Ethan Salas is one of baseball’s top prospects. Currently playing for the Arizona Fall League’s Peoria Javelinas, the left-handed-hitting catcher is not only No. 7 on The Board, he won’t turn 19 until next summer. Signed as an international free agent out of Venezuela by the San Diego Padres in January 2023, Salas is both precociously talented and mature beyond his years.

He is also still figuring things out. The 6-foot-2, 205-pound backstop was refreshingly candid on that front when I spoke to him on my recent visit to the AFL. More advanced defensively than he is with the bat — a scouting assessment he agrees with — Salas readily admits that there areas in which he needs to improve.

“I would say more consistency on game management stuff would be the biggest one right now,” said Salas, who has caught only 870 professional innings. “Calling pitches, situations in the game, seeing things before they happen, how to prevent big innings. I need to be more efficient in those areas.”

Salas’s physical attributes are undeniably plus, which brings us to an interesting aspect of how he operates behind the dish. It came to the fore when I asked if he is one-knee-down or more traditional in his setup. Read the rest of this entry »

What a game. This series has been so hyped that a scoreless tie through four innings felt like a letdown. But then the party got started. In the end, we got everything we wanted: stars, steals, defensive gems and gaffes, and even a walk-off home run to evoke Kirk Gibson. But my beat is writing about managerial decisions, so let’s get a quick 1,100 or so words in on that before it’s time for Game 2. Specifically, I’m interested in the bottom half of the 10th inning in Game 1 of the World Series, and the decisions that led to Freddie Freeman’s colossal walk-off grand slam and lifted the Dodgers to a 6-3 win over the Yankees.

Using Nestor

Hated it. The pitch for why it’s a bad decision is pretty easy, right? Nestor Cortes hadn’t pitched in a month, a trusted lefty reliever was also warm, and the scariest possible guy was due up. It’s hard to imagine a scenario where this was the lowest-risk move. There’s not much I can say about the pitch-level data, because he threw only two pitches, but there are myriad reasons to opt for a reliever over a starter in that situation.

A lot of Cortes’s brilliance is in his variety. He throws a ton of different pitches. He has a funky windup – several funky windups, in fact. He changes speeds and locations. That’s how a guy who sits 91-92 mph with his fastball keeps succeeding in the big leagues. But many of those advantages are blunted when you don’t have feel for the game.
Read the rest of this entry »

LOS ANGELES — The injured star meandered to the plate. Bases loaded, two outs, bottom of the 10th inning, down a run in the first game of the World Series. It all happened so fast. A first-pitch fastball fired inside, elevated, square in the lefty happy zone. A short, powerful swing beat it to the spot. A towering line drive sliced through the chilly Southern California air, the crowd silent in awe and disbelief for a beat. Then pandemonium, earth-shaking stomps, elated feral screams pierced the air.

In an instant classic, Freddie Freeman, playing through an injured ankle, channeled the iconic Kirk Gibson home run in Game 1 of the 1988 World Series, pounding a first-pitch heater into the right field bleachers for a walk-off grand slam to hand the Dodgers a 6-3 win over the Yankees in Game 1 of the World Series at Dodger Stadium.

“Those are the kind of things, when you’re 5 years old with your two older brothers and you’re playing wiffle ball in the backyard, those are the scenarios you dream about, two outs, bases loaded in a World Series game,” Freeman said. “For it to actually happen and get a home run and walk it off to give us a 1-0 lead, that’s as good as it gets right there.”

The 10th inning was a saga unto itself, a seesaw affair in which New York’s win probability swung from 90% to 0% in the span of a few minutes. It looked like the story of the game would be Los Angeles closer Blake Treinen and his inability or refusal to prevent stolen bases; Jazz Chisholm Jr. singled, stole second and third, and scored on a groundball to short to hand the Yankees a 3-2 lead.

After exhausting all of their preferred arms in the first nine innings, the Yankees were left to rely on Jake Cousins to try and close it out. Cousins retired the first hitter he saw before walking Gavin Lux and giving up a single to Tommy Edman.

That forced Yankees manager Aaron Boone’s hand. He didn’t want Cousins, a right-hander, to take on Shohei Ohtani, so he sought out the platoon advantage by bringing in Nestor Cortes, who was making his first appearance in over a month after dealing with a balky elbow. One pitch later, and Boone was looking like a genius — Ohtani put an awkward swing on a middle-middle heater, and left fielder Alex Verdugo sacrificed his body to corral the foul pop, lunging over the barrier along the line and front-flipping after securing the catch. Because Verdugo left the field of play after making the grab, both runners advanced; with two outs, and still seeking the platoon advantage, Boone intentionally walked Mookie Betts to bring up Freeman.

Cortes was not so lucky on his second pitch. He fired a fastball with 21 inches of induced vertical break; it was well-placed horizontally, hitting the inside corner, but not so much vertically. It hung up right where Freeman could mash it. Because the pitch was located inside, it allowed for a perfectly pulled fly ball, rocked at 109-mph and at a 30-degree launch angle. It was a true no-doubt dinger. Freeman triumphantly lifted his bat milliseconds after contact, aware he’d just delivered a legendary moment.

