Tough times helped mold Bucs' Taillon

PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. -- Jameson Taillon's journey was so crazy that there surely were days he wondered if the breakthrough season he had in 2016 would ever come.
Maybe Taillon will look back and see it was worth it. In the end, few rookie pitchers were more impressive than the 25-year-old Pirates right-hander.
In 18 starts after his June 8 debut, Taillon pitched 104 innings with a 1.115 WHIP and a 3.38 ERA. He took a no-hitter into the seventh inning at Citi Field in his second start, and he allowed three runs or fewer 15 times.
"That's a feeling I'll never forget," Taillon said. "That first game, I usually throw 93-95 [mph]. I came out that first inning sitting 96-97. That's just not me. That's how excited I was and how much energy I had."

Taillon's stuff is among the best in the game, beginning with a 95 mph sinker and a hard, knee-buckling curveball. He throws both for strikes consistently, and he sets them up with a changeup that is likely to become more of a weapon in his second season.
When the Bucs are asked about Taillon, they say the kind of things usually reserved for established veterans.
"His demeanor, first and foremost," third baseman David Freese said. "He's an absolute pro. You could see right away this guy was the real deal."
Taillon's manager with the Pirates agrees with that assessment.
"Steadfast," Clint Hurdle said. "Sniper focus. Always in attack mode. He feared nothing. He respected everything."
And in perhaps the highest compliment a manager can pay a pitcher, Hurdle said, "He'll develop into being a pitcher who can keep you in a game without his best stuff, to win you a game without his best stuff."

Back to how Taillon got to this place.
"I was in a dark place in 2015," Taillon said. "You wonder, 'Why me? What am I doing to deserve this?'"
Pittsburgh made Taillon the second overall pick of the 2010 MLB Draft -- the player taken between Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
Taillon was the prototype of what a great pitcher is supposed to be -- a 6-foot-5 right-hander with a blazing fastball and above-average secondary pitches.
Scouts almost universally forecast greatness. And because Taillon was from the Houston suburbs, they compared him to everyone from Roger Clemens to Nolan Ryan.
Taillon was fulfilling that promise, too, in spades. And he was on the cusp of the Major Leagues at 22 in the spring of 2014. That's when the pain in his right elbow -- the pain he'd been dealing with for months -- became more than he could tolerate.
That led to the procedure every pitcher dreads: Tommy John surgery.
And then, when Taillon was cruising toward a comeback the following season, he needed hernia surgery.

Here's what Taillon did then, and here's what may explain why he was so good when he finally arrived last season.
"I felt sorry for myself for maybe a couple of hours," Taillon said. "I got over it and went back to the rehab process."
Taillon decided that the 2014 and '15 seasons weren't going to be wasted.
Now when reporters asked about "the two lost seasons," Taillon stops them. He grew physically, and he grew emotionally.
"It's wasted as far as my name wasn't in a boxscore," Taillon said. "I wasn't competing at the highest level, which I understand.
"But I had an opportunity to go back to the drawing board and say, 'Well, I'm going to be here, I might as well make my time worthwhile. What can I do to make my mechanics better? What can I do to make my grips better? What can I do to make my arm stronger, to get stronger? What can I do to eat healthier? How do I transition all this to in-season?'
"I had so much time away with no pressure, no hype on me. I wasn't pitching for a boxscore. I was just committed to the process. I got to hone up and clean up and go forward with it. I asked friends, family, teammates. I was confiding with guys who'd had Tommy John surgery, confiding with guys who'd lost some weight. How guys cooked. What worked for them."

When Taillon finally got back on a mound last spring, he was a different man -- and certainly a different athlete.
"I grew patience," Taillon said. "I grew discipline. Back to high school, I'd always heard 'one pitch at a time.' What the heck does that mean? To an 18-year-old kid, what does 'one pitch at a time' mean? I want to be in the big leagues. I want to be striking guys out. I want to strike a guy out on a 0-0 pitch.
"Going through Tommy John [surgery], you learn that today you just need to bend your elbow 15 degrees. Tomorrow, I can do a little more. If I don't take care of today, I won't get to tomorrow. You celebrate the little successes. I started kind of understanding what 'one pitch at a time' meant. Execute this, move to the next day, then the next."
As Hurdle said, "Those two years out weren't wasted years by any means. They were years when he developed and shaped himself a lot of different ways other than pitching."
Perhaps more than anything else, those 18 Major League starts last year showed Taillon that he belongs. That's something every young player -- no matter how high they're drafted -- is unsure of.
"When you're in the Minor Leagues, there are so many questions about whether you can pitch up there," Taillon said. "What's the transition? I made it up and realized I could do it. It became fun. There were no more worries, no more need to read a prospect report. I was there. That's where I wanted to be. Now I can focus on getting better."