and Bellinger again, but they remained conservative and will allow him time.
“I thought he came out and attacked,” the manager said after the 10-4 with over the Dodgers at Camelback Ranch. “I thought he was aggressive, his fastball had life to it, and the evidence of that were some early swings and misses from Dodgers hitters. Thought he stayed poised and maintained his stuff throughout the outing.”
While Kapler said the Giants are open to whether Kazmir becomes a reliever or starter, they’re definitely building him up. Complicating that build-up will be the lack of Triple-A to start the year. There will be an alternate site, presumably in Sacramento, and Kazmir is not worried about getting ready without facing opposing hitters from other teams.
There will be Giants hitters to throw to, and especially after he got revved up for the Constellation Energy League, he thinks he’ll be OK.
“Facing hitters is facing hitters,” Kazmir said, now under two weeks away from Opening Day. “You’re going to have that little bit of adrenaline when you’re facing big-league hitters like I faced today, but at the same time, it’s getting hitters out. As long as you’re able to have a count and have a guy out there at the plate that’s trying to get ahead, I feel like I get a lot out of it.”