RIVERDALE, N.Y. - The Manhattan College Athletic Department will highlight former Jasper baseball standouts during the summer tracking their progress within their respective minor league organizations. The series will keep fans up to date in the Jaspers quests to reach the Major League. The first installment features Chris Cody '06 who is playing within the Milwaukee Brewers organization.
Cody's looking to re-tilt the lever
By Ronak Patel
A pitcher in professional baseball goes through a constant pendulum of successes and failures.
Some days, you'll have your stuff working; you're hitting the strike zone, befuddling hitters. But there will be starts when despite how hard you work, your stuff won't work.
It's this part of the lever that ex-Jaspers' great Chris Cody (2003-06) is working through right now with the Huntsville Stars, the Double-A affiliate of the Milwaukee Brewers. Cody, who was traded by the Detroit Tigers organization to the Brewers for Jose Capellan in 2007, is 2-6 with a 5.36 ERA through his first 10 starts on the season.
"I haven't gotten off to the start I would prefer," said Cody, who's 26 years old and was drafted by the Tigers in the eighth round of the 2006 MLB Draft. "It's not really how you start but how you finish. That's kind of the morale you have to go by in a long season."
The southpaw Cody, who holds Manhattan records for strikeouts (295), wins (29) and complete games (19), went 13-9 last year between stops at Huntsville and Nashville, the Brewers' Triple AAA team. He sported a combined ERA of 3.90 and struck out 102 batters in 152.1 innings pitched. Cody went 5-1 at Huntsville while going 8-8 in Nashville.
The 150-plus innings were a career-season high for Cody, who's pitched 475 career innings in Minor League baseball. A pitcher will see his workload increase with a jump from college to the pro ranks. Thus, Cody has learned to take care of his body and arm to withstand the ailments that accompany a pitcher's navigating his way through a long season.
"It's a grind physically and mentally," said Cody about the rigors of a long baseball season. "This is my fourth full season, so I've kind of learned the ropes of how to stay fresh mentally and physically."
"You learn your body; you learn how to take care of yourself. Even though you might feel great early on, it's important to get treatment and cure something that might be nagging you that you regularly wouldn't think twice about. It will come back to haunt you in the long run if you ignore it."
Jaspers' coach Kevin Leighton knew early on he had something special in Cody, who is not exactly a physical-looking menace on the mound given his 6-foot, 190-pound frame.
"Nobody wanted him out of high school," said Leighton. "He's another guy you see off the field, he's a quiet guy. You would never think he's a professional baseball player.
"But when you put him on the mound; all of a sudden he's a different type of kid. He's that quiet-type kid that just competes and he's the type of kid who all his life he's been told 'he doesn't throw hard enough, he doesn't do this well enough', and yet he's getting it done year-after-year. He doesn't get rattled easily."
Cody's calming persona is why he's not fretting over his early season turbulence.
"I've been around pro ball for four seasons and you learn there are a lot of talented people out there," said Cody, who led Manhattan to a 4-1 victory over Nebraska and current New York Yankees pitcher Joba Chamberlain in the 2006 NCAA Tournament. "You know what it is like to be a big fish in a small pond and then you become a small fish in a big pond.
"What I've learned is I need to stay even-keeled; not get too high when things are going well and not get too down when things are going bad. That's the most important lesson you can learn in this game. But it's also one of the hardest lessons to learn."
The lever on the pendulum may be tilting in a new direction for the first time in Cody's career, but he's tackling it head on.
"I've had a lot of success early on in my career and recently. I've ran into some bumps on the road," said Cody. "I've learned about myself and how to deal with failure. I think I am handling it well. It's a grind, a long season; you're going to have a few struggles."
And as Cody admits, it's not the worst thing for a ballplayer to go through some pitfalls.
"I'm playing pro ball for a living," said Cody. "A bad day for me is better than most people's good days at their job."
