The exchange included few words but plenty of implied meaning.
“How old are you?” the reporter asked.
“I’m 27,” Jeff Weaver said.
“You’re still a young guy.”
“That’s right. Plenty of time.”
Over the course of three seasons, Weaver went from future pitching ace to overrated bust to reclamation project. It’s easy to think of him as a grizzled veteran, hoping to revive his career, but in many ways Weaver is just getting started.
He freely admits he hasn’t met his lofty expectations, especially during a mostly dreadful 16 months with the New York Yankees. But his November trade to the Los Angeles Dodgers, his hometown team, has revitalized Weaver.
“I know what I’m capable of doing,” he said. “It rubs me wrong the way people think of me. It’s easily forgotten, especially in New York, why I was traded there.
“Obviously, people understand what I’m capable of, but in New York your problems are magnified. I definitely stunk, but there’s no doubt in my mind that I can get back to where I was and put everything else in the past.”
Just two years ago Weaver was considered one of baseball’s top young right-handed pitchers, certain to make a breakthrough once he escaped the lowly Detroit Tigers. Now he’s just a few miles from his hometown, ready to show that even though he hasn’t had a winning record in any of his five major-league seasons, and even though the Yankees couldn’t wait to get rid of him, he’s going to win.
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“We feel pretty confident that Jeff Weaver will do some good things for this club,” Dodgers manager Jim Tracy said. “It wasn’t too long ago that he was an awfully good pitcher with a devastating sinker and a real knowledge of how to pitch.”
Weaver’s problems started at a time he was most expected to flourish. He left the Tigers, and their dreadful offense, in 2002 to join a star-studded Yankees team ready to make another World Series push.
Given the opportunity of a lifetime, Weaver said he got away from the things that made him a rising star. One of his biggest problems was a lowered release point on his sinker, which made it easier for batters to identify and hit.
Weaver, who won 13 games with Detroit in 2001, went 7-9 with a 5.99 ERA last season and gave up 211 hits in 159 1/3 innings.
“I never lost confidence,” Weaver said. “I just tried to do too much and I tried to strike everybody out.
“You’re surrounded by [Roger] Clemens, [Mike] Mussina, [Andy] Pettitte and [David] Wells, and you see those guys striking out the side and blowing people away, you forget that you’re the kind of guy who puts the ball in play and gets a lot of ground balls. I was throwing 100 pitches through five innings, and that’s not how I throw.”
Weaver bottomed out last August when he and his 6-9 record were bumped from the rotation. He appeared in only one postseason game, giving up a game-winning, 12th-inning home run to Florida’s Alex Gonzalez in Game 4 of the World Series.
At that point everyone assumed Weaver’s time in New York was done, so it was no surprise when his name surfaced as part of a trade that eventually sent Kevin Brown to the Yankees.
Weaver is confident he has solved his problems, and Tracy said he plans to have Weaver in the rotation, even though the Dodgers have as many as eight candidates to fill five spots.
“I like the fact that he’s really excited to be here,” general manager Dan Evans said, “and we’re going to give him every opportunity to thrive in this environment. . . . He’s got a good arm and I think he has a good chance to help us this year.”