I particularly liked this...
“I come here, they had their arms open to me. They asked me what I wanted to do. And then (manager John Gibbons) saying, you’re the closer, that’s what you were born to do, you’re the man. I said, I’m not going to let you down.”
There was an immediate simpatico with pitching coach Pete Walker as well. Together they fixed the slider that had gone errant, restored its snap with a small mechanical adjustment.
“I knew the things I had to work on,” Giles explains. “I know myself. I’m a really good pitcher, good profile pitcher. If something’s wrong, I know how to fix it. It’s my body.’’
This, he implies, hadn’t happened in Houston and the relationship went downhill from there.
“When I came here, they stayed patient with me. I said, hey, I want to work on this thing till I’m comfortable. All right. OK, I’m comfortable, let’s move on to this next thing. Pitching, you can’t just try to fix everything at once.
“For me, I had to take baby steps to get my groove back. The Jays allowed me to do that. Yeah, the team was out of contention, but it doesn’t matter. It’s still my career. I still have to prove myself. Them being so patient with me, understanding what I want to do, was very, very big.’’
He means, specifically, that management didn’t freak out as his fastball velocity dipped while he was working out those issues. “Eventually, when your body gets comfortable, it’s going to spike back up, which it’s done. My control has been better. My slider’s better. My velo’s back.’’