Texas Rangers Off-Day Bonus Reading Offering: The Curious Case Of Darren O’Day

Darren O'Day is quickly becoming one of the greatest waiver claims in Rangers history. (Photo: R.P. Washburne)

ARLINGTON - Darren O’Day’s career path to the Rangers’ bullpen follows all the logic of a Mad Libs entry:

Failing to make the University of Florida baseball team as a walk-on, O’Day adopted a submarine delivery while pitching in a beer league in his hometown of Jacksonville, Fla. He became an ace reliever for the Gators and shelved plans to attend medical school. Undrafted in 2006, he signed with the Angels and reached the majors in less than two years. He tore his right labrum late last season and was left off the 40-man roster, considered damaged goods that no other team would want. The Mets took him in the Rule V draft, and he made their bullpen. But when New York desperately needed to call up an emergency starter in late April, they designated him for assignment and hoped no one would claim him. The Rangers selected the 26-year-old who stands 6-4 but is bent over in his odd delivery. Through 24 outings, O’Day has a 1.23 ERA – 1.08 counting his four games for the Mets.

“We thought he could come in be a winning piece in the bullpen,” Rangers general manager Jon Daniels said. “He has probably surpassed expectations.”

“He’ll never take it for granted,” said Tom Kotchman, the Angels scout who saw something in O’Day that no one else did.

School and baseball came easy to young Darren, sometimes to his father’s consternation. Ralph O’Day thought the younger of his two sons might have studied a little longer, worked a little harder on the field. Not that he struggled in either area, but family priorities sometimes meant missing a big game to make sure a school paper or project was finished.

“He really turned it on as a senior,” Ralph said recently from Florida.

Bishop Kenny High School has long been a baseball power in northern Florida. When O’Day was a sophomore, for instance, the Crusaders’ rotation was led by senior Jonathan Papelbon. O’Day didn’t become a starter until his senior year.

He turned down athletic scholarship offers, the best from small Division I programs, to walk on at Florida with an academic scholarship. Sure, he wanted to play baseball for the Gators but he had thoughts of become a veterinarian. When it time to choose a major, he selected animal biology.

O’Day pitched well that first fall in 2001, enough to survive the first cut and practice for a month, but not good enough to bump one of the scholarship pitchers off the staff. The coaching staff suggested he go to junior college and get more pitching under his belt. He preferred to stay at Florida and concentrate on his schoolwork. He considered his baseball career over.

The following summer at home in Jacksonville, a friend asked O’Day to pitch for his pick-up team. “I hadn’t pitched in nine months,” he said. “Hadn’t even played catch.”

He agreed and began fooling around with sidearm and submarine deliveries. Hitters almost literally didn’t know what was coming.

So O’Day returned to Gator tryouts in autumn 2002 and was almost afraid to tell the coaches what he’d brought with him. He came in from sidearm and even lower. “They loved it,” he said.

He pitched 39.1 innings in relief as a freshman (athletically speaking) in 2003 and went 4-3, then became the team’s closer as a sophomore. Over his final three seasons, he collected 19 wins, 20 saves and helped take the ’05 Gators to the College World Series (swept by Texas in the finals). His ERA was always under 3.00 and his grade point average was higher, earning him Academic All-American honors as a fifth-year senior in 2005-06. His athletic scholarship kept increasing along the way. Combined with his academic grant, “I was making money going to school at the end.”

His medical interest shifted away from vet medicine, and he watched surgeons at work. He passed the MCAT held off applying to medical school when advised that refusing a confirmation if pro ball beckoned would probably mean not being accepted again. He also took the LSAT on a dare from a friend and scored better than on the MCAT.

“It’s just a logic test,” he said.

While a handful of major league clubs were mildly intrigued by him, the delivery scared off most of them. Not the Angels’ Kotchman. He not only scouts Florida from his home near Tampa but has doubled as the organization’s rookie league manager for 26 years (and is the father of Atlanta’s Casey Kotchman). Most of the kids that he signs he then immediately manages.

