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2007 Camp`s your basic veteran bullpen arm, a strike-thrower with good command who shows up, keeps the ball down, and goes home. In fact, he was roughly league average in just about every way possible last year. There was but one exceptional thing about him: He set the Devil Rays` franchise record for pitching appearances in a single season with 75. Thrilling. 2006 A middle reliever who succeeds by throwing strikes and keeping the ball down, Camp`s ERA ballooned more than 2.5 runs last year despite essentially the same performance as in 2004 regarding homers, strikeouts, and walks. The difference stemmed almost entirely from what happened to balls in play. If you`re going to send out a historically bad defense, don`t compound the problem with pitchers that pitch to contact. Camp was released. After signing with Tampa Bay, his world tour isn`t turning out any better than your garage band`s would. 2005 A nifty little find as an NRI, Camp had a long and lackluster minor league career primarily because he was essentially a one-pitch pitcher. Cumberland taught him a slider in the spring, Camp mastered it, and with a new weapon to match a very good sinking fastball—voila! A fine middle reliever was born. His overall numbers were brought down by a home-run rate which was flukishly high given Camp's excellent groundball/flyball ratio of 2.16.
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