Scott Kazmir Baseball player
Scott Edward Kazmir (Slovak: Kažmír, born January 24, 1984) is an American professional baseball pitcher for the Oakland Athletics of Major League Baseball. After a stellar high school career in his hometown of Houston, Texas, Kazmir was drafted in the first round of the 2002 Major League Baseball Draft by the New York Mets, who later sent him to the Tampa Bay Devil Rays in a highly publicized and criticized trade. Kazmir made his major league debut with the Devil Rays on August 23, 2004, when he was only 20 years old. Despite his age, Kazmir quickly became one of the better lefthanded starting pitchers in baseball, primarily by relying on a mid-90s fastball paired with a sharp breaking slider. Over the next several years, Kazmir was one of the few bright spots on Devil Rays teams that lost 90+ games per season. He is still among the all-time leaders in many franchise pitching categories, including strikeouts, earned run average (ERA), wins, and games started.Nagging injuries lead to inconsistency in Kazmir's pitching motion and gradually reduced his pitch velocity and overall effectiveness beginning in 2008. The Rays traded Kazmir to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim in August 2009, where he performed well for a time. However, his effectiveness deteriorated during the 2010 season, when he posted the highest ERA among American League starting pitchers. Continued poor performances during spring training in 2011 led the Angels to send Kazmir to the minor leagues to retool his mechanics and regain his confidence, but continued ineffectiveness there led to his release in June 2011.After months of individual work and short stints with independent minor league and winter league teams in 2012 and 2013, Kazmir signed a minor league deal with the Cleveland Indians before the 2013 season. Solid performances in spring training earned him a spot in the Indians' starting rotation, and he pitched well enough during the 2013 season to come in third in the voting for American League Comeback Player of the Year. In December 2013, Kazmir signed a two-year contract with the Oakland Athletics and continued his resurgence by winning a career-high 15 games during the 2014 season.
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Baseball player
| Career start | August 23, 2004 |
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| batting side | Left |
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| throwing side | Left |