This is what Red Sox fifth-starter candidate Chris Mazza’s smoothest offseason in several years looked like: He became engaged. He pitched winter ball in the Dominican Republic. He was claimed off waivers from the Mets by the Red Sox on Dec. 20.
It’s what he didn’t do that made this past offseason different. He didn’t work for his father’s business, R. Mazza Masonry in Concord, California.
“My father’s a mason and I’ve worked for him every offseason since 2012, except this last one,” Mazza said. “I try. Give me enough time and I can do it, but I can’t do it as quickly or nicely as he can.”
Does he miss the work?
“I don’t miss it at all,” he said. “It was my lifting program. Pick up 80-pound sacks of mortar, all the brick, you’ve got to move the material, make scaffolding. You do not want to go to the gym afterward. That was my strength and conditioning.”
It’s not that Mazza, 30, is immune to hard work. He would have given up his main career by now if that were the case. Instead, he persevered, making his major league debut at the age of 29 on June 29, 2019, with the Mets against the Braves.
“It was a little bit of a blur at first,” Mazza said. “I remember giving up a run in my first three pitches and then settling down and going four scoreless after that. Freddie Freeman was my first strikeout, future Hall of Famer, so that’s one I’ll never forget.”
The Red Sox are Mazza’s seventh organization, five affiliated with Major League Baseball, plus two independent leagues.
When organizations released him, putting an end to his small minor league income, he pitched for much smaller paychecks with the unaffiliated San Rafael Paifics and Southern Maryland Blue Crabs.
Now he’s trying to earn a spot at the back end of the Sox rotation, a crowded competition. Red Sox interim manager Ron Roenicke so far has not listed all the names in the competition, saying he’s afraid he would forget somebody, but he did say that Mazza is “definitely in the mix.”
Eduardo Rodriguez initially was scheduled to make the second start of the Red Sox exhibition season, but was pushed back because he injured his knee and Mazza replaced him. As planned, Mazza pitched two innings Sunday. He allowed three hits, two walks and one run in the Red Sox 11-5 loss to the Orioles at Ed Smith Stadium.
The Orioles loaded the bases against him with nobody out in the first inning on two ground singles and a walk and he escaped without allowing a run. He struck out a swinging Pedro Severino for the first out and then made a nice play on a comebacker off the bat of Dwight Smith Jr. for a 1-2-3 double play assisted by catcher Kevin Plawecki.
The Orioles put two runners in scoring position with nobody out in the second and came out of the inning with just one run.
“With me being a sinkerball guy, I know I”m going to get a lot of groundballs,” Mazza said. “Sometimes they’re going to find holes and today they were, but the biggest thing is you’ve got to be able to minimize. Bases loaded once, then runners on second and third, giving up one run, I’ll take that all day.”
In the event Red Sox rookie chief baseball officer Chaim Bloom either trades for a fifth starter before the season starts or the Sox decide to use an opener every fifth day, nobody will win the competition, but Mazza said he doesn’t allow himself to think about those things.
“I was planning on hopefully fighting for a bullpen spot at the time (he was claimed by the Red Sox),” Mazza said. “We had our five guys in the rotation set in stone until they traded (David) Price. I’m going to try to do my job the best I can. If I get the spot, I get the spot. If not, I’ve still got a long season.”
As Roenicke said, Mazza is “in the mix.”
“Yeah, I definitely feel like I’m in the mix and we’ve got a lot of other good pitchers,” Mazza said. “We’re all teammates. We all want each other to do well and at the end of the day the best guy’s going to get the job and that’s how it should be.”
Mazza sets high goals for himself or he wouldn’t have made it all the way to the big leagues, but he knows that becoming the family’s best baseball player is not within the realm of possibility. His grandmother was Joe DiMaggio’s cousin.
“My grandmother’s mother was a DiMaggio,” Mazza said. “I never met Dom. I met Joe once when I was 6 and I didn’t realize who I was talking to. I was 6 years old. There’s not a whole lot I remember from when I was 6 years old.”
The original article written by Thomas Keegan can be found here:
https://www.bostonherald.com/2020/02/23/chris-mazza-bricklayer-by-winter-pitcher-by-summer