December 1 - Over an 18-month period, Paul Clemens suited up for eight different teams with four organizations.
In 2015 alone, the journey took the 2006 Robinson Secondary School graduate from Clearwater to Central Arkansas, Omaha, Lehigh Valley and finally La Guaira in the Venezuelan Winter League. Earlier this year, he added stints with with Triple-A New Orleans and the Miami Marlins.
Exposed by Miami on Major League Baseball’s waiver wire in late June, the right-handed pitcher was claimed by the San Diego Padres, his sixth MLB organization in six years. A couple weeks later, Clemens was in the rebuilding Padres’ starting rotation, perhaps reviving the career of a once-prized pitching prospect of the Atlanta Braves.
“That turned out to be probably the biggest blessing in my career,” Clemens said. “I’ve gotten to work with [Padres pitching coach] Darren Balsley, who has shaped me into a much-more repeatable pitcher and a much-more consistent pitcher making better pitches in the strike zone.”
Out of minor league options on Clemens, who made two shaky starts with Miami in late June, the Marlins were unable to pass him through waivers when attempting to send him back to Triple-A New Orleans. The Padres claimed him, and he rewarded them by compiling a 3.67 earned run average and 1.37 WHIP over 16 appearances, including 12 starts.
Over his final four starts, he beat two playoff teams in the San Francisco Giants and Los Angeles Dodgers and got no decisions while allowing one earned run over 11.2 innings in two outings against the Arizona Diamondbacks. In his final start of the season on Oct. 2 in Arizona, he had his best outing of the season, striking out seven while allowing one run on four hits in six innings in a 3-2 win.
“[The time in San Diego] really gave me some good motivation because I started pitching very well and I was getting more and more excited each time out,” Clemens said. “I finally started tasting success in the big leagues, and boy was that fun.”
After the season, Padres manager Andy Green met with Clemens, instructed him to add 15 pounds to his 6-foot-3, 207-pound frame and come to spring training with the goal of rejoining the rotation and aiming for 220 innings in 2017.
“It was nice to finally have a real sound opportunity, where the Padres said, ‘Here, we’re going to give you a handful of starts, we’re going to see what you can do’,” Clemens said. “And I was happy with what I was able to do. I think I was a little too satisfied with only going six innings, being happy with that, so next year I really want to focus on going seven or eight innings every time I get the ball.”
That determination comes as no surprise to Bill Evers, his high school coach at Robinson.
“He had a ton of energy, he loved baseball,” Evers said of his former ace, who helped the Rams to a Group AAA Northern Region title in 2005 and a Concorde District championship over Westfield and Marlins first baseman Justin Bour in 2006. “He had a big motor, just going all the time. I could tell him, ‘Paul, we’re going to practice eight hours today’, and he wouldn’t care, he’d say, ‘Sounds good coach’.
“He’s kind of the classic kid where pro scouts don’t care about your ERA or how many strikeouts you have, it’s all kind of about the body and how you project. There were a lot of players who had better numbers than he had, but they didn’t have that projectable body. Then it’s just a question of, ‘Does he develop?’.”
Clemens’ challenge early in his pro career wasn’t whether he would physically develop - he’s added 40 pounds to his frame and 10 MPH to his fastball since high school - but rather whether he could channel his inner competitiveness. Armed with a wit and tongue as sharp as his mid-90s fastball and big-league ready curveball, Clemens at times clashed with coaches and front office early on. The ability was there, everyone agreed, but would his brashness ever allow him to reach his potential?
“In my career, I’ve hurt myself,” Clemens admits. “I’ve said some things and done some things. I’ve not been treated the fairest in some of the places I’ve been, and I don’t think I handled that the best.
“I’m a very confident individual. I know what I bring to the table, and I think that’s why I’ve gotten myself in some hot water in the past. I am 100 percent confident in what I can do. I feel like I can step on a mound and go toe-to-toe with any hitter or pitcher that baseball has to offer. But while I think some of that confidence has helped me, some of my stubbornness has hurt me. I’ve just learned how to be more of a consistent professional, and now just go into spring training and be quiet and just go out and pitch the way I’ve pitched.”
Evers witnessed the potential during Clemens’ prep career. “You saw the body there, it was just a question of could he mentally figure it out and kind of reel it in it a little bit, the emotional part of it,” the coach said. “That was always kind of the question coming out of high school for me, ‘Could he mature enough to get to where he is now?’.”
The Braves, who had drafted Clemens in the seventh round in 2008 out of Louisburg College, dealt Clemens and three other prospects to Houston in a 2011 trade deadline deal for All-Star outfielder Michael Bourne. The change in scenery did not provide Clemens with the career boost he hoped it might.
He did work his way through Houston’s system to the big leagues - compiling a 5.51 ERA in 48 appearances in 2013-14 - but the Astros did not renew Clemens’ contract following the 2014 season. He then spent 2015 with the Philadelphia and Kansas City organizations, reaching Triple-A that year with both clubs, but last winter again found himself a free agent. Miami signed him, and after going 6-4 with a 4.30 ERA in 14 starts at New Orleans, called him up in mid-June.
In two starts with Miami, he was touched up for seven runs over 10 innings, allowing 11 hits and walking eight.
"When they called me up, I was having some aches and pains. But when somebody calls you up, you’re not going to tell them you’re not ready,” Clemens said. “I just wasn’t feeling good, my arm was dead and the ball just wasn’t coming out right. So it was tough going up to Miami while knowing in the back of my head that I’m not going to be 100 percent, or I’m not going to have my A-plus stuff. So I had to really scrape and fight in my two outings in Miami.”
Clemens, who had surpassed the three options clubs are allowed once a player is added to a 40-man roster, was then put on waivers. Teams could claim him and add them to their major league roster, or if he went unsigned, the Marlins would be able to send him back to New Orleans.
The Padres bit.
“[The Marlins] knew I didn’t have my stuff and wanted to get be back down to work on some things,” Clemens said. “I knew Miami really liked me and the spring training I had, so I know they were really frustrated I got claimed and they didn’t get me back to Triple-A. But that’s been a blessing for me to get claimed for me and my family, and now I think it’s been an even bigger blessing to be able to work with Darren Balsley, who I think could possibly take my career to another level.”
Balsley, the Padres’ pitching coach since 2003, worked with Clemens on locating his fastball and finding more balance with his off-speed pitches.
“[Balsley] is really big on my curveball, so we upped the usage-rate of my curveball, and that really seemed to help my results,” he said. “He got me to lower my sights on my fastball. It might sound very simple, and it is, but my fastball was running right around mid-thigh, and he said, ‘We’ve got to get that down. You’ve got a good fastball with good velocity, but we’ve got to get it down’. So we really just lowered my sights, and right under the kneecaps is where I want to live, down and away in that bottom-left quadrant of the strike zone.”
The results were positive, and thanks to the adjustments, a waiver-wire pick-up may have netted San Diego a 28-year-old starter with plenty of innings left in him.
“I was able to take that [low fastball] and really apply it in the game,” Clemens said. “I started having some good success and put things together, almost to the point where I didn’t want the season to end.”
Tasked by Green with adding muscle and weight this offseason, Clemens rises at 5:45 each morning, spends at least three hours in the gym, and has his diet controlled by his wife, Marlee, who is a dietician. Under club control through 2020, Clemens hopes his family - he and Marlee have two young children - have found a home in Southern California.
“Would I love to be a Padre the rest of my career? Absolutely,” he said. “Where I’m at now, I’ve grown so much as a professional in this game and I think the end of last year was just the tip of the iceberg to getting me back on track and in the direction I was headed earlier in my career.”
Photos courtesy of San Diego Padres
