NEWS

By Don Leypoldt

“The little things, made me who I am today,” Good Charlotte sang.

For Adam Ottavino, executing the little things piled up to Rocky Mountain heights.

The 2004 Danbury Westerner is in his third season with the Colorado Rockies; the 6’5” righty from Northeastern will shatter his career high for appearances in 2014.

It could have been easy to predict this success ten summers ago, even though the road Ottavino took to get to “consistent Big League contributor” was full of setbacks and detours.  Ottavino was an incredibly talented, if not erratic freshman, who struck out 49 in seven NECBL starts.  In his second start for Danbury, Ottavino allowed one run and fanned 13 in a dominating win against the Berkshire Dukes.

“That was the first time where I was really pitching every fifth or sixth day as a starter and playing against guys who are some of the better players from around the country,” Ottavino recalled.  “It was the first time that you get outside of your bubble and play against people who you’ve never seen before, and get some slight uptick in competition.  For me, that was important.  

“Maturity-wise, to learn how to handle myself along with playing every day and the travel all around New England.  That’s where I just tried to improve as much as I could as a pitcher, and I think I was able to do that.  It definitely put me in the right direction going forward,” he concluded.

“Adam was a good kid, a quality kid, hard worker,” said former Westerner GM and NECBL commissioner Mario Tiani.  “You knew early on when he was with Danbury that he had the tools to make it.”

Ottavino also benefited from a summer of playing just up I-684 from his native Brooklyn.  “That is one of the reasons I played in Danbury- is because it was so close.  I even got to go home after the games some times and get back the next day,” Ottavino reminded.  “It was a good League and it was definitely beneficial that people from home could come and watch me.”  

By building on the lessons he learned from the NECBL, Ottavino elevated his game from “good college pitcher” to “elite college pitcher.”  He won the America East Pitcher of the Year as a sophomore and had a strong summer afterwards.

“Going into my junior year I had a lot of confidence,” Ottavino felt, “knowing I was the Friday night pitcher and that I was, in my opinion, better than whoever I was pitching against.  Towards the end of that previous summer I started seeing all of the radar guns and that is when I realized that the higher up you go in this game, there is someone always watching you.”

Confidence aside, the big righty started his junior campaign slow out of the gate. “My coach felt I was pitching bad for a few games,” Ottavino said, “so that motivated me to not let any distractions get into my mind by thinking about the Draft or anything like that.  I was able to shut it down the rest of the way and put myself in a good spot to get drafted.  It all worked out.”

He finished the year with 130 strikeouts in just 93.2 innings.  The Cardinals made Ottavino the eighth first rounder in NECBL history.  While he is now firmly entrenched as a Major Leaguer, it wasn’t always the case.

“Even later on in my career, you can see that it took me a long time to learn the lesson of one game at a time,” he admitted.  “I used to try and pitch the whole year in one game and I would kind of get away from myself.  I’ve been able to stop doing that and focus on one day at a time.  I think that junior year was the first year where that lesson started to become pulled out.  It was important for me, as a pitcher, to have that mentality.”  
 
Ottavino progressed nicely through the Minors, earning Florida State League All-Star honors in 2007 and appearing for Italy in the World Baseball Classic in Spring 2009.

But the first rounder struggled mightily.  After five forgettable games in the Big Leagues in 2010, the Cardinals released him at the end of 2011.

“I struggled with some arm issues in ’08, ’09 and ’10 and even though my arm wasn’t where it needed to be I was still learning to pitch and I was at the highest level I had ever been,” Ottavino described.  “There was some failure but the fact I was able to bounce back in the second half of those seasons made me feel like I had it inside of me to pitch well.  I just needed to be more consistent from start to finish.  

“After 2010 when I got a taste of the Big Leagues, I realized that all I had to do was keep the game simple and perfect the small things in my game which would add up to big things.  I’ve been able to do that since,” he concluded.

The lessons of working on the small things accumulated to pay big dividends.  Although he spent all of 2011 in Triple-A and was ultimately released, Ottavino was in the process of putting the pieces together.

