"Buddy Ball good enough for Braves...Given chance with Atlanta, journeyman continues to win" -- August 7, 2007

By Caleb Breakey/MLB.com


NEW YORK -- Facing the top team in the National League East and needing a win to unease those same Mets, the Braves handed the ball to their Buddy.

Out of nowhere -- Korea, where he last pitched professionally, to be precise -- this pitcher,
Buddy Carlyle, who carries a demeanor akin to his name, has given the Braves a boost in the hot summer months.

Despite pitching in only his 13th game this season, Carlyle picked up his seventh win by holding the Mets to three runs over five innings in a 7-3 victory on Tuesday at Shea Stadium.

"Another good ballgame," manager Bobby Cox said. "He started bending a little bit, but he didn't break."

The win came amid a playoff-type atmosphere. Carlyle, however, said his experience in past Minor League stretch runs helped prepare him for such intensity.

He just doesn't seem to get rattled, doesn't seem to get flustered.

"To me, he's the [team] MVP ... he's faced some tough lineups for us," right fielder Jeff Francoeur said. "He's not facing the last-place teams. He's beat the Mets, he's beat the Padres. He's beat some good teams, and we feel confident with him."

Carlyle has waiting years for this success. Batters hit the now-29-year-old hard in 1999, when he started seven games as a rookie for the Padres, and offenses continued to pummel his pitches the following year.

After those two brief seasons in the Majors, Carlyle waited until 2005 for another shot, this time with the Dodgers.

But Carlyle didn't stick with Los Angeles and was sent globetrotting in search of work. The journey took Carlyle to Japan and most recently Korea before the Braves took a chance on the 6-foot-3, 185-pound hurler this offseason.

Carlyle has responded by posting a 7-3 record and 4.28 ERA in 13 appearances, and all of this after juggling his own self doubt about whether he could really compete with the top arms in world.

"Sometimes it crosses your mind," he said.

His surfacing in the Braves' rotation hasn't been dumb luck, though. Carlyle said he's changed his mechanics and worked on a cutter over the past few years.

But the main adjustment has been in his thinking. He had to learn what kind of pitcher he was.

"Pitchers, when they're in their low 20s, I don't think you have an idea," Carlyle said. "There are some guys with exceptional stuff, but that wasn't me. You just mature as a pitcher, and I think you get to know who you are and what you can do. As I've gotten older, I think that's something I've achieved. I'm not someone who's going to go out there and throw 96 or 97 miles per hour, so I just try to get outs any way I can."

He used that strategy in the fourth and fifth innings Tuesday. With runners at the corners and nobody out in the fourth, pitching coach Roger McDowell visited Carlyle on the mound.

McDowell reminded Carlyle that he had a 6-0 lead. He didn't need to worry about the runners, didn't need to try to overpower the next batter, Moises Alou, or strike him out. He just needed an out.

"He's probably going to score," McDowell said, according to Carlyle. "Just try to treat this like a new inning, with the one-two-three [hitters] up, and try to get out of this."
Carlyle paused for a moment.

"It worked out just like he said to do it."

Carlyle induced a double play in exchange for a run. He would allow two more Mets to score in the fifth, but Atlanta's offensive support sufficed, as is usually needed for a team's fifth starter.

Though Carlyle's not as gifted as some flame-throwing prospects, Cox wore a smile talking about Carlyle and his simple pitching approach after the game.

"He comes right at you with his stuff. That's it," Cox said. "If he walks a guy, he sure isn't pitching around anybody. I don't care who it is. He goes right after them."