Conviction Addiction Fuels Brandon McCarthy’s First Shutout In Rangers’ 5-0 Win Over Houston

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He arrived as the new pitching coach last fall, talking like an overzealous D.A. on one of the Law and Order franchises. All Mike Maddux talked about was “conviction.”

Can the solution to a problem more puzzling than Global Warming – making the Rangers pitching staff competitive – really be as simple as a single buzzword.

With each passing day, as the rotation ERA drops to levels unseen in The Ballpark era, it sure seems that “conviction,” more than anything else is the reason.

It’s not like he’s got a whole new group of pitchers to work with. It only seems that way. Case in point: Brandon McCarthy.

On Sunday, McCarthy pitched the first shutout – and the first complete game – of his career in a 5-0 win over Houston. The power of conviction was on display all over Minute Maid Park.

“You can’t give Mike enough credit for what he’s done since he came here,” McCarthy said afterward. “He challenges us all the time to believe in ourselves. From the day he came in here, he has changed the mindset, slowly but surely. We all believe in ourselves and each other and it’s created a competitive staff. We all want to go out there and pitch better than the last guy. We won’t allow ourselves to be comfortable with mediocrity. You have to excel if you want to stay in your spot and each of us believe we have the ability to do that.”

McCarthy was reminded of the need to excel on several occasions over the couple of days before Sunday’s start. Even though he’d pitched seven innings in back-to-back starts, his two longest outings as a Ranger, he has entertained questions about the security of his spot in the rotation.

After all, Derek Holland was thrust into the rotation on Friday after Vicente Padilla was placed on the DL with what’s being described as a minor shoulder injury. The Rangers expect Padilla back by the first week of June, which means somebody will likely be pushed out of the rotation at that point.

McCarthy entered the weekend as “Most Likely To Be Pushed” since he had an ERA (5.60) nearly a run higher than any other member of the rotation.

“What am I supposed to do, sit here and obsess over it?” he said Saturday when asked if he thought he was pitching for his spot. “I don’t consider myself a stop-gap guy. Somebody is going to have to come in and take the job from me. Giving it up is something I’m not thinking about.”

In other words, McCarthy tried to say, he had conviction in his belief he belonged in a starting rotation that has the best ERA in the AL in May (3.17) and the second-best in the league dating back as far as 10 days into the season (3.86).

With McCarthy, the power of the belief system seems more evident than with other pitchers on the staff, perhaps because there have been more steps to his resurgence than others on the staff.

Maddux had to convince McCarthy to believe he was healthy first. For McCarthy, that meant shelving his once promising curve ball during spring training. McCarthy feared the curve might put too much strain on his shoulder at the start of the year. Maddux and bullpen coach Andy Hawkins went along with McCarthy’s desire to throw a slider, but also reminded him time after time that he had a great curveball somewhere in him.

The next step: Making McCarthy believe he could stay healthy – and erase the stigma of being a five-inning starter – by being more efficient on the mound. That meant getting him to relinquish thoughts of putting up sexy strikeout numbers, a belief McCarthy held since leading the minors in strikeouts in 2004.

And finally: Get McCarthy to believe that he – not the pitching coaches – wanted to reintroduce the curve ball because he – not the staff – felt comfortable and confident enough to throw it.

On Sunday, it was so easy to see all of the pieces of that belief system continue to fall into place. The most recent step has been the reintroduction of the curve.

Two weeks ago, during a between-starts bullpen session, McCarthy announced a desire to throw a couple of them because he felt pretty good about his health and resiliency. Maddux and Hawkins didn’t argue.

“It’s always better when it’s their idea,” Maddux said Sunday.

You know why now: Conviction.

McCarthy took the curve into his next start at Detroit and showed a handful of them to supplement the slider. He had decent results even when he didn’t feel great about his fastball. So, for Sunday’s start, he integrated the two breaking pitches even more into his repertoire. The results were downright devastating.

An at-bat against Lance Berkman in the third was particularly telling. McCarthy had just been handed a 4-0 lead and promptly worked into his tightest spot of the game. He had two runners on and one out when Berkman came up. McCarthy fell behind in the count 2-and-0 after missing with fastballs. He had enough confidence in the slider to throw it behind in the count and got Berkman to chase one that broke in a lot and down just a bit. He got him to chase the same pitch to even the count.

After another miss with the fastball and a fouled-off fastball, McCarthy turned to the curve. It looked the same as the slider coming out of his hand, but broke down a whole lot more. Berkman chased the pitch in the dirt for Strike Three and a big second out.

A thoroughly confused Carlos Lee followed by swinging at the first pitch he saw, a four-seam fastball, and flied out to right to end the inning and the threat.

It only served to enhance McCarthy’s confidence and conviction. He rolled through the next two innings in just 20 pitches. Having thrown just 60 pitches in five innings, the pursuit of a complete game became more tangible. And with each inning, McCarthy seemed to pitch with more confidence and conviction. He crossed 100 pitches with little issue. And when he struck out Michael Bourn with a curve ball in the dirt, McCarthy, considered the most fragile of Rangers pitchers, had thrown 124 pitches. It was the most by a Rangers starter in nearly five years. Thing is: He averaged just 13.8 pitches per inning.

“Conviction is huge,” Maddux said. “Pitching with conviction is what it is all about.”

So is that it? Is that the answer to a decade of pitching problems? Can it possibly be that simple?

With each passing day, it seems, yes. Yes it is.