“2011 was a tough but an important year for me because I realized you can’t be worried about things you can’t control.  Just control what you can, repeat every start and try to get a little better.  Then when I ended up with the Rockies, and I got switched to the bullpen, I think everything that I learned as a starter really allowed me to succeed in the bullpen because I realized what was working, what wasn’t working and now that I only had one or two innings to attack the hitters, I could do it more efficiently instead of maybe holding things back,” Ottavino realized.  “I became more aggressive and that has really been the biggest thing for me.”

He also developed a slider as a nasty outpitch.  This past April, the Denver Post called the slider “sensational.”  Fangraphs.com ranked it as one of the most valuable relief pitches in baseball in 2013.    The Westerner described how that vicious pitch- thrown in the mid 80s with a number of arm angles- came to be:

“I grew up throwing a curveball.  That was my main breaking pitch.  Then at some point along the line, I realized that hitters weren’t chasing it.  They were seeing it out of my hand really well and readily identifying it as a curveball.  I realized I needed another breaking pitch that looked more like a fastball out my hand.  And that was obviously a slider.  

“I tinkered with a bunch of grips and it started off with me just trying to throw it like a fastball as much as I could in an effort to disguise it.  Once I got the hang of that, I was starting to see some better results.  I kept tinkering to the point where I actually have three different grips now that all do different things.  I try to throw it slightly differently each time.  

“My whole strategy is to not let the hitter see the exact same break more than once.  I want them to see a slight variation because I think that hitters at this level- at the highest level- can almost memorize the pattern of your pitch and make that adjustment intuitively whereas I think when I was younger, I could just throw breaking balls to change things up and keep them off balance.  

“It’s also taking your catch seriously.  Once you start doing that, you try and improve it by 30 or 40 throws and catch every day.  That is when I saw my pitches become a little sharper, is when I was getting the most out of my practice time.  My slider is no exception to that rule.  I just keep tinkering with it until I felt something that felt comfortable for me.  And that is the story.”

Developing the slider and building on accumulated lessons have cemented Ottavino as a bullpen stalwart for the Rockies.  He ranked seventh in the Majors with 79 relief innings in 2012, a year where he went 5-1.  In 2013, Ottavino posted a sparkling 2.64 ERA- including a 2.00 ERA in 45 innings at Coors Field.

“(Coors) is a challenge but I think it is more of a challenge if you give free stuff to the other team like walks and hit batters in really good counts.  I try to get ahead in the count all of the time, not be afraid of early contact and realize that I have a good defense behind me,” Ottavino stated.  “I try to force them to do something early in the count, and if not, then they’ll be in a situation where they can’t let it slide if they’re down 0-2 or 1-2.  

“That is the truth everywhere, but at this ballpark, it is especially true.  The outfield is so big that you’re not rewarded for good pitches as much since swings sometimes result in hits.  An extra base hit is just a moment away.  You just have to forget about that take it one pitch at a time and try and stay ahead.”

Ottavino appeared in his 50th game on July 25th; he needs just two appearances to shatter his personal best.  And though he has yet to experience “Rock-tober” and post-season baseball, he still has created many Mile High-lights:

“I’ve had some good games where I’ve come in with the bases loaded in LA or San Francisco or places like that and the crowd is real loud and you have to get out of a jam,” he said.  “That is really what I look for: coming in in the big moment of the game and sitting them down.”

Tweaks and little lessons mean that Ottavino’s opposing batters are sitting down in increasing numbers.

Adam Ottavino’s Advice to the 2014 NECBL: “The big thing was that when I pitched in Danbury I wasn’t nearly as good as what I would eventually become.  I don’t think I am as good now as I eventually will become.  I think throughout the year I played with a lot of talented players who stayed the same ability wise.  I knew at that time that I had talent but I also knew that I wasn’t as good of a pitcher as I could be.  

“I kept trying to work, on little things like getting ahead in the count or the consistency of my delivery or the strength of my mind during the game.  That, over time, might not seem like (much), but you can get much better if you just try and get a little better at a time.  It just adds up over a long period time.  I think the lesson is the finish line isn’t when you’re 19 or 20 years old.  It’s when you are 23, 24, 25 when you could be getting the opportunity to play in the Big Leagues.  That is when you need to be ready to walk through that door.  You have to really worry about where you’re at when you are 18 or 19 years old because it’s definitely not the finish line.”
 
 (Photo credit: Northeastern University)