DUNEDIN, Fla. — Jon Rauch is no stranger to closing.
He helped close out the Montreal Expos era, pitching the seventh inning of their final game on Oct. 3, 2004, an 8-1 loss to the New York Mets at Shea Stadium.
He pitched in the final game played at the Metrodome in 2009 when he was with the Minnesota Twins.
And last year the 6-11 right-hander opened the season closing for the Twins after Joe Nathan had season-ending elbow surgery. He had 21 saves before the Twins obtained Matt Capps in a trade with the Washington Nationals.
Rauch, 32, could be closing again, this time for the Toronto Blue Jays when their season opens on April 1 if projected closer Frank Francisco can’t open the season because of a sore chest muscle. If Francisco is ready, Rauch would be a set-up man with occasional appearances in the closing role on days that the regular closer was not available.
The job description doesn’t matter to Rauch.
“I just like to pitch, I don’t care where it is,” said Rauch.
“Regardless of what the job is, it’s still getting outs. Whether you’re closing, whether you’re a starter, whether you’re a mop-up guy, you’ve got to get outs. So why not approach it the same way?”
Rauch, who finished last season with a 3.12 earned-run average, is the tallest player in the majors. He also is among the leaders in tattoos, and says each represents something of significance to him.
He has one with his wedding date — Sept. 7, 2001 — in Roman numerals running down his spine. He has Olympic rings on his left ankle to commemorate playing with the gold medal-winning U.S. baseball team at the Sydney Games in 2000.
On the right side of his neck, there is a tattoo of intertwined wedding rings surrounded by two olive branches to honour his wife Erica. That tattoo was done after his wife had postpartum osteoporosis after giving birth to their second daughter. The condition resulted in stress fractures in both legs that left her wheelchair-bound for eight weeks. She recovered fully.
“It wasn’t easy to go through and you weren’t able to help out and be around,” Rauch said.
He started getting tattoos when he was 18.
“A friend of mine is a tattoo artist,” Rauch said. “Most are based on life experiences and things you’ve gone through, things you’ve seen, things that have made an impact on your life one way or another, you draw on the experience of it and put it into a picture.”
One experience that he says he doesn’t remember much about is that final game before the Expos moved to Washington. He has clearer memories about their final game at Olympic Stadium that was delayed for a few minutes when fans tossed golf balls on the field.
During this spring training, he shares a clubhouse with two other members of the last Expos team, outfielder Juan Rivera and relief pitcher Chad Cordero, who is on a minor-league contract trying to come back from shoulder problems.
If there’s a bond among former Montreal players, Rauch says it’s not because they played for the final Expos team.
“I don’t think it’s that,” he said. “I think it’s because you played together on a team with somebody, you were part of something. I think that’s what develops a relationship not the fact that you were part of the last game of something. (The team) is not extinct; it’s in a different city.”
When the Expos moved to Washington, so did Rauch and Cordero. Rivera went to the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim. Rauch moved on to Arizona during the 2008 season and then to the Twins in the 2009 season.
While Rauch likes pitching regardless of what he is asked to do — “If I’m on the team I’m happy — he said defined roles in the bullpen are desirable
“I definitely think it helps because then it’s not a guessing game,” he said.
“You don’t have four or five guys sitting around there when the phone rings saying all right who’s it going to be? You kind of know where your place is and it helps you mentally to prepare for the game. That way you’re not caught off guard.”
Rauch, who underwent shoulder surgery in both 2001 and 2005, is using spring training to work on his changeup.
“It’s one of those things I’m trying to work when I’m at camp and trying to get a feel for it,” he said. “I don’t throw as hard as I used to and it’s a big thing for me to change speeds and be able to locate my pitches. If I can throw it for strikes more than not I think it’s going to be beneficial for me. If I can’t throw it for strikes then there’s no point in having it.”
He has worked on a changeup for about 10 years, since he blew out his shoulder the first time.
“You can be throwing the same pitch for years and then you lose feel and you try to get it back,” Rauch said. “It’s just one of those pitches that you might as well take advantage of.”
Jays manager John Farrell said statistically Rauch has been better against right-handed hitters.
“But he’s got the use of the changeup and the use of the curveball so he’s got the ability to slow down some bats left-handed and negate some of the power left-handed with the use of the off-speed,” Farrell said. “The biggest thing with him is he’s not going to beat himself. He throws strikes, he pitches to contact rather than trying to go solely for the strikeout.”
Rauch was born in Louisville, Ky., and attended Morehead State University in Kentucky. But when his old school upset Louisville this past week in the men’s NCAA basketball tournament, his reaction was a shrug. He’s not a big sports fan.
“Never paid attention to it,” he said. “Baseball was a reward. If I got good grades in school I was allowed to play baseball so it was an avenue for me to get out of the house and get out of chores.”
If he wasn’t a professional baseball player, he figures he would be working with cars in some way.
“I was at school for engineering,” he said. “But I’ve always enjoyed working on cars so I probably would have been a gear-head getting greasy and dirty underneath a car.”