What’s Left for Magrane? : Angels Have Few Chances Remaining for Former Star Beset by Pitching Injuries

You watch Joe Magrane get roughed up by aspiring Seattle Mariners in a spring training B game and it seems hard to believe this is the same pitcher who started Game 7 of the 1987 World Series for the St. Louis Cardinals.

“I think about guys I came up with like (the Atlanta Braves’) Tom Glavine and Greg Maddux and wonder what might have been without the two surgeries,” said Magrane, a left-hander struggling for a job on the Angel staff.

“But I don’t spend too much time dwelling on it. I just have to make the best use of what I have now.”

Which isn’t much. A total reconstruction of Magrane’s elbow robbed him of his fastball in 1991. Then arthroscopic surgery on the same elbow last spring helped knock him out of the Angel rotation.

An off-season car accident, in which Magrane suffered broken ribs, a concussion and a deep cut and torn tendon in--where else?--his left elbow, prevented Magrane from pitching during the winter and developing the arm strength he needs to regain major league form.

And now this physically imposing, 6-foot-6, 230-pound left-hander, who looks as if he could blow fastballs by hitters, is relying on an assortment of Tommy John-like off-speed and breaking pitches, hoping to show the Angels he’s not a bust.

“I asked the plastic surgeon (who repaired the left elbow in October) to check to see if there was a magnet in there or something,” said Magrane, 30. “This is getting ridiculous. That elbow has been through just about everything.

“They say left-handed people tend to sustain more accidents or injuries than right-handers. I don’t know if that’s because we’re living in a right-handed world and everything is backward for us, or what. But I’m starting to develop a consensus on that.”

Another consensus, among many Angel fans, is that former General Manager Whitey Herzog, who managed Magrane at St. Louis, made a colossal mistake when he signed Magrane to a two-year, $3.5-million guaranteed contract in September 1993.

Magrane had missed all but five games in 1991 and ’92 and was released by the Cardinals the following August after going 8-10 with a 4.97 earned-run average.

Herzog liked to hire his old St. Louis buddies--Ken Oberkfell and John Morris were the other ex-Cardinals he brought to Anaheim--but what could he have been thinking with Magrane?

Even though Magrane was relatively sound in ‘93, any pitcher who undergoes a complete reconstruction of his elbow is generally considered fragile goods.

Magrane pitched fairly well for the Angels in the final two months of ‘93, going 3-2 with a 3.94 ERA in eight starts, but developed more arm problems the next spring. He was hit hard in 11 starts after the arthroscopic surgery, going 2-5 with a 6.64 ERA.

Last July, Angel Manager Marcel Lachemann demoted Magrane to the bullpen, where he had a 10.38 ERA as a reliever and was never used in a game the Angels won.

The Angels were rebuffed in their efforts to buy out Magrane’s contract during the off-season and had no luck trying to trade him.

So, guess who’s back in camp this spring?

“I know I’m not done, washed up, over with,” said Magrane, who is guaranteed $1.5 million this season even if he does not make the team. “I’m not a No. 1 starter anymore, but if I’m getting all my pitches over, I can be highly successful and make any team feel they wouldn’t be afraid of using me.”

Lachemann appears to be hedging. Magrane’s fastball has had no zip this spring and he’s having trouble getting his breaking pitches over the plate. After Magrane gave up four runs on four hits in three innings of Monday’s B game, Lachemann said: “He didn’t miss many bats.”

Magrane has a slim chance of earning a starting spot in a rotation led by left-handers Mark Langston, Chuck Finley and Brian Anderson, but since the Angels are beginning the season with an expanded roster and a 13-man pitching staff, he might have a shot at a long-relief role.

If Magrane doesn’t make the team, he said he’d like to “try my luck elsewhere,” implying that he might be open to a buyout of his contract to gain free agency.

“To feel the doubt in my peers’ minds was very difficult to adjust to,” Magrane said. “This is the first time I’ve really had to win a job--usually that’s decided beforehand. It’s definitely a challenge, especially with a three-week spring, but I wouldn’t be here if I didn’t feel capable.”

Magrane was more than capable in the late 1980s. He went 18-9 with a 2.91 ERA and 127 strikeouts for the Cardinals in 1989 after going 5-9 with a National League-leading 2.18 ERA in ’88.

A first-round pick of the Cardinals in 1985, Magrane made it to the big leagues in less than three seasons, helping St. Louis win the NL East with a 9-7 record and a 3.54 ERA in 1987.

He was bombed in Game 1 of the ’87 World Series by the Minnesota Twins but came back in Game 7, yielding only five hits and striking out four before being pulled with a 2-1 lead in the fifth inning.

Herzog, not wanting Magrane to face Minnesota’s Kirby Puckett, replaced the lefty with Danny Cox, who gave up the tying run in a game the Cardinals eventually lost, 4-2, in the Metrodome.

“Before the game, Whitey said if I win he’ll get the old man (Cardinal owner August Busch) to buy me a Porsche,” Magrane said. “I said, ‘How about a BMW?’ and he said, ‘You got it.’

“When he came to the mound to take me out, I told him I felt fine. He said, ‘I ain’t gonna let no . . . rookie decide the seventh game of the World Series.’ So I said, ‘What does this do to the car deal?’ And he said, ‘Get the hell out of here!’

“Everyone thinks those mound conversations are high-level, secretive talks, and that one was anything but.”

Magrane said he told Herzog years later that he thinks the manager made a mistake by taking him out of that game.

“I’ll be sitting around a campfire whittling 30 years from now and wondering what might have happened,” Magrane said. “But regardless of the outcome, I feel very fortunate to have played in the World Series. It’s a cliche, but a lot of great players never had that chance.”