A Happy Camper : Underrated at Rio Mesa, and Overlooked in Draft, Ayala Makes It in Seattle

If you want to find someone who pitched in a major league tryout camp, you can look just about anywhere.

Except in the major leagues.

Which brings us to Bobby Ayala, the likely stopper in the Seattle Mariners’ bullpen this season.

Ayala was an all-state pitcher as a senior at Rio Mesa High in 1988. But scouts overlooked him. About 1,500 players were drafted in 1988, and none of them was Bobby Ayala.

Ayala seems to believe that scouts only watched Rio Mesa on Tuesdays, and he pitched on Fridays.

Whatever the reason, Ayala was undeterred. He showed up a few weeks after the draft at the Cincinnati Reds’ annual open tryout in Thousand Oaks. It was a gathering of dreamers, those who were certain the scouts were wrong.

“I knew I was going to go there and surprise some scouts because I had good stuff,” Ayala said during a break at the Mariners’ spring training complex last week. “All I had to do was show I can pitch.”

Ayala threw to four batters, retiring them all.

Afterward, a scout asked him how he might feel about playing professional baseball. Less than a week later, Ayala was headed for the Reds’ minor league camp in Kissimee, Fla.

Ayala was the only one signed of the 100 players or so who showed up in Thousand Oaks that morning. Ayala, 24, has continued to defy the odds by earning a spot on a major league roster.

He worked his way steadily through the Reds’ system, finally jumping from double A to the majors in September, 1992, when he made five starts for the Reds and Manager Lou Piniella.

Piniella was impressed. Then he was fired.

He was hired last year to manage the Mariners. As Piniella spent the season trying to coax saves out of the bullpen with the worst earned-run average (4.74) in the American League, Ayala was spending his time as a spot starter for the Reds.

Ayala was 7-10 with a 5.60 earned-run average. Hardly impressive numbers, but when the Mariners needed relief help, Piniella remembered Ayala’s arm.

In a move also dictated by money, the Mariners sent high-priced right-hander Erik Hanson and second baseman Bret Boone to the Reds for Ayala and catcher Dan Wilson on Nov. 2.

“It was surprising,” Ayala said. “I didn’t think I’d ever get traded from the Reds. But I thought about it for a while and I thought this was for the better.”

Ayala did not immediately think of himself as the closer. But two weeks after the trade, oft-injured reliever Norm Charlton was released, clearing a path for Ayala.

“We feel he’s going to develop into an outstanding pitcher,” Piniella said. “We think he’s got closer stuff. He’s going to get the opportunity.”

As spring training began, Ayala was involved in a three-way closer race with Jeff Nelson and Bobby Thigpen, who holds the major league record for saves in a season (57 in 1990) but has struggled the last two seasons.

With the season days away, Ayala seems to have won the job.

“We were hoping that he’d show us that he might be able to handle the late-inning relief and so far he’s done that,” Mariner pitching coach Sammy Ellis said. “He’s got the stuff to do it.”

Another part of Ayala’s transformation from Reds’ spot starter to Mariners’ closer is his beard.

Players are not allowed to wear facial hair with the Reds, so the first thing Ayala did when he was traded was grow a fu manchu.

“I didn’t even recognize him when I walked in at first,” said Wilson, a teammate of Ayala’s for several years in the Cincinnati organization. “But that’s Bobby. That’s part of his game.”

Ayala said he wanted to look menacing. Just like Rod Beck, Bryan Harvey and Dennis Eckersley. All are top closers who have some sort of facial hair.

“Some pitchers like to have a mean look,” Ayala said. “It’s good to intimidate the hitters.”

Ayala’s beard intimidates no one. His split-finger fastball, which he’s thrown without injury since high school, is another story.

“He’s got a nasty splitter,” Ellis said. “He seems to have that aggressive demeanor on the mound. . . . He’s a street-wise kid from Southern California. He seems to be something of a kamikaze pilot type of pitcher, and that is the kind of guy you need in short relief.”

All the Mariners’ feelings about Ayala being a closer are just that, feelings. They have little evidence that he can do the job.

He saved just 10 games in the minors and three last season. He has never been a regular closer.

“We’re hoping, hoping dearly, that Bobby will show us he can handle that role,” Ellis said. “We won’t know whether he can really handle it until the bell rings and he gets out there with a one- or two-run lead in the ninth inning. None of us knows. We don’t know. He doesn’t know.

“It just looks like he can handle it.”

Ayala believes he can. This is a guy who doesn’t lack confidence. Talk to him for 15 minutes and he will mention that he has a “good, live arm” 15 times.

But he isn’t cocky. He concedes he still has plenty to learn about being a closer. He also admits he wasn’t always certain he would wind up in the majors.

“It’s been a surprise for me, a guy not getting drafted, going to a tryout camp and working his way up through the minors and proving he can pitch,” Ayala said. “Coming up to the big leagues within about four years. It’s been a big surprise to me.”