“It’s arguably one of the – might be the greatest baseball moment I’ve ever witnessed, and I’ve witnessed some great ones,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.

Until then, it looked like Giancarlo Stanton had been the one to deliver the legendary moment. In the top of the sixth inning, the titanic slugger walloped a Jack Flaherty curveball 116.7-mph to the pull side for a go-ahead two-run dinger, handing the Yankees a 2-1 lead with their top bullpen guys lined up to shut the door. But the Dodgers knotted it up in the bottom of the eighth, linking an Ohtani double with a Betts sac fly to level the score at two.

Things got weird in the top of the ninth, when Gleyber Torres rocked a Michael Kopech fastball deep into left field. A Dodgers fan, unbelievably, reached over the left field wall, snagging the liner before it could complete its journey. The umpires ruled it a fan-interference double, and Torres was stranded at second, setting up the extra inning dramatics that followed.

Before that wild finish, the game was largely defined by the two starting pitchers: Flaherty and Gerrit Cole. They both turned in excellent performances, slicing through hitters and keeping their teams within striking distance.

Flaherty’s NLCS flipped between brilliant and shambolic, leading to questions about how he might equip himself in this series opener. In Game 1 against the Mets, Flaherty threw seven brilliant shutout innings, lending an exhausted Dodgers bullpen some much-needed rest. But in Game 5, Flaherty did not have his best stuff. The Mets lit him up for eight runs over just three innings as the Dodgers effectively punted the game.

As MLB.com’s Mike Petriello tweeted before the game, Flaherty’s performance likely would hinge on his fastball velocity. When Flaherty sits above 93 mph, the expected damage is low and the pitch gets a ton of whiffs. But when it averages 91.4 mph, as it did in his start in Game 5 of the NLCS, it is liable to get hit around.

Petriello proved prophetic: Flaherty’s fastball averaged 93.6 mph, topping out at 96, and the fastball did damage, notching 10 called strikes and a 38% CSW (called-strike-and-whiff percentage). But the knuckle-curve was the real weapon — the Yankees swung at it 17 times and came up empty on 12 of them. Unfortunately for Flaherty, one of those swings was that Stanton two-run homer. He finished with 5 1/3 innings pitched, six strikeouts, one walk, and two earned runs.

Cole might have been even better. Across six-plus innings, the Yankees ace allowed one run on four hits and no walks, and for the fourth time this postseason, he struck out exactly four batters. He flipped his tactics midway through the start, deploying a fastball-heavy approach the first time through the order and emphasizing his softer stuff on successive encounters with the Dodgers lineup. Through two innings, Cole had thrown 70% fastballs.

Navigating through the lineup for a second time, Cole switched up his approach. He went cutter/changeup/cutter to start off his second Ohtani at-bat; Ohtani secured the early edge, bringing the count to 2-1. Cole got back into the count with a cheeky sinker; even though it was located middle-middle, Ohtani could only manage a foul ball, perhaps fooled by the unexpected movement. Cole, sticking with his newfound soft stuff approach, buried a curve on 2-2 to punch out Ohtani.

To Freeman in the bottom of the fourth, Cole continued the assault; he got ahead with two consecutive cutters, breaking Freeman’s bat on a foul ball on the second of the offerings. Ahead once again, Cole jammed Freeman with a 98-mph four-seamer up and in; Freeman shattered his bat again, shoving the pitch to the pull side for a 47-mph exit velocity groundout.

The Dodgers scored the game’s first run off Cole in the bottom of the fifth. With one out, Enrique Hernández drove a heater down the right field line; Juan Soto overran the ball, allowing Hernández to reach third with a triple. It was the Dodgers’ second hit of the game and their second triple, after Freeman — of all people — tripled down the third base line with two outs in the first inning despite his barking ankle. On a 1-1 count, Will Smith lifted a low-and-outside cutter to Soto into relatively shallow right field. Soto caught it a bit awkwardly but produced a strong and accurate throw home; Hernández slid in head first, just ahead of the tag.

As the top of the sixth began, Roberts faced his first difficult decision of the game — let the locked-in Flaherty take on Soto and Judge for a third time, or opt for one of the flamethrowers in the bullpen. Going against the conventional wisdom, Roberts stuck with his horse — and it backfired. Boone made the same decision, and the outcome went his way. The third-time-through-the-order debates would be settled another day.

With Cole finally out in the bottom of the seventh, the Dodgers immediately threatened to tie the game. Clay Holmes started Max Muncy out with a sinker at his boots for ball one; the next pitch, a slider, was too far up, giving Muncy the 2-0 edge. On the third pitch, Holmes overcooked a backfoot sweeper, nipping Muncy’s toe and giving the Dodgers runners on first and second with no outs. Enrique Hernández laid down a bunt, giving up an out to move the runners into scoring position.

