Biddle says he pitched through elbow pain

Jesse Biddle had just finished getting a haircut at his favorite barber shop in Mount Airy on Friday afternoon when a two-word text message from Phillies assistant general manager Scott Proefrock popped up on his phone.

Call me.

The pitcher the Phillies selected in the first round of the 2010 draft knew bad news probably awaited him. Still, it jolted him.

"Yeah, in a lot of ways it did," Biddle said Sunday during a telephone interview. "I think in the back of my head I was always a little worried about it because this is not a good time to be hurt when the organization is obviously making a lot of moves to get younger by picking up a lot of prospects. It's not a great time to be unable to contribute anything."

There is no good time to be told that your next season is over before it has begun. That, however, was a reality for Biddle even before Proefrock informed him that the Phillies had designated the 24-year-old lefthander for assignment.

October surgery to repair the ulnar collateral ligament in his left elbow represented the perfectly rotten ending to a second straight difficult year for the former Germantown Friends phenom. Until he reached double-A Reading in 2013, Biddle appeared to be on a straight path to the big leagues in the city where he grew up rooting for all the local teams.

Biddle, in fact, can point out exactly where he was sitting in a giant panoramic photograph that captures the joy inside Citizens Bank Park when Brad Lidge recorded the final out of the 2008 World Series. His big-league dream was to pitch off that same mound in a Phillies uniform, but now he does not know if that will ever happen.

He'll spend this week waiting to see if another team claims him off waivers, an improbable scenario given his struggles over the last two seasons and the fact that he will not be able to pitch again until 2017. Given his upside, on the other hand, it's a risk some team might be willing to take.

As much as Friday's news initially hurt Biddle, he quickly put it in perspective.

"It hurts, but I'm not stupid," he said. "I was not going to be able to help the team the entire year. I totally understand. I haven't really performed consistently the last couple years and nobody understands that better or is more frustrated about that than I am."

Biddle definitely is not stupid, but by his own admission he has done some questionable things during his star-crossed attempt to pitch in the big leagues for his hometown team. His most recent judgment might have been his worst.

After just two winter ball outings in Puerto Rico after the 2014 season, Biddle returned home with elbow soreness and was examined by team physician Michael Ciccotti. He was cleared to pitch again at the start of the 2015 season, which like the previous two began at double-A Reading.

The numbers were OK for much of his time at Reading, but his strikeouts were down and his command was spotty. The Phillies, nevertheless, promoted him to triple-A Lehigh Valley, where his season had a disastrous ending. He went 0-4 with an 8.03 ERA in his final five starts and no matter what numbers you looked at, they were all eyesores.

Biddle had foolishly pitched through elbow pain for much of the season.

"I guess at the time I didn't really know what it felt like to have serious ligament damage in your elbow," he said. "I didn't really know what was safe and what was unsafe. It turns out I was pitching with ligament damage for a good part of the year.

"I was making a really bullheaded decision to continue to pitch. My velocity kept going lower and lower and I was not making a mature decision. I was being really stubborn and it was completely my fault."

His reason for doing it?

"The feeling like I was close" to the big leagues, he said. "I thought I just needed to string together some really good starts. But by the end of the season I was just worn out. But I made the choice to go out there and pitch and that's what is on the back of my baseball card. It was my decision."

And now he is off the Phillies' 40-man roster and at least temporarily in limbo.

He said Proefrock told him that the Phillies still think a lot of him, but there's no denying that Biddle's days as a top prospect have passed and now he has a fight on his hands to achieve the big-league potential that looked so obvious just a few short years ago.

"It was a tough pill to swallow at first, but it's really just more fuel to the fire," Biddle said. "It's an opportunity for me to prove some people wrong and continue to try to get better. It's motivation, that's all it is. I don't have any doubt in my ability or that I am going to come back from this surgery with a new elbow and a new arm. I'm excited about that part."

He's not so excited about missing a season or the waiting and wondering where he will pitch next. Another curveball has come his way and it's every bit as nasty as the one that he used to use to embarrass hitters.

bbrookover@phillynews.com

@brookob