The Philadelphia Phillies came to town last week in the thick of the National League playoff race. They were in second place in the East Division, two games behind the Central Division’s Houston Astros in the battle for the wild-card postseason berth. Yet no baseball fan in his or her right mind would have traded the Cubs for the Phillies straight up, not even if their positions in the standings had been included in the deal.
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Bullinger was drafted by the Cubs as a shortstop in the mid-80s. Yet his .256 batting average at Class A Winston-Salem in 1987 was as good as it got for him as a minor-league hitter; he followed that with averages of .169 and .192 at two locations the following year, then a .216 at AA Charlotte in 1989. That was where he made his first appearances as a pitcher, and the next season he completed the transition, beginning a fairly rapid rise through the Cubs’ system. He had 14 saves at AAA Iowa in 1992 and 20 more there the following year. Throughout his career, wherever he has gone and no matter his role, starter or reliever, he has put together an impressive two-to-one strikeout-to-walk ratio, the best statistical indicator of a young pitcher’s promise.
In Sunday’s 90-degree heat he pitched a seemingly effortless three-hit shutout, with a career-high eight strikeouts, against a generally fearsome Philadelphia lineup (albeit lacking leadoff man Lenny Dykstra). This followed a shutout on Friday begun by Frank Castillo and finished by Randy Myers, and another victory on Saturday.
Every year, we’ve found, one pitcher always seems to draw the starting assignment whenever we go out to the game. (The 1992 campaign, when we always seemed to draw Maddux in the first of his three straight–and counting–Cy Young seasons, was the best year for pitching in our memory.) This year it’s been Jaime Navarro. We were lucky to see Bullinger on Sunday, not only because he pitched a shutout but because we’d been expecting Navarro, whom we’d seen the previous Tuesday. (A day off Thursday gave the starters an extra day of rest.) Navarro is a 27-year-old reclamation project who struggled with the Milwaukee Brewers the last couple of seasons after winning 32 games in 1991 and ’92, and we’ve written about him already this season. He continues to impress with his big, deliberate windup and his knack for changing speeds. He really has become a complete pitcher this year, and his eighth win, a week ago last Tuesday, brought his ERA to 3.02.
