SAN DIEGO — Rockies closer Daniel Bard, who overcame the yips to resurrect his baseball career and produce one of the best seasons in club history, was placed on the 15-day injured list Thursday with what Bard is calling anxiety issues.
The club made the move just hours before Colorado opened its season against the Padres at Petco Park.
“It’s a hard thing to admit,” the 37-year-old Bard said, adding that the anxiety has affected him on and off the field. “But I’ve been through this before. … I’m extremely grateful to be in an organization that understands these things and is accepting.”
Right-hander Jake Bird, who missed much of spring training with a strained left oblique, was added to the 26-man roster to replace Bard.
Bard said it felt “out of sync” early in spring training and his anxiety worsened. Bard often threw his fastball at 98 mph last season but it hovered around 93 mph this spring. Over the last few days, he had discussions with manager Bud Black, head trainer Keith Dugger, pitching coach Darryl Scott and others to decide the best course of action.
“We all just talked it out and agreed to take some time to get things right,” Bard said. “That was better than me just trying to plow through it. Knowing myself, I knew it was time to take a step back, so that’s the approach here.”
Bard will remain with the team and continue throwing, but there is no timetable for his return.
“We will assess where he is a couple of weeks from now,” Black said. “My sense is that Daniel is going to be fine. He’s not that far off.
“But he’s a perfectionist in a lot of ways and he has high standards for himself. He got off to a tough start at the beginning of camp and he wasn’t synched up with his mechanics. The best thing to do is take a step back, regroup in a lot of different ways, and see where we are at.”
Last season, Bard posted a 1.79 ERA and had a career-high 34 saves. His 91.9 save percentage (34 saves in 37 opportunities) was the best in majors and the second-best in a single season in Rockies franchise history. Huston Street had a 94.6% save rate in 2009.
With Bard out, Black said he would mix and match his ninth-inning relievers, saying that right-handers Pierce Johnson, Dinelson Lamet and Justin Lawrence, as well as lefty Brad Hand, are the pitchers most likely to close games.
“We’ll figure out the ninth inning as we go forward and I don’t know if we will dedicate the ninth inning to one guy,” Black said. “We’ll see how guys perform. Hopefully, there are a lot of opportunities for saves and our guys will get them. ”
Bard arrived at spring training as Colorado’s best reliever, but things looked amiss early in camp. When he pitched for Team USA in the quarterfinals of the World Baseball Classic earlier this month, the wildness that interrupted his career showed up. In Team USA’s 9-7 win over Venezuela, Bard was tagged for four earned runs on two walks, a hit batsman, a single and a wild pitch while not recording an out.
“Pitching in the big leagues is hard enough when everything feels great — the mind’s great and the body’s great,” said Bard, who had a 5.40 ERA with five walks in six innings of Cactus League baseball. “But it’s really hard when something is out of sync. I was a little out of sync early in spring but not enough to call it a problem and I thought it might work out.”
When Bard pitched poorly in the WBC, he said he didn’t realize, at that time, the anxiety was at the root of his rough outing.
“It is a big stage and I wasn’t feeling right and it just kind of exaggerated things that were off,” he said. “Whether that’s mechanical or mental, it doesn’t matter. It made some small problems into not small problems.”
In 2010, Bard, a first-round pick out of the University of North Carolina, posted an impressive 1.93 ERA for the Red Sox. He was seen as Boston’s heir apparent to star closer Jonathan Papelbon.
But then came injuries, control issues and anxiety. Bard’s ERA skyrocketed to 6.22 in 2012 and he was demoted to the minors early in the 2013 season. He didn’t pitch in the big leagues again until 2020 when he hooked up with the Rockies after an impressive January tryout. He made the team and was named the 2020 MLB Comeback Player of the Year.
Bard said Thursday that he realized that he didn’t have to talk publicly about his anxiety and that he could have gone on the IL with a phantom injury, but he thought it was important to be upfront about his problem.
“We talked about some options because there is always stuff that is banged up with any player,” he said. “We just thought it was best to get out front with it and not go on the IL with something that was really not a problem. … That was better than trying to dance around the truth.”