Braves have bargain of the year in Campillo
The Atlanta Journal-Constitution
You can put away the speed gun. Forget all the fireball jargon. Just hand him the ball and tell him to pitch. Now you're talking. He'll take care of the rest. He has been doing it for years, eight seasons in a row in Mexico City. That's Triple-A by USA standards, but the road trips aren't for tourists. Bus rides over crooked mountain roads and through the gulches and along the rivers, and games in ball parks with lights so dim you could hardly read the signs on the fences. And you're Mexican and they're Mexican, so there's no language barrier.
First thing you want to know, reading the "career highlights" of Jorge Campillo is this: Why, when the Braves signed him in 1996, did they "loan" him to the Mexico City Tigres? That's what it says in the Braves press guide. It was more a sentence than a loan. Jorge was stuck there for eight seasons. Eight, as in the figure 8. That's high altitude, thin air, and curve balls don't break much in Mexico City.
He started, worked out of the bullpen. Anything, just call Jorge. Then in the off-season he pitched in the Winter League. One year he won 10 games for Culiacan. That's when the Mariners bought him, and when his arm caved in. After elbow surgery, he had the lowest earned-run average in the Pacific Coast League, and to show their appreciation, the Mariners gave him his outright release. Ah, enter stage right, John Coppolella. A Notre Dame grad, former employee of the Yankees, now on Frank Wren's staff with the Braves.
Coppolella had seen Campillo pitch against the Yankees, and it was he (Coppolella), Wren said, who put all the numbers together and recommended that the Braves sign him. Campillo had an agent, a fellow named Jaime Torres, who had a stable of Latin-American clients.
"We got together with Jaime Torres at the winter meetings in Nashville," Coppolella said, "and we signed him. It wasn't just me. Matt Price and Ronnie Richardson were a part of it. Frankly, I had no clue. I thought that he would help us at Richmond. We were in a bad way in Triple-A. I had no idea it would turn out like this. I'd tried to get Brian Cashman interested in him when I was with the Yankees, but nobody was listening."
Campillo doesn't throw hard, usually in the low 80s on the speed gun. He wastes little time around the mound. Has an uncomplicated delivery. Gets the
ball, gets the sign, throws the ball. For $410,000, the Braves are getting the bargain of the year, while two multi-millionaire pitchers ride out the season,
and another bides his time on the injury list. Oh, I should point out that Campillo knows how to use a bat. He has driven in two runs with his three base hits.
Fallin: He has started only eight games so far but he leads the staff with a 2.54 ERA. He is the real deal.
He, Jair Jurrjens and Jo-Jo Reyes have been carrying the pitching load, an amazing turn of events with all the wealth otherwise wasted on a sickly
pitching staff. And after all the crooks and turns in his career, Campillo won't be 29 until August. It leaves you to wonder just what might have happened
if the Braves hadn't been so generous and lent him to Mexico City when he was just a kid.


