If Tanner Gordon evolves into a successful big-league starting pitcher, he might look back on his two-day, five-flight, 6,134-mile, bleary-eyed odyssey as a turning point.
The journey culminated on Thursday at Pittsburgh’s PNC Park when he gave the Rockies four innings of one-run pitching, including five strikeouts in the Rockies’ 7-2 loss to the Pirates. Gordon was desperately needed because starter Chase Dollander left the game in the second inning with an elbow injury.
“Tanner was incredible,” Rockies manager Warren Schaeffer said. “What a performance by him. We needed that. He saved our bullpen.”
The excursion is a blur to Gordon.
“It’s kind of hard to remember it all, to be honest with you,” Gordon said with a smile. “It’s hard to keep track of the days, nights, mornings, and all of the flights. I’m not sure which day was which. But it all worked out.”
Here are the “highlights” of Gordon’s cross-country journey:
• The 28-year-old right-hander pitched three innings of long relief in Philadelphia on May 9.
• Last Tuesday, he was in Pittsburgh with the Rockies when the club sent him down to Triple-A Albuquerque when reliever Jimmy Herget came off the injured list. The two flights — Pittsburgh to Albuquerque, through Salt Lake City — equaled 2,449 miles. He touched down in Albuquerque at about 10:30 p.m.
• On Wednesday afternoon, he arrived at Isotopes Park at about 4 p.m., feeling a little down because he’d been demoted, but understanding he had a job to do.
“So I got to the field, threw a little bit, started my lifting, and then they told me I was going back up,” Gordon said. “So I packed up all the stuff that I just unpacked, went to the house I’m staying at there, and packed again. It was pretty crazy.”
It turns out that Herget had suffered a right shoulder impingement during Colorado’s game on Tuesday night vs. the Pirates. So Gordon was needed again.
• At 6:40 p.m. Wednesday, Gordon boarded his flight from Albuquerque to Los Angeles (809 miles, with a two-hour layover). Then he took a red-eye flight from L.A. to Atlanta (2,197 miles, with another two-hour-plus layover).
“I got to Atlanta at about 5 in the morning,” Gordon said. “Then I had to wait in the airport again. It was kind of crazy. We took off from Atlanta about 7:45 a.m.”
• Gordon flew from Atlanta to Pittsburgh (679 miles), landing about 9:30 a.m. When he finally arrived at PNC Park, Schaeffer sought him out.
“When I saw him in the morning, his eyes were bloodshot,” Schaeffer said. “I asked him, ‘Are you ready to go?’ He said, ‘Yeah, a little coffee goes a long way.’ ”
Gordon said he doesn’t remember much about his four innings against the Pirates.
“It was kind of instinct and muscle memory,” he said. “I just went out and pitched. I didn’t think about it too much.”
Dollander was placed on the 15-day injured list on Friday with a right elbow sprain and is expected to miss a month or more. Gordon is the likely choice to replace Dollander in the rotation.
Who knows, maybe Gordon’s jet-lagged performance in Pittsburgh will be a launching pad.
“You know, the baseball gods don’t really care if you are tired or not,” he said. “I had to go do my job.”
OK, but surely Gordon’s expedition included a rollercoaster of emotions. It can’t be easy to deal with getting sent back to the minors, right?
“Sure, it’s frustrating in the moment, but then things settle back down, and it goes back to being about baseball,” he said. “You have a job to do. You can only throw a pity party for so long.
“And I don’t want to make it seem like it was something heroic. It’s part of the game. So I don’t want to make too much of it, but it’s going to be a fun story to tell.”
