The start of a New Year, and with it comes a new baseball season. A good way to begin is to drop in on Jason Bere, one of the young White Sox pitching stars who should have a brilliant major league career. I have him down for 20 wins, not only for the season ahead but into the 21st Century.
“I’m itching to go,” Bere said Monday in a telephone interview from his home in Wilmington, Mass. “I”m not going to do my running today. We’re getting nailed with a snowstorm.”
The last time we saw him, Bere was getting nailed by the Toronto Blue Jays in Game 4 of the American League playoffs. The Jays knocked him out in the third inning. The Sox won the game, anyway, because of Tim Belcher’s outstanding long-relief performance.
“If I could have changed one thing, that was it,” Bere said. “But I learned a lesson-not to take anything for granted. I had the lead and kind of relaxed, a little too much.”
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Otherwise, it was an outstanding season for Bere. A right-handed power pitcher in his maiden big-league voyage, he wasn’t recalled from the minors until late May. But he won 12 games, half his starts. The cumulative batting average against him was .210, second only to Seattle’s Randy Johnson among AL pitchers with 20 or more starts.
I asked what he planned to work on in spring training and he came up with the anticipated answer: “Everyone tells me I need to work on my control. So I guess I’ll work on that.”
Like many young pitchers, Bere sometimes had trouble throwing strikes. He gave up 81 walks in 142 innings, an average of 5.11 per nine innings. Among AL pitchers with 20 or more starts, only Wilson Alvarez, his White Sox teammate and a 15-game winner, was more generous; Alverez’s rate was 5.29. Nobody else was above 4.5.
A little wildness, particularly for an apprentice pitcher with a 94-95 m.p.h. fastball is sometimes helpful. It can put a little fear in the hitters and prevent them from digging in. Still, an average of three walks a game is considerably more desirable.
Bere has been working out almost daily at a friend’s gymnasium, mostly on weight machines. He has yet to throw to a catcher. “I’ll hold off on that for another week or so,” he said.
He has the three basic pitches-fastball, breaking ball and a changeup-not a large repertoire but more than adequate considering his fastball, when it comes in high, has an explosive effect. The high heater accounted for most of his 129 strikeouts, the most by an AL rookie last season.
Only one player, George Brett of the Kansas City Royals, solved Bere for as many as five hits. Brett has since retired, but Bere still must confront the Royals’ Mike Macfarlane.
“He hits the low fastball,” Bere said. “He lays off my high fastball. I don’t really know what to throw him.”
Macfarlane was 4 for 8 with three walks against Bere last season. Three of Macfarlane’s hits were home runs. No other hitter connected more than once.
Despite the loss of Ellis Burks, who was especially outstanding in the right field, Bere believes the White Sox are stronger with the acquisition of Julio Franco and Darrin Jackson. A lifetime .300 hitter, Franco will DH; Jackson is Burks’ replacement.
“We already had a good team,” Bere said, “but we have been strengthened-definitely. Without giving up any pitching.”
Pitching is the club’s strong suit. In addition to Bere, the Sox have three other pitchers capable of winning 20 games: Jack McDowell, who won the AL’s 1993 Cy Young Award and has averaged 20 wins over the last three seasons, Alex Fernandez and Alvarez.
Wisely, Bere has not set any personal goals for the season ahead.
“I’m not going to try to do much better,” he explained. “That’s when you get into trouble, when you try to overdo it. I just want to try and stay consistent.”
But he obviously see a championship ahead.
He will marry Dinelle Erwin, his high school sweetheart, in November.
Why November?
“After we win the World Series.”