Even with a slight Yankees lead, FanGraphs live win probabilities gave the Dodgers a 54.3% chance of winning after Hernández’s bunt. That probability sunk to 37.3% after Smith popped up the first pitch he saw. That was the end of the line for Holmes; Tommy Kahnle, he of 47 consecutive changeups, came in to handle Lux. In the highest leverage at-bat of the first nine innings, Lux rolled over on a — surprise! — changeup, stranding the runners at second and third.

Kahnle stayed in to face Edman to lead off the eighth. He threw four changeups to Edman, who rolled over to short. Ohtani smashed Kahnle’s 56th consecutive changeup 113.9 mph, roping it off the center field wall for a double. Ohtani’s speed forced a hurried throw from Soto; it came up about three feet short, and Torres tried to pick it, but it deflected off his glove. He was unable to locate it right away, and by the time he did, Ohtani had scooted to third with just one out. Boone pushed the closer button, bringing in Luke Weaver to take on Betts and Freeman.

Weaver snuck ahead of Betts, working a 1-2 count, but Betts smoked a changeup to center. For a second, it looked like Judge wouldn’t be able to get to it, but he scampered back just in time, preventing the extra-base hit but catching it with no chance to stop Ohtani from scoring from third on the sac fly. After eight full innings, the game was knotted at two.

In the ninth, things got weird. Torres crushed a 99-mph up-and-in fastball to the very top of the wall for that fan-interference double. Then, Roberts intentionally walked Soto and pulled Kopech; Trienen came in to take on Judge with runners on first and second and two outs.

Treinen unleashed some typical wizardry, whipping two sweepers in the zone to gain the 0-2 edge; Judge ultimately skied a fastball about 200 feet in the air to end the threat.

Weaver took the middle of the Dodgers order in the bottom of the ninth. Teoscar Hernández lined out to Soto in right, and Muncy popped out to short for the second out. Then, Enrique Hernández shattered his bat on a duck snort liner; it looked like it might drop, but Verdugo made a nice sliding catch to retire him and end the inning. This game was going extras.

Trienen picked up right where he left off to start the 10th, dispatching Stanton on some filth. But he left a sinker over the plate to Chisholm, and the third baseman pounced, smacking it past Lux for his second single of the game; he nabbed second a 2-0 pitch to Anthony Rizzo. Pitching coach Mark Prior strolled deliberately to the mound.

After Chisholm took third with no throw, Volpe on a 1-1 count squared around to bunt — but missed. On 1-2, he hit a ground ball up the middle. Edman fielded, and looked like he might have a shot to turn two, but the ball got stuck in the webbing of his glove. Edman got Rizzo at second but Volpe beat the relay to first, staying out of the double play and allowing Chisholm to score the go-ahead run.

With New York’s main leverage arms expended, Boone went to his own sweeper wizard, Cousins, to try and close out the first game of the World Series. He started strong, inducing a Smith fly ball for the first out. But he fell behind Lux, ultimately walking him on a high fastball. Cousins did not mess around against the NLCS MVP Edman, but he couldn’t put the shortstop away, either. Edman laid off an 0-2 slider, then pushed a groundball single up the middle on the 1-2 pitch. Lux likely would have advanced to third, but he hesitated and then tripped rounding second base; he had to scurry back to the bag. The Yankees had two lefties, Cortes and Tim Hill, warming in the bullpen; after Edman reached, Boone went to Cortes, who had last pitched over a month ago.

The rest, we can be sure, will go down in history.

Here is an embarrassing sentence: After reading the newest Sally Rooney novel, I started playing a lot of chess. I’m not good, but I have been spending a lot of time trying to get better (tips are appreciated). All this chess got me thinking about the cliché that the batter-pitcher duel is like a chess match.

One thing I’ve learned? Getting your pieces in a good position to execute a checkmate is not the same skill as actually executing. The former follows a straightforward logic, playing the percentages on any given move, calculating the arithmetic of this or that trade; the latter is an art, relying on second-order thinking to design the final decisive move. Pitching is similar — to get on the front foot, the pitcher needs to throw two strikes before throwing two balls; the pitcher starts with the element of surprise and the hitter in an aggressive mindset. But when the hitter gets to two strikes, he will play defense, perhaps slowing his swing for accuracy while fouling off close pitches. In both chess and pitching, the killer move requires a little pizzazz.

In his return this season from a second Tommy John surgery, Walker Buehler wasn’t even thinking about checkmate. Through August, he was among the worst pitchers in the league at getting to two strikes before two balls. He was nibbling without great command, and he didn’t seem to have the confidence in his fastball to challenge hitters over the plate. Instead, he frequently fell behind, setting up a tightrope act from which he rarely escaped unscathed. Read the rest of this entry »

On October 23, 1981 in Los Angeles, the Dodgers found themselves in an all-too-familiar spot: on the short end of a World Series tally against the Yankees. Down two games to none after the first leg of the series in the Bronx, they needed a win at Dodger Stadium to maintain any real hope of a comeback. Fortunately, they had an ace up their sleeve in Fernando Valenzuela. The portly 20-year-old Mexican southpaw had seemingly emerged from nowhere to become an overnight sensation, when he opened the season with eight straight wins, five of them shutouts. He would not be as stingy on this night, instead gritting out an 147-pitch complete game, working around nine hits and seven walks with what felt like unlimited reserves of guile and moxie — a Herculean effort that recalled Luis Tiant’s 155-pitch grind in Game 4 of the 1975 World Series. The Dodgers’ 5-4 victory turned the World Series around; they won the next three games as well, taking the series in six without needing their young ace again.

