In the first days of Braves spring training, more than one clubhouse visitor wondered aloud who the guy was sitting at Aaron Blair’s locker.
It was Blair, or about 85 percent of the guy who used to be him.
Blair has lost nearly 40 pounds since last spring, most of the weight shed during a conditioning program this winter when he worked out daily at SunTrust Park while recovering from a torn lat muscle near his pitching shoulder.
“I feel really good,” said Blair, who weighs 218 pounds after tipping the scales at 255 last spring. “I should’ve done this, like, two years ago.”
Blair, 25, was a Diamondbacks first-round draft pick in 2013 and a good prospect when traded to the Braves with Dansby Swanson and Ender Inciarte in a one-sided deal that sent Shelby Miller to Arizona in December 2015.
The 6-foot-4 right-hander made his major league debut in 2016 with the Braves and was 2-7 with a 7.59 ERA in 15 major league starts, to go with a 4.65 ERA in 13 starts at Triple-A Gwinnett that season. This after Blair had fashioned a 2.92 ERA in 26 games the previous season for Diamondbacks Double-A and Triple-A affiliates.
His prospect status sank, and last season Blair struggled even more, giving up five runs, five hits and five walks in three innings of his only major league start – at Arizona on July 26 -- and posting a 5.02 ERA in 25 starts at Gwinnett.
He tore the lat muscle in his last start, ending his faint hopes of at least being considered for a September call-up.
“It wasn’t anything (serious) like (Mets pitcher Noah) Syndergaard,” Blair said. “No surgery. I flew to see (Dr. James) Andrews and he said just rest, recover, don’t throw a baseball for three months, and you’ll be fine. He told me don’t golf, don’t go bowling. So I played a lot of video games.”
And he did a lot of workouts that were more advanced and effective than he had done before. The Las Vegas native stayed in Atlanta, where his wife works at Northside Hospital, and went to SunTrust Park to work out two hours each morning with fellow pitchers Mike Foltynewicz, Lucas Sims and Matt Wisler under the supervision of Braves trainers, including director of performance Andrew Hauser.
There was weightlifting, but not like he’d done before.
“We were still lifting, it was just kind of like conditioning lift,” he said. “Like, instead of sitting there squatting 300 pounds 10 times, it would be squat 200 pounds, then go jump and run. Did a lot of (plyometrics). It was me, Folty, Wisler and Sims, just the guys that live in Atlanta. It was fun working out at SunTrust.”
Blair started throwing again in mid-December and had no lingering effects from the lat injury. His entire body feels better.
“Running’s easier. I have more energy throughout the day,” he said. “Just daily, I feel better waking up in the morning. ... Even like the muscles around my shoulders and elbow -- just losing body fat, it turns into muscle. Over the long run, it was something that I absolutely needed to do.”
For Blair, it was about turning a negative – the injury in his last start – into a positive. It’s put him in the best shape he’s been in for several years, at a time when he needs to be at his best to have any chance of pitching for a Braves team that has had numerous pitching prospects move past him on the organizational chart since he came from Arizona.
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