URPRISE, Ariz. — During the makeshift chapel service adjacent to the Royals’ clubhouse Sunday morning, one aspect of the sermon particularly resonated with pitcher Kyle Zimmer.
It was about Moses, self-described as “slow of speech and tongue” (Exodus 4:10) … yet tasked to speak and lead.
The lesson to Zimmer:
“If you don’t have trust in yourself, that’s basically saying you don’t have trust in God,” he said, adding that the moment spoke to him as an affirmation of “having faith that his plan is greater than your own, and just trusting that in the end everything is going to be exactly as it should be.”
Christianity is a way of life for Zimmer, so forgive him if it “sounds weird” or taboo that he might see an application of all that in baseball — which is just a sliver of his life but, in fact, entwined with who he is.
But it provides him “perspective on a micro level” on what might be called a burdensome career trajectory for the fifth pick overall in the 2012 draft, who seven impossibly injury-riddled seasons later at last made his Major League debut …
Only to be sent down to Class AAA Omaha days later with command issues that underscored last season and undermined the breakthrough.
He abruptly went from feeling a sensation of “floating” as he walked off the field that long-awaited inaugural night, when he struck out two White Sox in a scoreless eighth inning, to seeming to float away.
At least from the outside looking in at Zimmer, who came back to Kansas City in July and went back to Omaha in August before finishing the season for the parent club with a total of 18.1 innings pitched in 15 appearances and a 10.80 ERA after yielding 28 hits and 19 walks to just 18 strikeouts.
But whatever it looked like to others, it was something else altogether from the inside looking out.
The season more than anything else was about getting over a mental hurdle, so much so that about the first thing he said about it as we chatted Sunday is that “there was a weight lifted off my back.”
Though Zimmer acknowledged he was “rocked” when he was sent down after so many years of persevering only to stick around just a couple weeks, the season absolutely was a net positive for him.
“Definitely: It was the first healthy season of my professional career,” he said, smiling. “And I played through September. I hadn’t even gotten through August before. And I felt like I could have kept going.”
Perhaps that sounds like a token point of consolation. But it actually addresses a few fundamental and meaningful elements about Zimmer’s winding path.
Naturally enough, his precarious health had come to consume his thoughts after the never-ending injuries.
