Kyle Drabek will be featured on the cover of Baseball America's American League East issue in which the top 10 prospects for each team in the division are profiled. To mark the occasion, here are photos of his debut in Toronto September 22nd.
Drabek is greeted by bullpen coach Rick Langford as he gets ready to make his second major league start against Seattle.
The 2010 Eastern League Pitcher of the Year gets set to climb the mound in the bullpen.
Drabek emerges from the bullpen after completing his warm-up tosses.
Drabek gets ready to catch a ball from catcher John Buck.
JaysVision features Drabek during the pre-game line-up introductions.
The left field auxiliary scoreboard details the statistics from Drabek's first start in Baltimore.
JaysVision captures Drabek emerging from the dugout with first baseman Lyle Overbay.
Drabek gets through the first inning unscathed despite a couple of errors, one by himself and shortstop Yunel Escobar. He began the game by getting Ichiro Suzuki on a ground out and induced a double play ball from Justin Smoak.
The long ball hurt Drabek in this one as he gave up a pair of two-out homers in the second and third innings to Victoria, B.C. native Michael Saunders and Jose Lopez to fall behind 3-0.
Drabek lasted five innings and allowed one base runner an inning by giving up four hits and a walk while striking out three. He threw 84 pitches, 50 of them for strikes. Though the Jays made it a 3-2 game, Lopez homered twice more off lefty Brian Tallet and Shawn Camp respectively to lead the juggernaut offence of the "mighty" Mariners to a 6-3 win.
Drabek showed a lot of promise by featuring a fastball that topped out at 96 miles per hour. He also threw sinkers, cutters, two-seam fastballs, sliders, curves and changeups according to MLB Game Day. It may a case of whoever determines the pitches can't quite figure out what Drabek is throwing. Though he finished the year 0-3 with a 4.76 earned run average, the tools are definitely in the tool box for the son of Doug Drabek, the 1990 Cy Young Award winner. He delivered two quality starts against the Orioles and Yankees and gave up just 18 hits and five walks in 17 innings while striking out 12. Hopefully, Drabek will get some run support in 2011 as he only received a whopping five runs to work with in his three starts.
With Drabek getting the cover of the upcoming issue of Baseball America, it was nearly a dozen years ago when the man he was traded for graced BA's front page. A mini-picture of that cover with Roy Halladay wearing his blue jersey with number 52 on it is in the current BA issue with Atlanta's Jason Heyward on the cover. It was taken during his no-hit bid against Detroit at the Dome when Bobby Bleepin' Higginson broke it up with a home run. Hopefully, the BA cover karma will work as well for Drabek as it did for Doc.
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