Day Twenty Nine: Jose Paniagua

Like I've said before, the list of pitchers that I have been truly captivated by is pretty short. In Mariners history I would say that the only starters who for a time drew my 100% attention were Freddy and 1992 Dave Fleming. Even Randy, or maybe especially Randy, was mercurial to the point of being confounding. There is one steady exception to this distaste for pitchers, and it's one of the main reasons that the new format of MLB pitching staffs is so fascinating to me. I love middle relievers. I guess now you would call these guys "low leverage relievers" as they are the guys who would either open a game or come in after the starter but before the shutdown guys in the late innings (hard to tell these days). Traditionally you would see these guys bridging the gap between a starter and the 7th inning man. In 2015, the Kansas City Royals basically rode a relief pitching system like this to a World Series championship. Adequate starter (RIP Yordani Ventura) followed by Ryan Madson in the 7th, Kelvin Herrera in the 8th, and Wade Davis in the 9th. The great Yankees squads had Jeff Nelson (7), Mike Stanton (8), and Mo (whenever) as perhaps the very best of these 1,2,3 formats. And the Mariners in 2001 had a dynamic push of the aforementioned Nelly, Arthur Lee Rhodes, and Kaz. So while there are these big dogs that get remembered as the primary members of the leverage innings squad what if Yordani Ventura only goes 4 and a third? Or 5 plus? You can't bring Ryan Madson in for the 6th. It fucks up your whole strategy. So the low leverage guy comes in to clean up the mess. That is the dude that I like. The dude who is super necessary but doesn't get even the minimal spotlight or respect that a 7th inning man might get. Guys like Jose Paniagua.

Jose Paniagua came up with Les Expos in the mid 90s and pitched a little with the big club. He was recruited out of the Dominican by Jesus Alou, who was of course working as a scout for big bro Felipe. The Alous were not only great players (nearly HOFers tbh) but great baseball minds and scouts. They largely built the Expos powerhouse of the 90s through their own development and talent appraisal. So Paniagua was an Alou find, meaning that he was damn good. Nobody who came up through that system wasn't. You can look at the players and their careers and you'll see this born out. Larry Walker will be Zoom (tm) chatting his acceptance speech this July, but there could easily have been 5 HOFers on that Expos roster at any given time (Walker, Grissom, Pedro, Vlad, and Moises Alou are all HOF players if Harold Baines is). Paniagua never got legit time with the Expos and was claimed off waivers by the savvy Mariners front office (not a lie!) in March of 1998. He spent the 98 season in Tacoma and then came up in 99 to play against the big dogs. He didn't disappoint.

That first season of full work, Jose had 59 appearances. They really used to just run guys out there. Only Josh Hader gets used that way these days it seems. Paniagua delivered a great season that year and the following year and struggled down the stretch in 2001. Then he was traded for Jeff Cirillo. His legacy as a Mariner is minimal other than playing for two deep playoff teams (two of only four lol, so I guess that's a pretty strong legacy). But there is a ton of mystique around Jose Paniagua.

Paniagua had tons of movement on his pitches. He threw a fastball that not only had velocity, it moved erratically in the zone. He was at his best throwing this fastball in 2000. It seemed he couldn't be hit when it was zipping this way and that. But at times it seemed that the ball would straighten out. That the movement which made his out-pitch so very effective would simply vanish. I have long had a theory as to why this happened. Jose Paniagua wore a hat with a very curled brim. This is not uncommon amongst big league players. There is nothing outwardly suspicious about wearing a hat that has a significant crease down the middle. But Paniagua used to grab the brim of his hat, right where the crease was heaviest, after pretty much every pitch. If you can find any footage of him (I'll have to look and see if a youtube search of "Jose Paniagua highlights" brings up anything) you will see him routinely doing this in 1999 and 2000, and for the first half of 2001. It was, and still is, my theory that there is some kind of slippery stuff on the bottom crease of his hat. And that he is putting his pitching hand on the brim habitually to get just enough on his fingertips to make his fastball a million dollar pitch.

Now I don't have any proof of this, but he was a almost 2 WAR non-save reliever in 99 and 00 (that's mighty good) and for pretty much the first half of 2001 he was as well. In the 2001 campaign so very many managers were trying to find a way to slow down the stampeding Mariners. They couldn't be stopped, and in baseball that is rare. So there were weird things that only a baseball manager would do to try and trip them up: Arthur Rhodes earrings for one, and stopping Jose Paniagua from going to his hat for another. Some time in early May, Paniagua was asked not to go to the brim of his cap while on the mound by an opposing manager. Now the flood gates had been opened and other managers began to do the same. Paniagua now lost control of his pitch. He couldn't place his fastball any longer. His walk numbers are ridiculous in the first half of the 2001 season and Lou basically stopped using him down the stretch. He was no longer effective. It is my theory that he couldn't throw that mid 90s fastball in the zone anymore because it didn't move without the grease. I have no way of proving this, but Paniagua was out of the league not long after. His final great highlight came on his final exit from a White Sox game when he gave the ump the finger. What a way to finish! I am glad for Jose that he was able to harness his pitch as long as he did.

Note that earlier I called Paniagua's pitch a "million dollar pitch." This is the way I feel about most so called cheating in baseball. Paniagua's labor was exploited from the time he was a child. Certainly his earnings with the Mariners were more than most of us will see, but it wasn't until 2002 and his contract with the Tigers that he earned a million dollars (a drop in the bucket for owner's billions). So yeah, he had to put a little grease (and probably take some steroids) on his ball to get there. Those are  the results of capitalism/US imperialism. Don't knock Jose Paniagua or any other ball player trying to get ahead. Knock the system that requires them to do so. Knock the fact that players from the Dominican are regularly signed for a fraction of what US born players get. Everything that happens is systemic. I will never vilify the worker (and yes, the ball player is still the worker) in favor of management and ownership. It's a testament to how far we have slipped into the abyss of capitalism when we all (myself included!) envision ourselves as the general manager (or worse yet! the commissioner!) rather than the player.