Sadly, just three days away from the first World Series rematch between the two storied franchises since then, Valenzuela died on Tuesday at the age of 63. No cause of death was given. In late September, he left his role as one of the team’s Spanish-language broadcasters and was hospitalized; on October 2, the Dodgers announced that he had stepped away “to focus on his health,” and that his family had “asked for privacy during this time.” The Dodgers announced on Thursday that they will wear a patch in his honor, both for the World Series and for 2025.

This is an absolutely heartbreaking turn of events, not only for the Dodgers and their fans but for the baseball world in Southern California and beyond. Valenzuela wasn’t just a star pitcher, he was a beloved global ambassador who brought generations of Mexican American and Latino fans to baseball and helped to heal the wounds caused by the building of the very ballpark in which he starred. His appeal was hardly limited to those who shared his background. For me, an 11-year-old baseball nut and third-generation Dodgers fan growing up in Salt Lake City, Valenzuela was a contemporary hero, a magical player whose superhuman feats made anything seem possible. The phenom whose box scores I clipped from the Salt Lake Tribune became the equalizer who helped avenge the team’s back-to-back losses to the Yankees in the 1977 and ’78 World Series, at the dawn of my baseball consciousness.

Despite speaking barely a word of English, Valenzuela had become an international celebrity in 1981, charming the baseball world — and expanding its reach — with his bashful smile while bedeviling hitters with impeccable command of his screwball, delivered following a high leg kick and a skyward gaze at the peak of his windup. Fans flocked to his games in Los Angeles and elsewhere, setting off Fernandomania. Valenzuela graced the cover of Sports Illustrated less than two months into his rookie season, and soon afterward was invited to the White House. In Daybreak at Chavez Ravine, a 2023 biography, author Erik Sherman described the pitcher as baseball’s version of the Beatles, a composite of the Fab Four with a universal appeal.

Valenzuela won the 1981 NL Rookie of the Year and Cy Young awards, made six consecutive All-Star teams during a 17-season major league career, and then spent the past 22 seasons in his broadcasting role. In 2019, the team included him within their inaugural class of Legends of Dodger Baseball. In 2023, the Dodgers dedicated a full Fernandomania Weekend in his honor. The festivities culminated with the retirement of his jersey no. 34, which equipment manager Mitch Poole had kept out of circulation since his 1991 release. The franchise had almost exclusively limited jersey retirements to Hall of Famers, but the move befit Valenzuela’s iconic stature with the team and within the larger community. The lone exception to the policy came in 1978, when coach Jim Gilliam, who had starred for the Dodgers during a 1953–66 run, died of a brain hemorrhage on October 8, the day after the Dodgers won the NLCS.

“Roberto Clemente is ‘The Great One,’ but culturally, Fernando Valenzuela has been more significant in terms of bringing a fan base that didn’t exist in baseball,” José de Jesus Ortiz, the first Latino president of the BBWAA, told Sherman for Daybreak. In the New York Times, Scott Miller reported that the Dodgers estimate that more than 40% of their current fan base is Hispanic.

My favorite photo of Fernando Valenzuela, because it captures the joy and the magic of Fernandomania. The boy shaking his hand is proud to wear his charro outfit, proud to be exactly who he is. Fernandomania was all about the power of representation and the power of authenticity. pic.twitter.com/s9LzchocCy

— Nathalie Alonso (@NathalieMLB) October 23, 2024

“He is one of the most influential Dodgers ever and belongs on the Mount Rushmore of franchise heroes,” Stan Kasten, team president and CEO, said in a statement. “He galvanized the fan base with the Fernandomania season of 1981 and has remained close to our hearts ever since, not only as a player but also as a broadcaster. He has left us all too soon.”

For his career, Valenzuela went 173-153 with a 3.54 ERA (104 ERA+), 31 shutouts, and 2,074 strikeouts in 2,930 innings. In addition to winning the Cy Young, he placed among the top five in voting three other times. He sparkled in October, going 5-1 with a 1.98 ERA in 63 2/3 innings. In eight postseason starts, he allowed more than three runs just once, in the aforementioned World Series game.

Valenzuela didn’t exactly come out of nowhere, but the 150-person town of Etchohuaquila, Mexico, where he was born on November 1, 1960, was the humblest of beginnings. He was the youngest of 12 children of parents Avelino and María, farmers who lived in a house with dirt and concrete floors, no electricity and no running water. “The family is very, very poor. The farm is about half the size of the Dodger Stadium infield, about from shortstop to home plate,” superscout Mike Brito (he of the omnipresent Panama hat and radar gun) told Sports Illustrated’s Steve Wulf for a March 23, 1981 feature on the rookie. While growing up, Valenzuela and his six older brothers earned additional money working on a nearby ranch in the afternoons.

