By John Klima
Staff writer

Jason Schmidt is not Bud Black's pitcher, never has been, and to follow baseball protocol, he doesn't have to have an opinion about any pitchers who aren't on his own staff, no matter what his baseball instincts may really tell him.

Yet Black still has a lot of pitching coach in him, so it was hard not to ask him the question, even if he wasn't going to answer it: What's wrong with Schmidt?

After all, it was only last August that Schmidt was throwing 94 mph in the classic Dodger Stadium pitching duel against Greg Maddux. At age 34, Schmidt came to spring training suddenly throwing his fastball as hard as Maddux does. 81-84 mph fastballs tend only to work if your name is Maddux or Moyer, not if you've just signed for $47 million.

The velocity never got better for Schmidt, only worse, hitting the bottom in a start last Friday against the Padres. There was virtually no difference between his fastball and changeup. Smoke, mirrors and split-fingers can only get you so far. Unless you've got Maddux control, there is no room to make a mistake. Black allowed for a look of amusement and then proceeded diplomatically.

"I think he got a few balls up in the strike zone, probably not located where he wanted the ball to be thrown," Black said. "But his mechanics looked the same to me."

And right there was all you needed to hear. One of the tell-tale signs of a shoulder injury is when everything else looks the same ... except for the velocity. It happens more often than not in reverse order, when another injury forces a pitcher to compensate and thus damages his shoulder. Yet Schmidt's suddenly delinquent velocity illustrates one of the hazards of the commodity major league clubs prize most — power arms.

Schmidt, Bartolo Colon, Kerry Wood, Mark Prior, Jered Weaver, Felix Hernandez, Darren Dreifort (for old-time's sake), pick your arm and your ailment, and the list always has room for one more.

Perhaps it's a remnant of the steroid era, this notion that power arms are needed to counter power bats. And to a large degree, it's true, but it also negates many of the truisms that pitching has supposedly been built on over the years: patience, mechanics and precision. What became of the idea that secondary stuff is more effective than velocity? Baseball people will tell you one thing; their player development moves are another question. The thinking is that you can't successfully pitch-to-contact in the big leagues. Maybe some pitchers can, but not enough of them. The end result is this quest for velocity, where pitchers are sacrificed at the altar of the radar gun.

Have we reached an era where we ask more of our power arms, sooner, than any previous generation? This is not to say that velocity isn't important, but at some point, when do you — as a pitcher, as a manager, as a pitching coach, as a general manager, as a scout, pro side or amateur — decide that efficiency, command and mechanics are worth as much or more than chucking and ducking?

The Angels asked too much of Colon in September of 2005 and have never had the same power pitcher since. His Cy Young Award-winning season was nothing short of an awesome display. He was powerful, efficient and precise. He could get into the ninth inning throwing harder than he did in the first inning, with command that rendered him virtually untouchable. He also had weight issues and a delivery that was as abrupt as slamming on the breaks of a Hummer.

In a fateful Sunday afternoon start against Seattle that year, Colon ceased to be a power pitcher and became an injury-plagued command pitcher. He left that game in the sixth inning because of what was termed lower back stiffness. The Angels continued to run him out to the mound until it was apparent that Colon's compensation had ruined his shoulder and robbed his velocity. We'll soon see if this is an aberration, or if Colon's career is another victim to the lust for velocity.

At least the Angels, now in the walk year of Colon's contract, made money off him. They won the AL West in 2005, and having invested $51 million over four years, got one solid season, one exceptional season, and thus far, two years of Where in the World is Bartolo Colon's fastball? The Dodgers should hope that they're going to get more out of Schmidt, but as history has shown, once the velocity leaves, there's very little chance of it ever coming back.

This is why Brad Penny deserves credit for finally solving it. Long blessed with the ability to run up a fastball in the mid 90s like a latter day Allie Reynolds (both Oklahoma natives), Penny traditionally burned up his pitch counts laboring to overpower batter after batter. He was becoming a five-inning mule.

Trading an ounce of fastball velocity for fastball command, and liberally mixing in his secondary material, Penny suddenly has the look of a streamlined Cy Young Award candidate. And while the Dodgers benefit from his success thus far this season, Penny can also take pride in the fact that, as long as he pitches like this, he will extend his career and make more money in the end. The room-for-one-more club always has room for one less.

Don't say no-hitter: Forgetting for a moment that Mark Buerhle's strikeouts were down and his walks were up last year, when he pitched a no-hitter against the Texas Rangers on Wednesday, he nearly set a record. A 38th-round draft choice in 1999, Buehrle would have become the lowest-ever drafted pitcher to throw a no-hitter, were it not for Kenny Rogers, a 39th-round draft choice in 1982, who pitched a perfect game against the Angels while a member of the Rangers.

