Photo: Syracuse.com

Syracuse, N.Y.(Syracuse.com)  One of the best relievers in recent baseball history took the mound for the Syracuse Chiefs against Norfolk last week.

By the time Joe Nathan threw his ninth-inning pitches for the Chiefs, an announced crowd of 2,008 at NBT Bank Stadium had dwindled to below a total that carried one less zero in the middle of those four numbers.

No matter. Nathan had a baseball in his hand, batters to get out and a game to save. When you’re 42 years old and still making a few bucks playing baseball, the adrenaline rush is the same on the north side of Syracuse as it is in Wrigley Field.

“I’ve said it my whole career. If I didn’t get nervous, I wouldn’t be playing. I love getting that energy,” Nathan said. “And that’s kind of the reason I can go out there and do this every day. That’s a matter of each individual caring when they go out there and caring about doing what’s right by your teammates and caring about your individual performances as well. So, there could be zero people or there could be 50,000. It doesn’t matter for me.”

Nathan finds himself wearing a Chiefs uniform after following the seemingly contradictory notion of if he’s going to pitch in a new place he might as well go somewhere that he’s known.

Nathan is coming off 2015 Tommy John surgery, a procedure that limited him to three games with the Cubs and seven with the Giants last season. This year, he signed a pact that got him a spring training look with Washington.

But the Nationals decided he didn’t fit their immediate plans, and let him go before the start of the season. Nathan returned to his home in Knoxville, Tenn., to ponder his free agent options.

He decided that if he had to swing through the minors, he might as well return to a Nationals organization that at least had a passing familiarity with him from the spring.

So that’s how a player with 377 career major league saves is trotting out of the bullpen for Syracuse, at least temporarily.

“Obviously, I didn’t get on the big club. I went home for a little bit just to see if anywhere else was going to need me. But at the end of spring it’s tough with rosters being set and stuff like that,” Nathan said. “So we felt like if we’re going to continue to do this thing I’ve got to be somewhere pitching. So why not come back to the organization that has seen me last and seen me the most since spring and kind of knows where I was at stuff-wise and mentally?

“So we felt like this would be kind of a good spot to come and get some innings in and continue to build off of what we’re trying to do here, and build arm strength and kind of learn each day and continue to progress with the pitches now that I have, just getting comfortable with myself again. They kind of allowed me to come here also with kind of an out in case something else comes up where another team needs me on a 25-man (roster). I think they worked with us in that aspect.”

Nathan’s out clause allows him to leave Syracuse if another big league team requires his services up top. He started out strong with the Chiefs before a bad outing Thursday night ballooned his ERA to 9.00 in five innings pitched.

“Last year was kind of the comeback season to get some innings in from the surgery the year before,” Nathan said. “So last year was kind of get all those question marks out of the way, how you feel. Then come into this year and just play. It’s nice having another set of eyes on me because a lot of times you can’t exactly evaluate yourself and see what your pitches are doing. So it’s nice having those extra set of eyes of coaches here to tell you that things are coming out good and everything looks clean.”

Nathan appears to be on a pretty open-ended timetable for his trial. It’s one primarily shaped by his performance, but also one framed by advice from his family and friends before he even packed a wardrobe for the chilly spring of Syracuse.

“I think the biggest advice I got was just go day-by-day and enjoy each moment we have up here as much as we can. So I’m just trying to have fun with these guys, enjoy myself coming in and have fun wherever that may be,” he said. “If I didn’t feel good, I wouldn’t be here. If I didn’t enjoy it I wouldn’t be here. So, the fact that I’m still in pretty decent shape and can still move around and the fact that I enjoy it, have fun out there, still get the adrenaline, still get the nerves, that’s the biggest thing. When this gets boring and gets old to me, I think then it would be tough to come back here.”