JUPITER, Fla. – A small adjustment to his windup has former FAU pitcher Austin Gomber ready to impress at Cardinals spring training.
Struggling with the ability to repeat his motion while at High Class A Palm Beach midway through last season, Gomber elected to try to speed up his motion to achieve greater consistency.
“Once we found the tempo that we wanted, it was just how to consistently get to that,” Gomber said. “July is kind of when I took off last year, when everything started to click.”
Gomber posted a 2.15 ERA over his final 10 outings of 2016. The final four games came at Double A, winning his only decision while allowing four runs over 19 1/3 innings.
The loss of a fingernail forced Gomber to miss nearly all of August, but he’d shown the Cardinals enough to earn a spot in the Arizona Fall League, where he once again shut down opposing bats. In an AFL-best 33 2/3 innings over seven starts, Gomber limited hitters to a .205 average, allowing only eight earned runs.
“It was a good experience,” Gomber said. “I’ve heard it’s kind of a showcase league. It was an honor obviously to get invited and then to pitch well was just icing on the cake.”
Gomber, a fourth-round Cardinals pick in 2014, is a non-roster invitee to St. Louis spring training, which opened earlier this week.
The invite last season came a little ahead of Gomber’s own projected schedule.
“Obviously I always had confidence,” Gomber said. “I felt like this year would be a year that I would definitely be here. I think last year coming to camp was a little bit more than I expected, but it was a good learning process for me.”
The learning process continues this spring.
Gomber hopes a good showing will prompt the Cardinals to assign him to Class AAA Memphis following camp, one step away from the big leagues.
“I’m not coming in trying to make the [major league] team because I feel like that’s unrealistic,” Gomber said. “For me, I’m just trying to come in and leave a good impression that I’m ready when they need me – whenever that may be.”
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