In the obscure world of draft history, only three other American League pitchers who were drafted after the eighth round have ever thrown a no-hitter: Oakland's Mike Warren, a 12th-round pick, Bret Saberhagen, a 19th-round pick, and Nolan Ryan, a 12th-round pick in 1965, the first year of the draft.

The list is slightly longer in the National League, where Kevin Millwood (11th round), Ed Halicki (24th), Bob Forsch (26th), Darryl Kile (30th) and Bill Stoneman (31st) were all draft-era bargains who became no-hit pitchers.

Excluding foreign-born players who are not subjected to the draft, only two non-drafted free agent pitchers have thrown no-hitters in the 42-year history of the draft: John Montefusco, and another White Sox pitcher, the memorable Joe Cowley.

It was Cowley who no-hit the Angels in 1986 with what might have been the ugliest no-hitter ever recorded. Cowley, who was gone from the majors after going 0-4 with the Phillies in 1987, walked seven and struck out eight in a 7-1 performance that caused Angels first baseman Wally Joyner to scoff, "He was either two feet outside or right on the black."

Cuba vs. The Netherlands: When Florida rookie right-hander Rick Vanden Hurk pitched against Orlando Hernandez of the Mets Thursday in Florida, it did not mark the first time in major league history that a Dutch-born pitcher faced off against a Cuban-born pitcher, but it is the first time a pitcher who was signed directly from the Netherlands faced a Cuban-born pitcher.

Bert Blyleven, born in the Netherlands and raised and signed in Southern California, started against Mike Cuellar five times and Luis Tiant twice. However, Vanden Hurk was originally signed out of the Netherlands at age 16 as a catcher. He became the fifth Dutch-born player to appear in the major leagues, and only the second pitcher.

Historical footnote not withstanding, Vanden Hurk would probably like to forget this outing. He gave up eight runs and seven hits in four innings in a loss, the first major league decision for the 21-year-old who was promoted from double-A, and learned why Jose Reyes, Carlos Beltran, Carlos Delgado, David Wright and Shawn Green don't play in the Southern League.

Steal: The trade that San Diego GM Kevin Towers made with the Texas Rangers in January 2006 is probably shaping up as one of the better deals that the scout-educated, evaluation-driven Towers has made.

The exchange got the Padres top starter Chris Young, first baseman Adrian Gonzalez and outfielder Terrmel Sledge for the cost of a spare closer (Akinori Otsuka), a left-hander who can't stay healthy and no longer pitches for the Rangers (Adam Eaton) and a minor league catcher no one has ever heard of (Billy Killian).

In his first season as Padres manager, Black recognized that there has been an improvement in Young from the days when Black broke him down as the Angels' pitching coach.

"A lot of a pitchers' success comes from what the ball does in the hitting area," Black said. "He's got very good life on the fastball in the hitting area. The ball, for lack of a better term, pops, or takes off. You can't teach that. The velocity might not read extremely high like a lot of power pitchers, but his ball reacts like a power pitcher.

"You combine that with the deception that he has because of his height, and what I saw this spring was better secondary pitches than I saw when he was with the Rangers. Good slider, improving change-up, occasional curve. Then again you combine that with a guy who has great aptitude and you put all this together and you have what we' re seeing now and last year."

Seeds on the dugout floor: Juan Pierre has played in 289 consecutive games entering Saturday. However, he has appeared in 675 consecutive games dating to Sept. 18, 2002, as a member of the Rockies. Pierre then played every game until he was used as a pinch-runner on June 3, 2005. According to section 10 of the MLB rulebook, consecutive games streaks do not continue when a player appears as a pinch-runner. That means Pierre's streak ended at 386 games before resuming into this season. What it all means is that Pierre has missed one game since the start of the 2002 season, and in that one game, he still appeared in a limited role. Thanks to Trent McCotter of SABR for supplying the dates. ... David Wright's 26-game hitting streak that ended Friday night is the longest in Mets club history. He became the first player since 1962 to end one season with a hitting streak of 10 games and begin the next season with another streak of 10 games. ... Paul McAnulty's career with the Padres will have to come to a crossroads at some point in the near future after they optioned him to triple-A Portland this week. McAnulty has one option remaining. ... Among several suggestions Dave Winfield wrote in his "Baseball United Plan" in his book, "Dropping the Ball" is that Major League Baseball should honor all former Negro League players by signing them to ceremonial one-day contracts, as well as compiling a database of players and their statistics. Winfield is right, for three simple words: They Could Play.

John Klima is a baseball writer with the Los Angeles Newspaper Group.