(Jupiter, FL) After some shoulder tightness set back his schedule, Kevin Siegrist was finally able to make his Grapefruit League debut this season, throwing a scoreless inning as the St. Louis Cardinals beat the Washington Nationals 9-3.
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“Definitely nice get out there,” Siegrist said afterwards. “Arm feels good. Just I get a little bit of nerves–doesn’t matter first time out there. Once you throw the first pitch those are gone, then you just focus and make sure all your pitches are working.”
The delayed start is of no concern for the left-hander to be ready for the start of the season.
“No, I’ll have enough time,” said Siegrist. “I have enough time. I don’t see it affecting me at all. I feel good, so we’ll see where we take it from here.”
In the 5th inning, Siegrist struck out a batter and allowed one hit–which for a Spring Training game, had the side benefit of allowing him to work with a runner on base.
“Actually yeah,” he said. “I guess it’s nice to work on that, work on different head looks. because runners can throw off your timing a little bit. once you get used to it, it’s fine.”
The variety of pitches from Siegrist was also noteworthy. He featured a curve and changeup to go with his fastball.
“I was talking to Dexter about how uncomfortable an at-bat he can even be for a right-hander,” said Mike Matheny. “Splits have shown that, but it shouldn’t stay that way. Today, he threw that changeup too. A couple really good changeups low in the zone, good arm speed, swing and miss pitches. And the curveball’s coming along. He’s just getting more confidence in it. He’s getting–where before, sometimes he had just one weapon and that was a boring-in heater on the third base side that he was having a lot of success with. Now, you have to think about more things against him.”
“For me it’s about fine-tuning them,” said Siegrist. “I think you know the feel of how it used to be or how you want it to be yeah it’s just fine-tuning it and just making sure that you throw quality pitches out there.”
photo credit: STLBaseballWeekly.com