As a youngster, Fernando played soccer as well as baseball. By age 13, he had joined his brothers on the town team. The oldest, Rafael, marveled at his arm strength, telling Fernando, “You have the arm to be a pitcher.”

In 1976, the 15-year-old Valenzuela signed his first professional contract with the Mayos de Navojoa of the Mexican Pacific League, a winter league; they farmed him out to their affiliate, Cafeteros de Tepic. The next year, he signed with Puebla of the Mexican Central League, and in turn the team loaned him to the Guanajuato Tuzos, for whom he went 5-6 with a 2.23 ERA and a league-high 91 strikeouts. After the MCL was absorbed into the Mexican League the following year, Valenzuela went 10-12 with a 2.49 ERA and 141 strikeouts for Leones de Yucatán.

The Cuban-born Brito, who had caught in the Washington Senators organization in the mid-1950s, spotted Valenzuela while scouting Silao shortstop Ali Uscanga in a game against Guanajuato, a start in which Valenzuela struck out 12 batters. The next year, Brito brought Dodgers general manager Al Campanis to Mexico to see Valenzuela pitch. After protracted negotiations, the Dodgers paid Puebla owner Jaime Avella $120,000 — $20,000 of which went to the pitcher. Avella honored a commitment to give the Dodgers first crack at Valenzuela despite the Yankees’ offering $150,000.

In late 1979, Valenzuela made an impressive three-start stateside debut with the Dodgers’ A-level Lodi affiliate, and was sent to the Arizona Instructional League, where his future Dodgers teammate Bobby Castillo — a Brito discovery who had washed out as an infielder in the Royals organization, and then dominated as a pitcher in the Mexican League in 1976 and ’77 before being signed by the Dodgers — taught the young lefty the screwball. Castillo had picked up tips both from major league reliever Enrique Romo and the greatest screwballer of all time, Hall of Famer Carl Hubbell, who counseled his protege to throw fast and slow versions of the pitch.

Valenzuela proved a quick study, more than holding his own as a 19-year-old at Double-A San Antonio in 1980. The Dodgers called him up after a stretch in which he’d gone 7-0 with a 0.87 ERA and 78 strikeouts in 62 innings, a Texas League dry run for the coming streak. Even as a virtual unknown, he drew increasingly loud ovations upon entering games, particularly because he was just the second native Mexican to pitch for the Dodgers since their move to L.A. — significant given the original sin of evicting nearly 2,000 Mexican American families from the Chavez Ravine barrio. That process began in the early 1950s with the city’s plan to build public housing; when those plans fell apart, the city used the land to lure O’Malley, using eminent domain to clear the last of those families before building Dodger Stadium, which opened in 1962.

According to Jaime Jarrín, the Dodgers’ Ford Frick Award-winning Spanish-language broadcaster from 1959–2022, owner Walter O’Malley sought “a Mexican Sandy Koufax“ in order to grow the fan base. “He realized it was very, very important to please the Mexican community in Southern California, because he knew that they were going to come to the ballpark,” Jarrín told the Los Angeles Times for a 2021 documentary series, Fernandomania at 40.

Valenzuela arrived amid a tight NL West race. The Dodgers had gone 20-5 from August 19 to September 14 but gained just two games on the division-leading Astros. Debuting on September 15 with two innings of relief against the Braves, Valenzuela struck out Jerry Royster but allowed two unearned runs stemming from errors by his infielders. Four days later, he threw three shutout innings against the Reds, striking out Johnny Bench and three others. Quickly gaining the trust of manager Tommy Lasorda, he was thrust into high-leverage situations — and he dominated. In 17 2/3 innings, he allowed just eight hits and five walks while striking out 16; he didn’t yield a single earned run. The Dodgers ended the 162-game schedule by beating the Astros in three straight games to tie them at 92-70. While Valenzuela would have been an inspired choice to start the tiebreaker game, he’d worked two innings the day before, so Lasorda instead tabbed Dave Goltz, who got shellacked; the Dodgers trailed 7-1 by the time Valenzuela turned in two shutout innings.

The wait till next year included considerable hype. The Dodgers featured Valenzuela on the back of their 1981 media guide, Fleer issued a standalone rookie card, and SI’s Wulf penned the aforementioned profile, writing, “His ancestry is Mayan Indian, and he speaks just enough English to order a beer. He is a left-handed pitcher, and his body is more reminiscent of former Dodger left-hander Tommy Lasorda than it is of former Dodger left-hander Sandy Koufax. His future is more Koufax, though, than Lasorda.”

With staff stalwart Don Sutton departing via free agency after the 1980 season, the pump was primed for the team to produce a third straight NL Rookie of the Year to follow Rick Sutcliffe (1979) and Steve Howe (1980). Expected to compete with Sutcliffe and Goltz for a rotation spot behind Jerry Reuss, Burt Hooton, and Bob Welch, Valenzuela won the battle, then was tabbed to fill in for Reuss, who suffered a calf strain, on Opening Day. Facing the Astros in front of 50,511 fans at Dodger Stadium, he spun a five-hit shutout, striking out five over the course of 106 pitches. He was off to the races.