When offered an Angels contract, O’Day practically bordered on denial: “You don’t have anybody like me.” To which Kotchman snorted: “And everybody told me you were smart.”

Off to rookie ball in Utah they went. Kotchman told O’Day that he needed to add a change-up to his fastball and Frisbee slider: “You’ll be gone in three to four weeks.”

He did, and he was. O’Day progressed quickly through the system and received word of his promotion to the 2008 Angels’ 40-man roster from general manager Tony Reagins while the family was putting up Christmas decorations. He told his father it was the best Christmas present ever.

Ralph’s response: “I said, ‘What about all that stuff I gave you?’ He said, ‘Nope.’ ”

Before reporting, O’Day put himself through a workout boot camp conducted by his brother. Kyle O’Day, 29, graduated from Florida with a degree in exercise and sport science. He was a middle-distance runner in high school and now trains elite sprinters.

The schedule: six days a week, four to five hours a day. “So that he was 100 percent ready,” said Kyle, who lives near Atlanta. “In big-time sports, you often only get one shot.”

O’Day earned a spot in the bullpen as the long man and appeared in 30 games, of which the Angels went 6-24. He usually pitched an inning or more with the team behind and occasionally when far ahead. (One loss, one hold). When the Angels lost at Oakland 9-2 on July 11, he pitched from the fifth inning on – 53 pitches in four innings, three hits, two strikeouts. In 11 of his appearances, he threw two innings or more.

But his pitching labrum was torn by season’s end, and he decided to skip surgery that might require a year’s recovery time in favor of rehab. After six weeks’ of off-season conditioning with the Angels in Scottsdale, it was time to return to his brother’s boot camp.

“They spent eight weeks strengthening the shoulder,” Kyle said. “We spent two and a half months concentrating on making his back, hips, hamstrings and calves able to better handle the decelerating motion of pitching.”

Meanwhile, the Angels had figured they could add another player to the 40-man roster and leave O’Day exposed to the Rule V draft last December. He was chosen by the Mets as a candidate for their bullpen makeover (ironically centered around the free-agent signing of Angels closer Francisco Rodriguez).

O’Day beat the odds again and began the season in New York. He got into four of the Mets’ first nine games and didn’t allow a run in three innings. But an injury to starter Mike Pelfrey left the team desperate to call up a spot starter during a homestand. They designated O’Day for assignment.

“My parents were there for the weekend – which kind of helped, after what happened,” he said. “The Mets called me in, said, ‘We don’t want to do this. We think you’ll get taken.’ ”

Ralph and wife Michal were meeting fellow parents in the players’ lounge when they spotted a scrawl on the TV that Darren was “DFA.”

“When Darren was with the Angels, Jared Weaver’s parents told us that you’ll never be able to make plans,” Ralph said. “We just told the other parents good bye.”

In Arlington, Daniels learned O’Day was available and liked what he remembered of him. The latest scouting reports on him emphasized: throws strikes; batters can’t pick up the base easily; gets a lot of ground-ball outs.

“He seemed like a worthwhile guy to take on a claim for $20,000,” Daniels said. “He pounds the strike zone, works the bottom of the zone. He’s resilient. That arm slot probably helps.”

O’Day was hanging out in Panama City, Fla., when the Rangers claimed him, and thus began the odyssey to Toronto and temporary custody of the Kason Gabbard jersey.

“I was excited” to come to Texas, O’Day said. “Last year coming here, nobody wanted to pitch. I liked watching these guys play. Everybody knew if this team got pitching, it would be tough to beat.”

To date, O’Day has been part of the improved pitching. In 22 innings, he has allowed 20 base runners (14 hits, six walks), struck out 22 and three earned runs. Upon joining Texas, he moved his position on the pitching rubber over a few inches at the suggestion of pitching coach Mike Maddux and believes that has increased his effectiveness. And he rarely uses the change-up that helped him reach the majors.

As for a future Dr. O’Day?

“The longer I play baseball, and I want to play 10 years, the less likely it is I go back to medicine.”