Bowling Green State University Athletics
Badenhop Named Tigers' Top Minor-League Pitcher
September 26, 2006 | Baseball
Sept. 26, 2006
By JACK CARLE, Sentinel Sports Editor - Despite an outstanding season, Burke Badenhop knows he can't rest on his laurels.
A graduate of Perrysburg High School and Bowling Green State University, Badenhop has been named the minor league pitcher of the year in the Detroit Tigers' organization.
"You don't want this ... to be the top of the mountain," Badenhop said in a telephone interview last week. "You don't want this to be as good as it gets. You've got to keep working to get better and make it on to that next level."
Badenhop spent the entire season helping the West Michigan Whitecaps win the championship of the Class A Midwest League.
Badenhop started 27 games for the Whitecaps, going 14-3 with a 2.84 earned run average. His 14 wins tied for the league lead and he was ninth in ERA. Badenhop pitched three complete games, which tied for the league lead, and he finished second in the league with 171 innings pitched. Badenhop allowed only 170 hits, including six home runs, and 31 walks with 124 strikeouts.
A right-hander, Badenhop started two games for the Whitecaps in the playoffs and was 1-0 with a 2.63 ERA. In the playoffs, West Michigan beat Fort Wayne 2-1 in a best-of-three, Lansing, 2-0 in a best-of-three and Kane County 3-1 in the best-of-five championship series.
Badenhop said he wasn't taken totally by surprise in being selected for the award.
"I had a feeling I might be under consideration," he said. "There are a lot of good pitchers in this organization. It's not something that you expect, that's for sure, but it's nice to garner such recognition."
Mental toughness
Badenhop, who graduated from Bowling Green in May 2005 and spent last summer with the Oneonta Tigers of the New York-Penn League, said gaining mental toughness was a major key to his success this year.
"It was something that kind of plagued me a little bit through my first year (in professional baseball)," Badenhop said. "The rap on me was good stuff and everything, but doesn't always give his best effort."
Badenhop was helped in his mental approach by West Michigan manager Matt Walbeck and pitching coach A.J. Sager, both of whom played in the major leagues.
"A.J. Sager had addressed that with me and said `that's really your only knock' and if you can get rid of that we might have something here," Badenhop said.
Sager said he would like to take a lot of credit for Badenhop's development, but it was just a case of getting Badenhop to trust his pitches.
"It's just a matter of throwing strikes," Sager said. "It's not unusual for a lot of guys at that level to feel like they have to make perfect pitches all the time.
"Once he had a couple of games where he threw it over the plate and got the results he wanted, confidence started to grow and then he was a good a strike thrower as there was in the league."
The first few games of the season, Badenhop said he was `floundering'.
"He (Sager) came out for a mound visit in a game and said `Now is the time you need to turn it up,"' Badenhop recalled. "It was a tough thing to recognize. But after that, I was more focused and much more, go after it and go get it.
"He really helped me recognize that ... It kind of helped me turn up the pressure and turn up the focus."
"About four or five games into the season, he got real aggressive," Sager said. "His stuff was always good enough. It was just a matter of him throwing it over the plate earlier and more often and he did that."
Badenhop said he wants to continue to develop a `bulldog' mentality like former major leaguer Orel Hershier, who also pitched for Bowling Green.
"It's about mental preparation and knowing you have to go at hitters 110 percent of the time," Badenhop said.
Walbeck helped Badenhop's confidence and reinforced the need to stay focused.
"Matt Walbeck was a big league catcher for 10 years and he knows what works," Badenhop said. "He said the guys on our staff are just as good as guys he caught in the major leagues. It's all about controlling it and commanding it and knowing what kind of pitcher you are."
The sinker
Finding another effective pitch made a huge difference for Badenhop this season.
With Oneonta in 2005, Badenhop started 14 games and went 6-4 with a 2.92 ERA. He allowed 69 hits in 77 innings with 55 strikeouts and 26 walks.
His work load increased dramatically this season, but he had an outstanding strike out-to-walk ratio and allowed an average of one hit an inning.
The reason was a sinking fastball that fooled the hitters, causing them to swing and miss or beat the ball into the ground.
"In my mind he has a major-league sinker," Sager said. "It moves a lot. But it's not so much how it moves, it moves late and it's hard for the hitters to square it up on the barrel of the bat.
"That's a blessing. It's a hard thing to teach."
Badenhop was able to develop the pitch last winter in the off-season.
"I never really felt comfortable with my fingers over the seams like that, it tears your fingers up a lot and you just don't think you have as good of control," he said.
The work paid off and Badenhop saw the results almost immediately.
"When I got to spring training and I got on the mound, I was throwing fastballs that normally get hit," he said. "But because they were moving, guys were swinging and missing at them. I am not a guy that really gets a whole lot of swings and misses."
The sinker could be the ticket to bigger things.
"If I can have it sitting in the upper 80s (miles per hour), touching 90 at times, that's plenty good," Badenhop said. "There are plenty of guys in the big leagues that have a sinker, who throw that hard. ... You look at Derek Lowe or even Brandon Webb, that's the type of pitcher they are.
"That's kind of where I'm headed. ... When you know you have a good pitch like that, not just in this league, it can get you to another level."
The sinker also gave Badenhop added confidence.
"It's a ground ball thing ... You're always one pitch away from getting a double play and I think I got quite a few of them this year. It's always easier to pitch like that."
In addition to his sinking fastball, Badenhop also throws a slider and change-up.
"All three are very quality pitches," Sager said. "He won't need another pitch. He really won't need the quality of any of those pitches to get better to go as far as he wants to go.
"He didn't give up a lot of hard hits. Most of his hits were ground balls that just happened to go between the infielders and you can live with that."
The championship
West Michigan started the season well, mis-fired a little bit in August, and then finished strong.
"We were the best team from Day One, I would say," Badenhop commented. "We really struggled in August. I think we had a below .500 record. If you asked me going into the playoffs, I was pretty pessimistic on how we were going to do. But our last week, we kind of go back on the right track."
The Tigers basically kept the entire team together for several reasons, including the fact it was Walbeck's last year managing the team.
"Walbeck wants to move up in the organization or coach at a higher level and he's definitely earned it," Badenhop said. "I hope the Tigers keep him because he's a great guy to play for and a great guy to have in your corner."
What's next
Badenhop took a vacation trip to South Carolina after the season was over, but plans to work at BGSU with the Falcon Club again before starting workouts for the 2007 season.
"It was a long season. I'm just trying to catch my breath now and soak in as much as you can from this year. You just don't want to let it go and start preparing for next year right away, you'd like to savor it a little bit," Badenhop said. "Then you have to get back on track."
He'll start working out in the middle of next month and then in late November or early December start playing catch.
"From this point forward for Burke it's just a matter of experience, getting out there and facing hitters and learning how to use your stuff and mixing it and matching it," Sager said. "Hopefully he stays healthy and keeps throwing strikes. I think that he has a real good shot to make this work for him for a while."
Badenhop doesn't know what the Tigers have in store for him for next season. The Tigers have a high-Class A franchise in Lakeland, Fla. and a Class AA team in Erie, Pa. The Toledo Mud Hens are Detroit's Class AAA team.
"It makes you work harder because you know nothing's set in stone that you're going to have to earn your spot," Badenhop said about the future.
