From the Boston Globe’s Nick Cafardo :
Tampa Bay lefthander Scott Kazmir didn’t care for comments Curt Schilling made this week on WEEI radio, when Boston’s ace said the reason the Red Sox and Devil Rays have had numerous bench-clearing incidents is because of Kazmir ”hitting multiple batters every time he threw against us. I don’t know if any of it was intentional, but he kept hitting players.”
Kazmir, who will pitch the series finale tonight against Tim Wakefield, responded to Schilling’s comments in today’s St. Petersburg Times.
”I don’t know why he would say that,” said Kazmir. ”I never tried to hit anyone ever.
”What can you do? Why would I, of all people, get thrown into everything? I was looking at a video before of past things with the Red Sox and Devil Rays and they had all this other stuff before I was even in pro ball. And all of a sudden it’s all because of me?”
Schilling, who improved to 4-0 with last night’s 9-1 win over the Devil Rays, went on to say in the radio interview, ”We made it clear to them, for the most part, that we were only throwing at guys on their team because their young pitchers couldn’t throw inside. Obviously, he’s getting better and he’s learning. But you don’t learn to pitch in the big leagues inside, you learn how to do that in the minor leagues. And you can’t do that here because you get people hurt.”
Kazmir responded, ”So, I guess I don’t know how to pitch inside if I hit a guy or two? It doesn’t make too much sense. It’s his opinion. He wants to be heard.”
I think we now know the real reason the Mets were so quick to trade Kazmir for Victor Zambrano in the summer of ’04 ; even back then, New York could sense that Scott had serious headhunting tendencies, and the organization must’ve been concerned about how his attitude would rub off on the rest of the pitching staff, Al Leiter’s boombox, etc.
Though I doubt the situation will stay the same throughout 2006, it is worth noting, if just for pure annoyance purposes that Ty Wiggington has twice as many home runs as David Wright so far.