Both Valenzuela’s San Diego and Houston starts were on three days of rest, for some reason; in the latter, he drove in the game’s only run. Within 24 hours, the Dodgers sold out all of the reserved seats for his next start at Dodger Stadium — an unprecedented occurrence, as team vice president Fred Claire told SI. The word “Fernandomania” made its debut in print atop a Scott Ostler column in the April 27 Los Angeles Times; within, Jarrín, who was doubling as Valenzuela’s interpreter, said, “I’ve been doing Dodger games for 24 years and I’ve never seen this kind of reaction to a ballplayer.” So many people questioned Valenzuela’s age that the Times printed a copy of his birth certificate.

In front of 49,478 fans for just his second home start, Valenzuela blanked the Giants while going 3-for-4 and again driving in the game’s first run. The streak, which had helped the Dodgers to a sizzling 14-3 start, led SI’s Jim Kaplan to write about “The Epidemic of Fernando Fever” for its May 4 edition:

Delivered with a high-kicking motion that brings to mind Juan Marichal, Valenzuela’s scroogie tails away from right-handed hitters. When righties crowd the plate to get a better shot at it, Valenzuela jams them with an inside fastball he perfected under the tutelage of Pitching Coach Ron Perranoski. But like most outstanding pitchers, Valenzuela relies as much on carefully nurtured skills as raw ability. “He can hit either corner with his fastball, throw the scroogie at two different speeds and come in with a fine curve,” says Perranoski.

The increased media attention led the Dodgers to limit Valenzuela’s availability on the road to one press conference on his first day in town, and another after he pitched. At Montreal’s Olympic Stadium, he ran his scoreless streak to 36 innings before surrendering the game-tying run; he yielded to a pinch-hitter in the top of the 10th, during which the Dodgers scored five runs. Kaplan checked in again in New York for what would become the magazine’s May 18 cover story. In front of 39,848 fans at Shea Stadium, he stranded seven runners in the first three innings, finishing with a 137-pitch, 11-strikeout complete game. “Like a crafty fish, Valenzuela had allowed the Mets a good chase (five walks, seven hits) but no catch,” wrote Kaplan. “And like frustrated fishermen, the Mets had nothing to show for their efforts but exasperation.”

Rematched against the Expos, Valenzuela allowed just three hits, but two were solo homers; a third-inning shot by Chris Speier was not only the first that Valenzuela surrendered in the majors but the first time that he had fallen behind on the scoreboard all season. Pedro Guerrero’s walk-off home made him a winner nonetheless, running his record to 8-0 with a 0.50 ERA. His string of victories had matched a feat last accomplished by Red Sox right-hander Dave “Boo” Ferriss in 1945. With no Baseball-Reference Play Index in those days, writers invoking Ferriss’ name likely didn’t know the precocious lefty had matched the feat of an even bigger name in baseball history — or that both had been far outdone:

On May 18 (cover jinx alert!), Valenzuela allowed four runs in seven innings against the Phillies, beginning a descent into the more typical ups and downs of a 20-year-old pitcher. Of course, not every 20-year-old gets invited to the White House between starts, as Valenzuela was by President Ronald Reagan for a state luncheon honoring Mexican President Jose Lopez Portillo on June 9. Two days later, he made his final start before the beginning of the seven-week players’ strike.

The Dodgers were 36-21 when the players walked out, half a game ahead of the Reds in the NL West race. When the strike was finally settled, the powers that be agreed that the division leaders would be crowned first-half champions and would face the second-half division winners in a best-of-five series, with the winners advancing to the best-of-five League Championship Series. Thus the Dodgers’ 27-26 second-half record and third-place finish behind the Astros and Reds was of little consequence, even if the Reds finished with a better overall record (66-42 to their 63-47).

Play resumed with the All-Star Game on August 9. Valenzuela got the starting nod and worked a scoreless inning, surrendering singles to Rod Carew (who was soon caught stealing) and Willie Randolph, then getting George Brett and Dave Winfield to ground out.

Thanks to a six-start, 52-inning stretch that included just seven runs allowed, Valenzuela finished 13-7 with a 2.48 ERA (seventh in the NL). His 25 starts, 11 complete games, 192 1/3 innings, and 180 strikeouts — in about two-thirds of a season, remember — all led the league. Facing the Astros in Houston to start the Division Series, Valenzuela lost the opener, and the Dodgers dropped Game 2 as well. Back in Los Angeles, the Dodgers won Game 3, and Valenzuela returned on three days of rest with a complete-game four-hitter in Game 4; they won the series in five. Against the Expos in the NLCS, the Dodgers won Game 1, but Valenzuela and company lost Game 2, then dropped Game 3 as well. The series extended to five games; snow delayed the rubber match for a day, allowing Valenzuela a rare fourth day of rest. He rose to the occasion, driving in the tying run in the fifth inning and holding the Expos to three hits and one run through eight. Rick Monday’s solo homer off Steve Rogers gave the Dodgers the lead in the ninth, and while Valenzuela could record only two outs in the bottom of the frame, Welch needed just one pitch to sew up the pennant.

