Cam Bedrosian has blossomed into the late-inning reliever the Angels envisioned
No matter how much Cam Bedrosian struggled in his first two seasons with the Angels — and there were plenty of rough nights, as his 5.81 earned-run average in 51 games in 2014-15 will attest — his father, former Cy Young Award winner Steve Bedrosian, sent him the same text message after every appearance:
“You’re a big leaguer. You belong there.”
It wasn’t until May 2 of this season that Bedrosian, a 24-year-old right-hander with a 96-mph fastball and nasty slider befitting his pitching pedigree, began to believe it.
With the Angels trailing Milwaukee, 7-2, in Miller Park, Bedrosian replaced Greg Mahle in the sixth inning. It was Bedrosian’s third appearance since a late-April promotion from triple A that marked the ninth time in two years he had shuttled between the minor leagues and big leagues.
Bedrosian gave up a run-scoring infield single to Ryan Braun. Then he struck out Jonathan Lucroy and Chris Carter to end the sixth and all three batters — Kirk Nieuwenhuis, Aaron Hill and Yadiel Rivera — in the seventh.
“I think that was the first time I struck out the side in the big leagues,” Bedrosian said. “And then to get two more on top of that … that was a big confidence booster right there. To strike out five guys in a row, you sit back and think, ‘All right, I’ve got the stuff, so just do it.’ ”
Bedrosian continued to thrive in low-leverage situations, but when injuries sidelined closer Huston Street for most of May and setup man Joe Smith for much of June, he gravitated toward the back of the bullpen.
Bedrosian has been so dominant since early June, giving up no runs and nine hits, striking out 20 and walking five in 18 2/3 innings over 20 games, that he replaced Smith as the team’s primary setup man before the All-Star break.
As he watched his son establish a foothold in the big leagues after two tenuous seasons, it became clear to Steve Bedrosian, who notched 184 saves in 14 major league seasons, that those five strikeouts against the Brewers were a turning point to a season and, perhaps, a career.
“He got some big hitters out that day in Milwaukee, and he started attacking guys, spotting the fastball better,” Steve Bedrosian, now 58, said by phone from the family farm in Senoia, Ga. “He started to gain some confidence, that feeling that he belongs here. I think that was the last missing ingredient.”
Bedrosian enters a weekend series at Houston with a 1-0 record and 1.03 ERA in 39 games, and with Street’s ERA at 5.03, an argument can be made that Bedrosian is the team’s best reliever.
“I think the coaching staff did a good job of utilizing him early on, not throwing him into the fire, building that confidence and trust,” Street said. “Everybody sees the talent. No one questions that. And I think the mentality is definitely there.”
Some advice from Street and Smith helped Bedrosian blossom into the late-inning reliever the Angels envisioned when they selected him in the first round of the 2010 draft.
“They told me to try to enjoy it a lot more and not put so much pressure on myself,” Bedrosian said. “It was tough living out of a suitcase. I did that for two years, and it’s definitely a little stressful. I’m glad now to have a base, to be stationary.”
Velocity has never been a problem for Bedrosian, whose fastball has averaged 95.2 mph this season. The consistency of his slider, which Bedrosian says “is almost slurvish,” and the effectiveness of his changeup have been issues.
Bedrosian settled on a slider grip his father taught him last winter, “and it seems to be coming out of my hand fairly similar to my fastball, with some depth and right-to-left action,” Bedrosian said. “I’m throwing it for good, quality strikes.”
And the changeup? Steve Bedrosian insists that Cam “has a real good one,” but Cam hasn’t thrown it once this season.
“I kept trying to throw it over the years, I’ve tried a bunch of different grips, and honestly, I felt guys were on it, and it was just a crappy fastball,” Bedrosian said. “So I decided at the beginning of the year to scrap it, work on the fastball and slider and see what happened. It’s going well so far.”
So well that Bedrosian is pitching almost exclusively in the late innings of games in which the Angels hold narrow leads, a pressure-packed role that doesn’t seem to faze him.
“The easiest part about pitching when you’re behind or have a huge lead is you very rarely have the feeling that you cost the team the game,” said Street, who has 323 career saves. “And the hardest part about pitching consistently at the end of the game is that almost every time you have a bad day, you have that feeling.
“You have to reconcile the fact that you’re going to have bad stretches, bad games, but it doesn’t make you a bad player. The guys I’ve seen who can’t rebound from those games are the guys who never make it. … But I think Cam is up for that challenge. We all believe he can and will pitch in those situations.”
Twitter: @MikeDiGiovanna
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