PETERSBURG, Fla. — Control has always been George Kirby's super power.
The Mariners' emerging ace can manipulate a baseball about as well as any big-league pitcher alive; for a young pitcher, his command of the strike zone is truly unprecedented in MLB history.
Managing to control his emotions, well, that's has been an entirely different story for Kirby.
The 25-year-old acknowledged as much Saturday afternoon in the visitors' dugout at Tropicana Field, a day after he gave a postgame interview in which he questioned manager Scott Servais' decision to keep him in the game in the seventh inning of an eventual 7-4 loss to the Tampa Bay Rays.
"I wear my emotions on my sleeve more than anyone else," Kirby said Saturday. "It's a blessing and a curse at the same time."
Kirby apologized to Servais.
"Obviously I screwed up," Kirby said. "That's not me. Skip's always got to pry that ball out of my hands. Just super uncharacteristic of me as a player and who I am out there on that mound. I love competing."
It wasn't Kirby's first outburst.
His competitive intensity has helped make him one of the game's best young pitchers. But as he suggested, those Furious George tendencies can also work against him.
During his start June 25 in Baltimore, after giving up a third-inning home run, Kirby stormed back to the dugout and kicked over a bucket of baseballs.
Coaches addressed the incident with Kirby then. They sat him down again after Jarred Kelenic, in a similar tantrum, broke his foot kicking a dugout cooler a few weeks later.
Servais said he expects Kirby's comments Friday night to be a turning point for the young pitcher.
"I said it about Jarred Kelenic seven weeks ago: When you make mistakes and it only affects yourself, it's not that big a deal," Servais said Saturday afternoon. "But when it starts affecting other people, that's when you take notice. So I think this is one that George will learn from."
Before he met with reporters Saturday, Kirby was sitting and talking with Adam Bernero in the bullpen along Tropicana Field's left-field line.
Bernero is the Mariners mental-skills coach, and Kirby and Bernero have grown close over the past year.
After about 15 minutes on the bullpen bench, both stood up and hugged. Kirby then walked to the visitors dugout to meet with the media.
"Bern's been a great tool for me. He's a great friend, and we care a lot about each other," Kirby said Saturday. "He's helped me through some stuff."
Specifically, Kirby has embraced breathing techniques Bernero teaches.
All of the Mariners' young pitchers use the breathing patterns in some capacity. Between innings, they'll sit in a chair propped up in a small room behind the dugout and be intentional about every breath they take, trying not to waste energy.
"They're all trying to be as present as possible," Bernero said in an interview with The Times last month.
When the idea of the breathing techniques was introduced to him a couple of years ago, Kirby bristled.
"This is stupid," Kirby, in an interview with The Times last month, said of his initial reaction.
Bernero encounters that from many players at first. Many simply don't want to ask for help or don't know how to ask for it.
"They know that baseball is such a mental game, but it's still hard for guys to relent and go: 'OK, you're the mental-skills guy. Let's talk,'" said Bernero, who pitched in the majors for five teams over seven seasons from 2000-06. "Everyone is on their own timeline."
Bernero works with players at all levels of the Mariners system, but he is in uniform and in the dugout for most games with the big-league club.
"Our organization really values mental skills, which has been awesome," Bernero said. "So we try to get to guys early in the minor leagues, so when they get [to the big leagues] it's not new to them."
"Ultimately," he added, "being open and vulnerable is the cheat code. Then the hard part is taking that vulnerability and turning it into your strength."
Kirby, a first-time All-Star this summer, has become steadfast in his use of the breathing patterns.
He takes ice baths every day. Sometimes it'll be a one-minute plunge to start his day. After starts, he typically stays in the cold tub a little longer — for up to four minutes — to aid recovery.
He practices his breathing while soaking, a four-second breath in through his nose, a four-second release out through his mouth. The idea is to practice being uncomfortable so that when he's on the mound in a stressful situation, he can fall back on the routine and find some comfort in his breath.
"I really enjoy how it just changed my mentality on a lot of things," Kirby said last month. "The way I think about going into something, like not having that fear beforehand. ...
"I just needed something, just to get back down to ground level. Once I really started to get a routine with it and I realized it works, it makes me feel a lot better."
It's been a difficult few weeks for Kirby — certainly the most frustrating stretch in his budding big-league career. He has allowed 14 earned runs over 21 innings (6.00 ERA) in his last four starts, all on the road, and the Mariners have lost his last three outings.
Those four starts came after he pitched a masterpiece Aug. 12 against Baltimore — throwing nine shutout innings for the first time in his career, only for the Mariners to wind up losing the game, 1-0, in 10 innings.
He also missed a start two weeks ago because of an illness.
Against the Rays on Friday night, he walked two batters and hit another in the first inning, a stunning start for a pitcher who set a MLB record for best strikeout-to-walk rate (7.64) through his first 50 starts.
He dominated the next four innings, retiring 18 of 20, and helped the Mariners take a 4-2 lead through six innings. At 93 pitches, he went back out to pitch the seventh inning — and then surrendered a two-run homer to the Rays' No. 9 hitter.
"I have high standards," Kirby said Saturday. "My job is once a week, and I like to go out and give my team the best chance to win every time. So when I don't do my job, it definitely eats at me. And it's been eating at me for the last month.
"'I'm realizing I've got to do a better job of preparing and going into each start with a better mindset."
