Local arm Zach Clark cleared waivers and has been outrighted to Double-A Bowie after making his major league debut on May 1 with the Orioles in Seattle. Clark surrendered three earned runs on three hits in 1 2/3 innings work.
The O’s DFA’ed Clark to make room for Freddy Garcia on Saturday. He was 1-2 with a 4.56 ERA at Triple-A Norfolk, however as MASNSports.com’s Roch Kubatko points out, the Tides rotation is now full with Steve Johnson, Jair Jurrjens, Zach Britton, Jake Arrieta and Josh Stinson.
Interestingly, Ken Rosenthal of FOX Sports tweets that the O’s plan to make Clark a knuckleballer now that he’s cleared waivers. Buck Showalter urged R.A. Dickey to do the same when he managed the Texas rangers in 2005.
Learning the knuckleball is no easy task. It took Dickey four years to master the pitch, but he turned himself into a Cy Young award winner at age 37.
Clark, 29, will join Eddie Gamboa as the Baysox second knuckleballer. The O’s also had Zach Staniewicz in extended spring training learning the pitch.
Why not just have him work with Clay Buchholz? He can teach him about putting “rosin” on his arm. Or wetting his hair…
I say MLB should investigate those claims because they are serious, but I’ll say this in Clay’s defense: If Clay was cheating, why the heck would he leave it out there? If he’s cheating, he’s a complete moron. If I was cheating, I sure as heck wouldn’t have the substance in question on my bare forearm.
That said, the glistening substance on his arm could be one of many things, and water is pretty much the only substance it could be and would be legal.