BASEBALL : Witt Prospers as Set-Up Starter for Ryan

It is a measure of Bobby Witt’s development and the confidence that the Texas Rangers have in him that he is being entrusted to do arm-and-legwork on behalf of Nolan Ryan.

Witt, of course, is also doing it for himself and the Rangers, but the key point is that expectation has again replaced exasperation.

“I’m not going to put pressure on him by saying he’s going to be the next Nolan Ryan or Dave Stewart or Roger Clemens,” said pitching coach Tom House, a doctor of psychology. “Enough people have done that to him already.

“I will say he’s definitely turned the corner (in) becoming a pitcher rather than thrower.”

The Rangers believe it to this extent: At the All-Star break, they juggled their rotation so that Witt would start immediately ahead of Ryan, who at 43 and with a stress fracture in his lower back, seldom completes what he starts.

Ryan’s reliance on the bullpen is such that the Rangers needed assurance the relievers would be rested. Witt has provided that assurance.

He is 5-0 in his last six starts, averaging almost eight innings a game. In his three starts since the All-Star break, the bullpen has worked 4 1/3 innings. In Ryan’s three starts, the bullpen has worked 9 2/3.

It is no disgrace, of course, but Ryan has completed only 40 of his last 132 career victories after completing 121 of his first 167.

So, when the Rangers open a three-game series in Milwaukee Monday night, Witt will be on the mound, laying some groundwork for Ryan, who will make his second bid for his 300th victory Tuesday night.

The Witt-Ryan team within a team is not all one-sided, however. The Rangers reflect on an improvement in Witt’s work habits and suspect Ryan has rubbed off.

“I think it’s more than coincidence that Bobby is now demonstrating some of the same qualities Nolan possesses,” Manager Bobby Valentine said. “He used to do only enough so that he could pitch every fifth day. Now he works seven days a week. He has a better chance now to be the pitcher everyone thinks he can be.”

And what kind of pitcher is that?

“One of the glamour guys,” Valentine said. “A guy up there in wins, innings pitched and complete games. A guy who strikes out a lot of hitters and a couple times in his career, when he has everything special, puts zeroes across the board.”

Sound familiar?

Sound, say, like a characterization of the young Nolan Ryan?

There are those who have made that comparison. Even House acknowledges they are in what he calls the same genre--power pitchers troubled early in their careers by wildness.

Now 26, right-hander Witt was Texas’ No. 1 selection in the 1985 June draft after being a University of Oklahoma All-American and a 1984 Olympian. He was burdened with those great expectations and an aluminum-bat reluctance, the Rangers believe, to pitch inside because of the damage he saw college hitters produce with those non-wood weapons.

In parts or all of four seasons with the Rangers before 1990, Witt’s strikeout ratio of 8.71 per nine innings was third only to Ryan’s and Lee Smith’s among active pitchers with 600 or more innings.

He has a 95-m.p.h. fastball, a wicked slider and a satisfactory changeup. But pitching to only half the plate, he walked 498 and struck out 648 in 669 1/3 innings. He was 39-42 with a 4.85 earned-run average and twice was sent to the minors.

Said House: “Our expectations just didn’t match up with his learning curve, with his capacity to gain experience and use it.”

For Valentine, the exasperation was twofold.

“One, I didn’t think he was always being upfront with me about the health of his arm,” the manager said, “and two, I could never convince him to use all 17 inches of the plate rather than the outside eight or nine. It was as if he made a conscious effort to see how many pitches he could throw and how many guys he could strike out.”

Through maturation and recognition of what he needs to do on and off the mound, Witt is now: (1) relying on his fastball rather than trying to be cute with a breaking pitch, (2) using both halves of the plate and (3) getting strike calls on pitches that may have gone the other way before, because umpires didn’t expect to see him pitch inside and were conditioned to thinking he was always wild.

His record is 8-8, but he has rebounded from an 0-4 start with that 5-0 streak in which his ERA is 1.99 and he has struck out 50 and walked 23 in 45 1/3 innings--dependable innings that have helped the bullpen prepare to help Ryan.

In an era when starting pitchers are satisfied merely getting to the fifth or sixth innings, Witt wants more.

“He has a closing gear,” House said. “He’s like Dave Stewart is and Nolan would be if his back permitted it. Get into the late innings and he tells you not to worry about the bullpen, that he’ll finish it.

“It’s a pleasant variation from the five-and-fly syndrome.”

And a pleasant development for Ryan and the Rangers.

Witt has received the publicity in his role as the set-up starter for Ryan, but Kevin Brown, 25, is already 12-7 in the wake of a 12-9 emergence in 1989. On the basis of arms alone, Brown, Witt and Ryan are virtually unmatched anywhere. They’re the fastest guns in the West--and the American League, which the Texas staff leads in strikeouts.

It is a risky business attempting to predict what Commissioner Fay Vincent will decide regarding the fate of New York Yankee owner George Steinbrenner.

A decision is expected early this week. Sources familiar with Vincent’s thinking tend to believe that Steinbrenner will not be ordered to sell the Yankees but will be suspended for at least a year.

The threat of a Steinbrenner lawsuit does not intimidate Vincent.

“The commissioner’s authority has been routinely challenged in federal court and routinely supported in federal court,” Vincent said in Texas, while attending Ryan’s first 300 bid.

What more can happen to the Yankees this year? An owner in trouble. A fired manager. Dave Winfield traded. Mel Hall and Jesse Barfield among those asking to be traded. Don Mattingly batting .245 and now on the disabled list. An offense last in the league in hits and runs. A record that is the worst in baseball, including an 18-30 mark for new Manager Stump Merrill.

In Texas the other night, after the Yankees blew a potential 7-3 victory over Ryan and lost to the Rangers, 9-7, Merrill shook his head and said he was truly baffled.

“I’m wondering what I did, what I’ve done in my background, what I’m being punished for,” he said.

The deadline for trading players without waivers is Tuesday midnight.

The Dodgers, of course, are trying to deal Kirk Gibson and Alfredo Griffin, with increasing speculation that the Oakland Athletics represent the most viable possibility for Gibson.

The recent work of Reggie Harris, sources say, has led the A’s to believe they can part with Todd Burns, who would become the Dodgers’ fifth starter.

The players who may be moved before the deadline include the Houston Astros’ Mike Scott, the San Diego Padres’ Jack Clark, the Rangers’ Gary Pettis, the Yankees’ Barfield and the Baltimore Orioles’ Phil Bradley and Mickey Tettleton.

Scott seems to be the one certainty--with the contending Pittsburgh Pirates and Boston Red Sox openly displaying interest and expressing the conviction that he will be traded.

There is new evidence that the inmates have taken over the asylum.

Consider that Bradley, a journeyman hitter and outfielder, had enough gall the other day to say that a one-year, $1.3-million extension offer from the Orioles left him humiliated.

Then there was Lenny Dykstra saying that the Philadelphia Phillies have until the end of this season to give him a contract similar to Rickey Henderson’s four-year, $12-million deal with the A’s or he would definitely leave as a free agent after the 1991 season.

Dykstra said he is the best leadoff hitter in the National League and should make what the best leadoff hitter in the American League makes.

True, Dykstra continues to lead the NL in hitting, as Henderson does the AL, but this is Dykstra’s first big season compared to 12 for Henderson, and Dykstra has obviously failed to compare their power and stolen base production. The point: They don’t compare.