Versatility has served Figueroa well

It wasn’t long after he had cleared waivers and was sent back to Triple-A when Nelson Figueroa took the mound and gave up a run. When that happened, the professional journeyman only had one thought…

“Well, I’m done,” Figueroa said. “I’ll never get back there now.”

The funny thing about the two runs Figueroa allowed for Lehigh Valley is that they were the only two he gave up in three starts covering 19 innings. In that same span the righty struck out 18, and allowed just 13 hitters to get on base. His 3-0 record with a 0.95 ERA was further proof that Figueroa could get outs in the big leagues.

Then again, this is not news. Figueroa has been that guy for a long time — the proverbial square peg in a round hole. Sometimes it seems as if the strikes against him are his age, repertoire or the location of his dominant hand. Maybe if he were younger, threw harder or was a lefty, Figueroa’s career would have turned out differently.

No one would fault Figueroa if he had some bitterness or had called it quits long ago. However, that hasn’t been the case at all. With an arsenal of what seems to be about 100 different pitches along with a handful of derivations, Figueroa is like a Swiss Army knife for Charlie Manuel.

In fact, this season Figueroa has started a game, closed one, come in as the long man and as a situational right-hander. Mixed in there is a week as the International League player of the week and enough frequent traveler miles to circle the earth.

To top it off, Figueroa is back with the Phillies a decade after he was traded from Arizona as part of the Curt Schilling trade.

It’s crazy to think that of all the players in that trade — Omar Daal, Travis Lee and Vicente Padilla — that Figueroa would somehow manage to find a way back with the Phillies.

Oh, but the right-hander has taken the scenic route. Last season Figueroa, from Coney Island in Brooklyn, made 10 starts for the Mets and has appeared in 32 games for his hometown team over the past two seasons. In between his 2001 season for the Phillies and 2009 work for New York, Figueroa has pitched for Milwaukee and Pittsburgh in the Majors, as well as Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Nashville, Long Island, Buffalo, Chihuahua in the Mexican League as well as South Korea and Taiwan.

All told Figueroa has pitched for 18 different teams, which doesn’t include winter league when he was MVP of the 2007 Chinese Professional Baseball League championship series. Shoot, he even took the entire 2005 season off to recover from two different shoulder surgeries after tearing his rotator cuff.

“I can relate to that a lot,” said Manuel, who had a playing career very similar to Figueroa. “I played five years in the minors before I even made the major leagues and I used to get sent out some to play for some and then get called back. Yeah, I can relate to those things.”

Manuel went to Figueroa for two innings on back-to-back nights, which in the modern game is definitely old school. Actually, Figueroa would have gone back to the mound in the 13th for a third inning and was waiting on deck to hit until catcher Brian Schneider blasted his walk-off homer to give the pitcher his second big league win of the season.

Like a lot of ballplayers, Figueroa says he hasn’t thought much about how much longer he’ll play. What makes him unique is that with a degree in American Studies from renowned Brandeis University, the vagabond lifestyle of a journeyman pitcher is an interesting career choice.

“I’ve learned one thing in this game, you can’t control anything,” he said “I can only control when the ball is in my hand and I’m out there on the mound.”

This year he’s been in control, but for how long. When Chad Durbin returns from the disabled list after the All-Star Break, Figueroa could be caught in another numbers crunch and be designated for assignment for the third time this year between two teams in the NL East.

Still, it’s almost a guarantee that Figueroa will be pitching for somewhere for the rest of the year. It might not be in the big leagues, but as long as he’s still consistently getting outs with control over that vast repertoire of pitches, some team will want him. After all, pitchers that get outs just don’t grow on trees.

The return of Brandon Duckworth

In mid-July of the 2001 baseball season, the Phillies surprisingly found themselves in the midst of a battle for the NL East with the Atlanta Braves. At the time, no one thought the Phillies were ready to contend yet, but the Phillies surprised a lot of people by hanging around until the next-to-last series of the season.

For 159 games that year, the Phillies gave the Braves all they could handle.

Give some credit to first-year manager Larry Bowa for getting the most out of his kids by putting his foot on the gas and never letting up. Bowa made his players treat every game as if it was the seventh game of the World Series and for the most part they responded. Of course those tactics backfired often throughout Bowa’s tenure in Philadelphia, though in the manager’s defense the team’s talent wasn’t quite there yet.

In 2001 though, Bowa took on the Braves with a rotation that featured Robert Person, Randy Wolf, Omar Daal and rookies Nelson Figueroa and Brandon Duckworth. Person reached the apex of his career by winning 15 games that season before the injuries mounted, while Wolf entrenched himself as a bona fide big-league starter. Daal was the veteran lefty in the mix who got the ball on opening day simply because he was the only guy the team had ready to go.

Meanwhile, Figueroa and Duckworth held down spots in the rotation because of injuries and the fact that Bowa didn’t quite trust Amaury Telemaco and Dave Coggin too much. Maybe he didn’t trust those guys either, but for a little while he was pleasantly surprised.

Who would have guessed that all these years later Figueroa and Duckworth are still out there fighting for spots on big-league rosters? Last season Figueroa made 10 starts for the Mets and has appeared in 32 games for his hometown team over the past two seasons. In between his 2001 season for the Phillies and 2009 work for New York, Figueroa has pitched for Milwaukee and Pittsburgh in the Majors, as well as Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, Indianapolis, New Orleans, Nashville, Long Island, Buffalo, Chihuahua in the Mexican League as well as South Korea.

Yes, with his 36 birthday quickly approaching, Figueroa will pitch for whatever you want to pay him.

The same goes for Duckworth, too, only in locales that are not as exotica as his old buddy, Figgy. After landing in Bowa’s crowded doghouse, Duckworth was a piece in the trade that brought Billy Wagner from Houston to the Phillies. Following a couple of seasons where he shuttled up and down between the Astros and New Orleans/Round Rock, Duckworth moved to the Pittsburgh organization where he pitched for Indianapolis.

Duckworth appeared to be a cornerstone of the Phillies future during the 2001 season. However, the mild-mannered right-hander got around the league a couple times after the ’01 pennant chase, big-league hitters caught up with his repertoire. However, in Game 159 with the Phillies clinging to hope that they could catch the Braves, Bowa yanked veteran 13-game winner Omar Daal from a start in Atlanta in favor of Duckworth.

Since 2006, Duckworth has been pitching for Kansas City and their top farm club, Omaha, where he worked mostly in relief.

The relief role just might be where he fits in with the Phillies in 2010.

What goes around, comes around…

Of course Duckworth has to make the team, first. However, in making the official announcement that Duckworth had agreed to a minor-league deal with the team on Tuesday, the soon-to-be 34 year-old righty will likely spend the summer in Allentown with the Triple-A IronPigs.

In the meantime, Duckworth will get into a bunch of Grapefruit League games this spring and get a first-hand look at how much things have changed since he left before the 2004 season. Sure, some tired old faces are hanging around, but for the most part the Phillies are a different beast than they were in the early 2000s.

Regardless, it’s always neat to see guys like Duckworth and Figueroa hanging around the game and still battling for a spot on a roster. At its essence, those are the guys who make Major league Baseball interesting. They are just regular dudes who work as hard as they can in order to carve out a little spot in the game for as long as possible. They may never get to an All-Star Game or see their picture on too many baseball cards, but it’s difficult not to respect their perseverance and love for the game.

Gotta love the guys just hoping to get by.