America’s Closer : As if Maddux & Co. Needed Help, Mark Wohlers Comes Along With His 100-m.p.h. Fastball

Gosh, the missing piece to the Atlanta Braves’ puzzle. Just what everyone was hoping for.

Assuming, as they once claimed, that people outside Georgia are fond of them, then everyone will be thrilled to learn that the world’s greatest rotation, home to the last four Cy Young Award winners, is now backed up by a reliever who is potentially devastating and actually effective.

Assuming they’re wrong, that America watches TBS for the movies, would rather see “Casablanca” for the 100th time than a Brave game and wishes they’d go away, tough luck. Here’s Mark Wohlers, 25, 6 feet 4 and 210 pounds, with a fastball that has been timed as high as 102 m.p.h., to tip the scale.

When Wohlers got his first save on June 5, the Braves were 20-17, four games behind the first-place Phillies in the National League East.

After that, he saved 10 more games as the Braves went 35-14, putting them six ahead of the second-place Phillies.

Before Thursday’s game against the Dodgers, opponents were batting .187 against Wohlers. For comparison’s sake, they’re batting .200 against Greg Maddux, winner of the last three Cy Youngs and a front-runner this season. Wohlers had struck out 55 in 36 2/3 innings, an average of an amazing 13.5 over nine.

“He’s actually throwing harder than he has in the past,” Brave pitching coach Leo Mazzone says.

“If you look back at his major league career, last year was the first time he had more strikeouts than innings pitched. It’s just a continual thing. Now he’s really begun to trust himself and trust his stuff. He’s becoming more patient with himself. You know, there’s a right time and a right place for everything.

“I think it was a different process here. I think if Mark would have broken in with a second-division club, you could afford to say, ‘OK, here, you’ve got it in the ninth inning regardless of how much success or failure you have.’

“But here in Atlanta where we’ve been in pennant races every year since ‘91, it’s going down to the wire and you don’t have the opportunity to do that. You’ve got to do it now , or mix and match.

“We had a couple relievers go in streaks. We had Juan Berenguer go on a hot streak, we had Alejandro Pena go on a hot streak, we had Mike Stanton go on a hot streak and we had Greg McMichael go on a hot streak over these past four years. Sitting [and] waiting in the wings is Mark Wohlers. We always felt at some particular point in time he could take it over, but nobody’s smart enough to predict when. But by the same token, you never lose your patience with a tremendous arm like that. “

Grateful Brave fans, no more patient than anyone else’s, have a common reaction: What kept him?

Unlike your basic, swaggering here-it-comes-let-see-who’s-best fireballer, Wohlers was more like a large young puppy. He didn’t grow up overpowering. He learned it late and when he attained it, didn’t seem to trust it.

“I didn’t always have the arm,” he says. “I had, I guess, an above-average arm for high school, but when I got to the minor leagues, I was probably only throwing between 84 and 86 [m.p.h.].

“I had horrible mechanics and was fortunate enough to work with Matt West, who was one of our pitching coaches down in the minor leagues. We tore my pitching mechanics apart and started from the ground up. He got a lot more out of my arm than I ever did with the mechanics I’d had.

“I’ve been able to get it up there pretty good, but you’ve got to do more than that to get major league hitters out.

“These guys are good. If you’re throwing the ball 99, some of these guys can swing 100. You definitely got to mix it up and you’ve got to hit with it, not just throw it all the time.”

Expectations hung heavy over his head as Wohlers looked for a breaking ball and fought himself in parts of four seasons and started slowly in this one.

Wohlers, with a locker next to Mazzone, heard his coach’s assessment of his problems until he couldn’t stand it any longer and attacked the problem the only way he could.

He moved his locker.

“The main reason I moved was there’s a lot of reporters at Leo’s locker, saying, ‘What the hell’s wrong with Wohlers?’ ” he told the Atlanta Journal and Constitution.

“As much as I tried not to listen, it was hard. I know Leo has my best interests at heart and was totally being honest. But I knew what was wrong with me and I didn’t need to hear all that.

“I don’t read the local newspapers. I don’t listen to the talk shows and I still hear it. So I can imagine how bad it is.”

Wohlers got a locker next to Maddux, an artist who would seem to have little in common with a fire-breathing dragon. When Wohlers broke in, Maddux, then a Cub, watched him throw two fastballs on TV and remembers thinking, “Totally awesome.”

However, what Wohlers was looking for--poise--was what Maddux had, and the young grasshopper studied the master and all the other masters around him: Tom Glavine, the ’91 Cy Young Award winner; Steve Avery, who had started eight postseason games by 23; and the hard-throwing John Smoltz.

“The entire pitching staff and coaching staff, I’ve gone to all of them for resources and development,” Wohlers says. “They’re all great resources.

“Not so much mechanically from Maddux but for his thought process out there late in the game. I like to pick his brain a little bit. When you’ve got resources like we do around here, you’re kind of an idiot not to take advantage of them.”

For whatever reason, the pieces fell into place. Here’s Wohlers, bigger than life, faster than 100, hoping he has found a place to stay, in the clubhouse and elsewhere.