A Finisher Looking for Something to Finish

Let’s say you have been selected to manage the American League All-Stars and you have to pick your team right now. Remember, your squad has to include at least one player from each team, so--after loading the roster with Yankees and Athletics--you’re faced with picking an Angel.

Let’s see . . . there’s Johnny Ray with that impressive .325 batting average and the 29 RBIs. Now, if he were still a second baseman, you could find a place for him. But, heck, AL outfields are brimming with big-time hitters these days. There are four outfielders with better batting averages, six with more RBIs and about 50 with more homers. (Ray has two.)

Wally Joyner started in the All-Star game as a rookie two years ago, but his run production (15 RBIs) has been almost nonexistent this season. Mike Witt has made the team two years in a row, but the Angel ace has been in a deep hole in ’88. He’s 1-6 and has a 5.48 earned-run average.

But you must pick someone with a halo on his cap, so a close inspection of the statistics--we’re breaking out the magnifying glass here--is in order. And, sure enough, there are some All-Star-like numbers . . . next to an unlikely All-Star candidate named Harvey.

Bryan Harvey is a former furniture mover who wasn’t even an all-star for Howard’s Furniture, a nationally ranked slow-pitch softball team. He’s hardly one of the more recognized names in baseball, but, for the moment, he’s the most effective relief pitcher in the league. His ERA (0.40) is the lowest in the league (among pitchers who have worked 20 or more innings) and opposing hitters have hit only .135 against him, also the lowest in the league.

The only team to score against him, Detroit, pushed across the run when former Angel Gary Pettis singled to center, stole second, took third on Lou Whitaker’s fly out to center and scored on pinch-hitter Pat Sheridan’s fly ball to left.

Harvey is 24 years old. He pitched a total of five innings in the major leagues before the Angels called him up from Edmonton April 21. And he has been almost perfect ever since.

A rookie’s dream come true, right? Not exactly. Harvey may be one of the few Angels having a good season, but he’s not having much fun.

“It would be a lot better if we were winning a few more,” Harvey said. “I mean, we wouldn’t have to be in first place or anything, just doing a little better than this. Then I could feel better about the way I’ve been pitching.”

The Angels have lost five games in a row and a couple of key players to injury. It’s beginning to look like a long, lonely summer in the cellar.

“I can separate my own performance from the team’s in my mind,” Harvey said, “but it would be a lot more fun if we could get off the bottom.”

Harvey is just a rookie--and a polite, soft-spoken one, at that--and he’s not about to point out that if the Angels were just a mediocre team, his numbers (a 2-1 record and 2 saves) probably would be considerably more impressive. It’s important that your team have a lead once in a while if you want to make a living saving games.

Manager Cookie Rojas said: “The way he’s pitching, if we had a few more opportunities to use him, he could have a lot of saves. Unfortunately, we haven’t been in the position to use him as a closer often enough.”

If Harvey does end up in the All-Star game, there will be lots of stories about how he was discovered in an American Legion game in Mooresville, N.C., after he agreed to pitch when the regular pitcher couldn’t make it. And how Angel scout Alex Cosmidis gave him a tryout the next week, clocked him at 93 m.p.h. and signed him on the spot. And how Harvey saved 20 games last year in double-A Midland before being named most valuable player in the Puerto Rican winter league, in which he saved 18 games in 18 chances.

There are lots of kids with good arms in the minors, and some of them get by with a fastball and little else. But the big league success stories seldom feature a pitcher with nothing but a fastball.

In 1986, Harvey became a two-dimensional pitcher--as in fastball and forkball. Actually, he had thrown the forkball before that, but it had this nasty habit of disappearing . . . over the fence.

Joe Coleman, now the Angel bullpen coach and then the organization’s minor league pitching instructor, was working with Harvey in the instructional league when he noticed a flaw in Harvey’s delivery.

“I was watching film and saw that he was too far out front, his body wasn’t catching up with his arm and he was leaving too many pitches up in the strike zone,” Coleman said. “So, just as a hit-or-miss thing, I had him put in the turn to help his body catch up with his arm and create a whipping-like motion.”

“The turn” is a Luis Tiant-style move. Harvey momentarily turns his back to the hitter before coming to the plate. The new delivery helped his fastball because, as Coleman points out, “nobody in his right mind wants to see the guy’s back right before he uncorks a 92-mile-per-hour fastball.”

More important, however, was the effect it had on Harvey’s forkball.

“Before I changed the delivery, the forkball wasn’t doing anything,” Harvey said. “Nothing. Now I feel confident to throw it anytime, no matter what the count is.”

Harvey’s forkball is usually in the 84-m.p.h. range, as quick as the fastball of many major league pitchers.

“The bottom really drops out of that forkball,” catcher Butch Wynegar said, with a hint of awe in his voice. “The kid’s going to be our closer. He’s going to be around for years to come. He’s been the bright spot in what has been a dismal season for us.”

In spring training, Gene Mauch, then the Angel manager, summed up Harvey’s prospects rather succinctly: “There’s no question about his stuff. He just has to throw strikes to make this club.”

As it turned out, Harvey didn’t make the opening-day roster. He was disappointed, but not surprised.

“Donnie Moore was healthy and (DeWayne) Buice was healthy and my arm was tired,” Harvey said. “I had just come out of winter ball and I had no pop.”

Harvey said he regained the “pop” the day before the Angels recalled him. It has been in evidence ever since. He has struck out 20 batters in 22 innings, and he has walked only five.

“He’s really been throwing strikes,” Wynegar said. “I think the questions in the spring were the usual ones you have about a young, hard-throwing minor league pitcher. You can get a lot of minor league hitters to chase those high hard ones, but big league hitters are a lot more disciplined.

“But he’s proven he can spot the fastball. He’s got the really good forkball working now, too, and he’s throwing it for strikes consistently. And he has a good idea what to do with a guy when he has two strikes on him.”

Coleman can’t help but smile when he describes a batter’s predicament when facing Harvey.

“It’s a guessing game,” he says, “and you can’t guess forkball because you’ll never catch up with the fastball. But even if you do guess forkball and get one, you’ve only got a chance of hitting it. It’s got so much downward movement, it’s like a spitter.”

Rojas has been impressed by the young right-hander’s stuff, but he also has been pleasantly surprised by his control and poise.

“He’s just pitched excellent since coming up,” Rojas said. “He’s an aggressive pitcher who goes after the hitters. He doesn’t get tangled up in tough situations, and that’s a good sign to see from a young man like that.”

Of course, Rojas hasn’t seen a good sign in so long, he has almost forgotten what one looks like. He says he looks at his team these days and feels like a guy who has been handed “a rifle with no bullets.”

Harvey could help provide some ammunition, but the Angels need some solid starting pitching and a little offensive support before Harvey can come in and finish them off.

“Hopefully, we’ll get it together,” Harvey said, “and, hopefully, I’ll get some chances to show them I’m their closer.”

In the meantime, he’ll have to settle for seeing how many zeroes he can put on the front end of his earned-run average. And, who knows, he just might get to represent his team in Cincinnati on July 12.