Seeking relief

PHOENIX, Ariz. – The road to redemption starts near the intersection of 51st Avenue and Indian School Road.

It’s the Spring Training home of the Milwaukee Brewers at Maryvale Baseball Park, and the place where relievers Salomon Torres and Guillermo Mota find themselves to find themselves. The 2007 season was one to forget for both Dominican relievers. They are hoping this year will be one to remember – for good reasons.

So are the Brewers. The club’s bullpen lost closer Francisco Cordero and reliever Scott Linebrink to free agency after last season.

“Last year was not a good year for me,” Mota said. “Things didn’t work for me and didn’t work the way I wanted. That’s baseball. Sometimes you gave good years, sometimes bad. I’m doing what I can to have a good year this year so you can see who the real Guillermo Mota is.”

The Guillermo Mota known by the Mets fans was a flop. Last season, he was suspended for the first 50 games of the season for violating Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug Prevention and Treatment Program and you can argue he was still missing in action even upon his return. With the Mets, he went 2-2 with a 5.76 ERA in 52 games and likely led the team in the boos-per-player category.

Mota does his best to act like he could not hear the jeers at Shea Stadium and he says he did not pay attention to boos. If that’s true, he deserves an award. Ignoring 50,000 fans screaming at you is quite an accomplishment.

“I don’t look at it as a bad experience. It was good one,” he said. “It motivated me to do things better. You do good, they applaud. You don’t, they let you know. They are not my family, they want the team to do good. Every player goes through that sometime.”

“Bounce back” and Mota is a reoccurring theme. The pitcher interrupted a Spanish-only interview after struggling to articulate his thoughts with the English phrase, “bounce back.” Brewers manager Ned Yost said he looks for Mota “to bounce back big-time.”

“He’s going to have a great year,” he said. “(Mota and Torres) are relaxed and on the attack. They are comfortable and pitching well.”

Torres, 36, already looks like he fits in. He was slowed because of a sore arm early in Spring Training but is working his way back into the fold. It’s already a better situation than last season in Pittsburgh,  a year full of injuries and a highly-publicized dispute with management. Torres argued he signed for lower-than-market value with the Pirates in return for a promise by the club to rent his baseball academy in the Dominican Republic. He says the club backed out. Torres eventually leased the facility to the Texas Rangers.

The veteran chooses not to dwell on the past but if he did, he would have some stories to tell. The Pirates saga is just the latest chapter in a long line of events that shaped his career.

Torres signed with San Francisco as a teenager and made his big league debut with the Giants in 1993. He was shelled by the Dodgers in the last day of the season that year to cost San Francisco a playoff spot and any chance of making a permanent home in the Bay Area. Three years later, he retired from the Montreal Expos because he did not like how he was being pitched.

You can blame immaturity for his early exit. Torres took his lack of playing time as a personal attack when it was nothing more than a personnel decision, the same type of decision that is made everyday across the Major and Minor Leagues.

He later served as a coach for the Expos Summer League team in the Dominican Republic for a few years until he signed a Minor League deal with the Pirates in 2002 and made his big league return later that season. By 2006, he was the Pirates closer. By the end of 2007, he wanted a trade out of Pittsburgh.

The man who admits he didn’t know anything about the business of baseball when he was a young man was furious because the sport had stung him again, this time as a full-grown man. He thought he knew better.

Yet Torres refuses to let the sport make him a bitter man. He chooses to go forward instead of  looking back.

“I’m eager to show to myself that I still have it,” Torres said. “I can go out there and get in some games. I feel like I can throw a lot of games because I feel healthy. I feel great.”

He and Mota are at the right intersection.