A spring later, Colby Lewis is back to normal

Colby Lewis was in a hurry 12 months ago.

The right-hander had missed the past 1 1/2 seasons, thanks first to flexor-tendon surgery and then trying to fight through the pain in a right hip that had been gradually getting worse for years.

But the hip had been repaired, Lewis felt better than he had in years, and he felt an urgency to make up for lost time. The problem was that the hip wasn’t quite ready for the ride.

A year later, the Texas Rangers’ projected No. 4 starter can’t pinpoint the last time he felt this good.

“Oh, [2012], before I hurt the elbow,” Lewis said Saturday morning. “Well, probably even better because I don’t have the pain in the hip. I’ve had the pain in the hip since 2006. So, it had just progressively gotten worse. It’s just, there’s no more pain.”

There wasn’t pain last year as he climbed back on a mound with intentions of cracking the Rangers’ rotation early in the season. He went to Triple A Round Rock to open the season, even though he thought he could have helped the Rangers’ rotation as they dealt with injuries.

Lewis was up by April 14, but not entirely the pitcher he had hoped to be. He prides himself on working deep in games and logging quality starts, but he didn’t see the seventh inning until June 24 and registered only two quality starts in the first half.

He pitched well May 12 at Houston, scattering seven hit in 5 2/3 scoreless innings, but the scouting report Astros hitters were given on Lewis wasn’t particularly flattering.

“We kind of saw that he was missing a lot of pitches in the zone,” said catcher Carlos Corporan, whom the Rangers acquired from Houston in January. “He wasn’t the same pitcher that he was.”

After the Los Angeles Angels knocked Lewis around on July 10 for 13 runs (11 earned) in 2 1/3 innings, his ERA sat at 6.54. During the off-season, Lewis admitted that he should have spent more time at Triple A to work on his mechanics.

“I wanted it to happen too quickly,” Lewis said. “I expected a little bit more out of myself and didn’t really allow myself to take the time to understand the process and that it was going to take a little bit more time than I wanted it to.”

Lewis put the pieces of his mechanics back together, adjusting to the longer stride that the new hip afforded him, and posted a 3.86 second-half ERA that is more of a barometer of the pitcher the Rangers believe he can be than the 5.18 ERA he posted over a team-high 29 starts.

He re-signed over the off-season for $4 million, continuing his relationship with the team that originally drafted him in 1999 and re-signed him for the 2010 season after two years in Japan.

So far this spring, Lewis has looked like he did late last season, if not better.

If Robinson Chirinos, the Rangers’ regular catcher, didn’t already know about the hip resurfacing Lewis underwent in August 2013, it would be hard to tell that any work had been done at all.

“We know, but people watching from the outside the way he’s moving and the way he’s throwing, they can’t tell he had hip surgery,” Chirinos said. “That tells you a lot. He put in a lot of work to get to that point.”

Now at age 35, feeling better than he has in almost a decade, Lewis has found the Fountain of Youth and the injury isn’t even in the back of his mind.

“Not in any drills, not in anything running or anything at all,” Lewis said. “I feel great. All it took was 2 1/2 pounds of metal.”

And a little extra time.

This story was originally published February 28, 2015 at 2:33 PM with the headline "A spring later, Colby Lewis is back to normal."