Cold-blooded.
It was Monday night, August 3, 2009, with a really bad A’s team hosting a Rangers club battling to hang onto a Wild Card spot. There were about 10,500 fans in the Oakland stands, or about 4,500 fewer than were announced to be on hand last night, if you’re able to suspend disbelief for the moment.
With Texas nursing a 1-0 lead behind the strong work of emergency starter Dustin Nippert, manager Ron Washington went to the bullpen in the sixth to get Neftali Feliz, on what was his second day in the big leagues but first to get the ball. Feliz had been transitioned at AAA from starter to reliever about five weeks earlier, and the hype was relentless.
The 21-year-old sat 97-99 as he struck Adam Kennedy out swinging, needing six pitches to sit the veteran down.
He touched 100 and mixed in a couple show-me sliders before striking Kurt Suzuki out, also swinging.
Feliz started Scott Hairston out with two balls up and out of the zone, before Hairston spoiled 99 low and away and then swung through 100 once, and swung through 100 again.
Washington sent Feliz back out for the seventh after his 16-pitch domination in the sixth.
Feliz punched Jack Cust out swinging (97-99).
Ryan Sweeney put a ball in play, rolling out to second on a 2-2 fastball up and in.
Tommy Everidge, in one of his 85 big league at-bats, took 100 low and away, just off the plate. Watched 100 on the outside black to lose count leverage. Watched Feliz’s third slider of the night (on pitch 29) catch the outer half of the plate to fall to 1-2. And got bad wood on 101 — 101 — up in the zone, fouling out to first baseman Hank Blalock to the end the inning and Feliz’s jaw-dropping night.
Six years later the debut wasn’t quite as electric for another 21-year-old, but when Keone Kela trotted in from the same bullpen, asked also to protect a narrow lead, the anticipation felt familiar. Feliz was thought to be a future closer when he made that August 2009 debut — he would assume the job a week into the following season — and nobody since Feliz has earned expectations at that level in Texas until Kela’s arrival, which he accelerated with a huge camp.
Kela, on his second day in the big leagues but first to get the ball, didn’t have the fastball command that he’d shown in Arizona last month or that Feliz had displayed on his first night on a Major League mound. He started Billy Butler off with 94 twice (called strike, foul) to get ahead but then went back to the well rather than offering Butler something bent to chase, and the veteran clubbed a fastball up and away to left.
Ike Davis worked a six-pitch walk, all fastballs (93-94), and Kela’s debut and his club’s 3-1 lead were on shaky ground.
Mike Maddux visited the mound, reminding Kela that Brett Lawrie had seen six pitches in his previous two at-bats — one fastball and five sliders — and struck out twice.
With that, Kela went to his breaking ball (as I wish he’d done with Butler on 0-2): called strike, swinging strike, swinging strike. One out.
He threw the kitchen sink at the hot Stephen Vogt, starting him off with a changeup (88) for strike one looking, missing outside with a curve, and grooving 94 on the third pitch, which Vogt rifled to right field, struck hard enough that Butler had no chance to advance any further than third base.
The bases were loaded with just one out, and up stepped Marcus Semien.
Curveball upstairs.
Changeup down, swinging strike.
Changeup down, swinging strike.
Chase curve in the dirt, not chased.
Changeup at the letters, called a ball. Full count.
The first fastball of the sequence, 94 down and in, and Semien spoiled it.
Then the rookie buried a changeup down and away — a full-count, bases-loaded changeup from a rookie making his debut in a two-run game — which Semien grounded through the box and which Elvis Andrus fielded cleanly, shuffled to the bag, touched and fired, and the double play was complete, the inning over, the lead preserved.
You’d think the moment would have been a whirlwind for Kela, who has overcome so much to get to where he is, but — aside from the fact that he told reporters after the game that he saw Andrus scoop up the grounder and flip it to Rougned Odor, something that didn’t happen — it’s pretty obvious Kela was able to slow the game down and execute a plan.
Cold. Blooded. Kela.
The Kela inning didn’t feature the ease of Feliz’s debut, in more ways than one, and there was no need for Michael Young to visit Feliz on the mound and tell the kid to “man up,” as Prince Fielder did with Kela last night, but there was another difference in the two games as well.
On August 3, 2009, closer C.J. Wilson, entrusted with what by then was a 2-0 Texas lead, was terrorized with a single-strikeout-single-single-triple sequence in the ninth to lose the game in walkoff fashion.
Last night, a much different Feliz from the one who debuted on the same mound six seasons ago came in and nailed things down in the ninth (culminating with three more breaking balls to Lawrie: strike, strike, strike), giving Kela his first big league hold, Jeff Banister his first big league win, and, more important in the grand scheme, Texas its first victory of the two-day-old season.
The Rangers needed that.
And, man, so did I.