In a rematch with the Yankees that featured many of the same stars on both sides as in 1977 and ’78 — the longest-running infield of Steve Garvey, Davey Lopes, Bill Russell, and Ron Cey for the Dodgers, Ron Guidry, Graig Nettles, and Reggie Jackson for the Yankees — the Dodgers fell behind two games to none before returning to L.A. Having thrown 223 regular- and postseason innings to that point, and working on three days of rest for the eighth time that season, Valenzuela wasn’t sharp in Game 3, but he gutted out the start of a lifetime, remaining calm and keeping the Yankees at bay in front of a stadium record 56,236 fans. Cey’s three-run first-inning homer off Dave Righetti, the Yankees’ own rookie lefty, staked Valenzuela to a 3-0 lead, but the Yankees clawed back while he tried to navigate traffic. Rick Cerone’s two-run homer put New York up 4-3 in the third, prompting a mound visit from Lasorda instead of Perranoski. From Jason Turbow’s book on the 1981 Dodgers, They Bled Blue:

Valenzuela figured that he was done for… Lasorda wanted to see for himself just what his pitcher had left. No detail in particular fueled the manager’s decision, but something about Valenzuela’s demeanor convinced him. Instead of yanking Fernando, Lasorda gave him a pep talk. “If you don’t give up another run,” he said in Spanish, according to ESPN, “we’re going to win this ballgame.”

… Valenzuela stared at his manager and responded in English: “Are you sure?”

Further jams ensued, as Valenzuela allowed the next two batters to reach base before striking out Righetti with his 72nd pitch; he wouldn’t throw a clean inning until the seventh. The Dodgers took the lead on a two-run rally in the fifth against relievers George Frazier and Rudy May, and Valenzuela survived a scare in the eighth, getting a double play off the bat of pinch-hitter Bobby Murcer after putting the first two men on base. With his pitch count past 130, he retired the side in order in the ninth, capped by a whiff of Lou Piniella on a fastball.

The victory turned the tide. After winning Games 4 and 5 by one run apiece, the Dodgers blew out the Yankees in the Bronx in Game 6 to claim their first championship since 1965. Instead of throwing Game 7, Valenzuela could rest his arm. A couple of weeks later, he beat out Tim Raines for NL Rookie of the Year honors, and edged Tom Seaver to become the first rookie to win a Cy Young.

The heavy workload that Valenzuela bore in 1981 did not break him. On the contrary, “El Toro” continued to excel, posting a 3.04 ERA (116 ERA+) over the next five seasons while averaging 35 starts and 269 innings, and making the NL All-Star team annually. His 27.1 bWAR from 1981–86 ranked second only to Dave Stieb (33.6). He went 19-13 with a 2.87 ERA (122 ERA+) in 1982, a year the Dodgers were eliminated from contention on the final day of the season; he finished third in the Cy Young voting that year. Prior to the 1983 season, he became the first player awarded $1 million in arbitration. Despite posting a 3.75 ERA (96 ERA+) that season, he helped the Dodgers win the NL West, then delivered an eight-inning one-run performance for what turned out to be their lone NLCS victory against the Phillies. He went 12-17 despite a 3.03 ERA (116 ERA+) and 240 strikeouts in 1984; that season’s highlight may have been his striking out Winfield, Jackson, and Brett — all future Hall of Famers — in the fourth inning of the All-Star Game.

Valenzuela rebounded in 1985, going 17-10 with 208 strikeouts and a 2.45 ERA (141 ERA+) for the division-winning Dodgers. He pitched well in two NLCS starts against the Cardinals, but after leaving a 2-2 tie in the eighth inning of Game 5, he could only watch Ozzie Smith hit a walk-off homer off closer Tom Niedenfuer, the switch-hitting shortstop’s first ever while batting left-handed. In February 1986, just ahead of another arbitration hearing, he signed a three-year, $5.5 million contract, making him the highest-paid pitcher to that point, and the first to top $2 million in single-season salary (for 1988).

The 1986 season turned out to be Valenzuela’s last great one. He went 21-11, reaching the 20-win plateau for the only time while throwing a league-high 20 compete games, striking out a career-high 242 hitters, and posting a 3.14 ERA (110 ERA+). Again he shined in the All-Star Game, this time beginning a stint of three scoreless innings by striking out Don Mattingly, Cal Ripken Jr., Jesse Barfield, Lou Whitaker, and Teddy Higuera. He was the runner-up to Mike Scott in the NL Cy Young voting, and took home his only Gold Glove.

