Avila Meeting Up With Mud Hens For Rehab Stint
By Ashley Dunkak
@AshleyDunkak
DETROIT - Veteran catcher Alex Avila will begin a rehab stint with Triple-A Toledo on Friday, manager Brad Ausmus said Thursday.
Avila, whom the Tigers placed on the disabled list May 9 due to a loose body in his knee, will meet up with the Mud Hens in Norfolk.
Ausmus said Avila is scheduled to catch three to five innings Friday, serve as the designated hitter Saturday, and catch five innings Sunday.
Next week, Avila is set to be the designated hitter Monday, catch seven innings Tuesday, be the designated hitter Wednesday, catch seven innings Thursday and catch five to seven innings Friday.
The team misses Avila's left-handed bat, Ausmus said, but what Avila does behind the plate is what makes it so imperative that the Tigers get him back.
"It's hard for people to notice preparation or the game-calling or the levity in high-stress situations that he brings to the pitchers," Ausmus said Thursday. "He's one of the better catchers in the game at blocking a ball in the dirt, which gives the pitchers confidence to throw chase pitches. There's a lot of things.
"James McCann's done an excellent job for first [year as a] full-season player and a catcher, and he's going to be a very good catcher, and Doc [Bryan Holaday]'s done a good job filling in, but experience is huge when it comes to that position," Ausmus added.
Having spent 18 years behind the plate himself, Ausmus knows how long it takes a catcher to come close to mastering all the nuances of the position. In retrospect, Ausmus said, the development process takes five or six years.
"I've always said the cruel irony of catching is just when you figure out what you're doing behind the plate, you lose all your physical skills," Ausmus said.
"You can't replace experience - game experience, situation experience, you can't replace it," Ausmus continued. "You have to experience it. It's tough to speed up. You play for five or six years, you start to get a grasp of what's going on around you at all times during the game, and two years later your bat speed goes, your arm strength goes."
Ausmus said not all players want to acknowledge that they have passed their peak when they do, but he remembered recognizing the pivotal moment in his own career for what it was.
"For me, it was probably right around the time I left Detroit, I got traded away the second time, after 2000 - maybe had a year or two after that was okay, but to me that's when the physical skills started to go backward," Ausmus said. "When I left here, I could still run a little bit, and then when I got to Houston in 2001, I could no longer run. I couldn't steal anymore."
For Ausmus, the change came so quickly it seemed as if someone threw a switch, and he knew what was happening.
"Some players don't want to believe that it's winding down," Ausmus said. "I didn't have a problem. Like I said, 2001 I knew that my legs were going. At some point shortly after that I knew I wasn't throwing as well. Now I could always block and I could always call a game, but the other things were going."
Ausmus won a Gold Glove in that 2001 season, however, and he did so again in 2002 and in 2006.
Outside the Tigers locker room, Avila has never been a particularly heralded player - like Ausmus, he went to only one All-Star Game - but his team appreciates him, and Ausmus looks forward to getting him back in action.