The innings began taking their toll in 1987, when Valenzuela allowed league-high totals of hits and walks while going 14-14 with a 3.98 ERA (101 ERA+); his first win, a strong seven-inning effort against the Giants on April 12, was the 100th of his career. Battling control issues, he struggled to a 4.24 ERA in 1988, going on the disabled list in early August for the first time due to a stretched anterior capsule, breaking a streak of 255 consecutive starts. Though he returned briefly in September, he was a bystander during the Dodgers’ unlikely championship run, as Orel Hershiser led the way with a record-setting scoreless innings streak and a postseason run for the ages.

Valenzuela spent two more years with the Dodgers, one league average, the other replacement level, but not without a career highlight. On June 29, 1990, he watched former teammate Dave Stewart complete a no-hitter for the A’s against the Blue Jays. As Mike Scioscia recalled in 2017, just before going out to warm up for his start against the Cardinals, “Fernando pokes his head in [to the bullpen]… and says, ‘Hey, you saw one on TV, now you’re going to see one in person.’ And he walks out of the bullpen, and throws a no-hitter.”

“If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!” broadcaster Vin Scully exclaimed after Valenzuela sealed the game by deflecting a Pedro Guerrero comebacker right to perfectly positioned second baseman Juan Samuel, who began a game-ending double play.

While Valenzuela admitted that he had only been kidding about his prediction, the day remains the only one in major league history to feature multiple no-hitters.

The Dodgers made the painful decision to cut Valenzuela loose near the end of a rough spring training in 1991. The late-March timing caused a rift. Had the Dodgers waited another week, they would have owed the entirety of his arbitration-determined $2.55 million salary; by releasing him when they did, they only had to pay him one-quarter of that amount. “It’s very tough to swallow… There’s no doubt he can still pitch. I don’t understand it,” said Scioscia. Valenzuela, agent Dick Moss, and MLBPA counsel Gene Orza soon filed an unsuccessful grievance asserting that the release was financially motivated. Lasorda took the team’s side, asserting his belief that the decision was performance-based, and that the pitcher’s major league career was over. The hurt would linger for over a decade.

Valenzuela signed a minor league deal with the Angels, but was rocked in two starts before being sidelined by a rare condition that restricted the blood flow near his heart. Medication helped alleviate the problem, but he finished the season in the minors, with uninspiring results. He went to spring training with the Tigers in 1992, but didn’t make the team. In June, his contract was sold to the Jalisco Charros of the Mexican League; after opening 0-5, he finished 10-9 with a 3.86 ERA. He returned to the majors with the Orioles in 1993, going 8-10 with a 4.94 ERA (91 ERA+), and after another stint with Jalisco made eight appearances for the Phillies in ’94. His lone win in the strike-shortened season, an eight-inning, three-run start against the Dodgers in Philadelphia on July 17, was the 150th of his career.

After the lockout ended in April 1995, Valenzuela signed with the Padres. While he wasn’t very good that year, he enjoyed a renaissance in 1996, going 13-8 with a 3.62 ERA (110 ERA+) — by far his best post-Dodgers season — and helped beat out his old team for the NL West title. On August 28, 1996, he notched his 2,000th career strikeout by fanning the Mets’ Edgardo Alfonzo.

Valenzuela couldn’t muster the same magic in 1997. After going 2-8 with a 4.75 ERA for the Padres, he was traded to the Cardinals as part of a six-player deal on June 13. He went 0-4 in five starts before being released on July 15. At 36 years old, his major league career was done.

Not quite ready to hang up his spikes, Valenzuela spent winters pitching in the Mexican Pacific League, doing well enough that in January 1999, the Dodgers invited him to spring training to audition for a relief role. The Padres expressed interest as well, but he declined to pursue either opportunity, still embittered about the end of his tenure in Los Angeles. He continued to provide innings for the Aguilas de Mexicali club as late as the 2007-08 season, when he was 46.

At Mexicali during the winter of 2006–07, Valenzuela was joined by son Fernando Valenzuela Jr. (b. 1982), a former 10th-round pick out of UNLV who spent four years in the affiliated minors with the Padres and White Sox, climbing as high as Double-A. The younger Valenzuela continued to play in independent leagues, the Mexican League, and the Mexican Pacific League until the 2016–17 season. In February 2017, the elder Valenzuela bought into the Mexican League’s Quintana Roo Tigres. Fernando Jr. became team president, while another son, Ricky, served as GM.

Valenzuela kept his distance from the Dodgers until June 2003, when he rejoined the organization to do color commentary for Spanish-language radio broadcasts alongside Jarrín and Pepe Yñiguez. “We’ve been trying to get him back to the organization for so long,” said vice president for communications Derrick Hall. He credited team chairman/CEO Bob Daly, “who on his first day here said, ‘Get Fernando. Get Fernando.’”

Because the soft-spoken Valenzuela was somewhat uncomfortable with criticizing players, Jarrín hit on a strategy of interviewing him throughout the game, inviting him to offer his own perspective. In 2015, Valenzuela joined Yñiguez and former teammate Manny Mota for Spanish television broadcasts on SportsNet; later Jarrín and José Mota (Manny’s son) would work alongside him in that capacity.

Valenzuela served on the coaching staff of Team Mexico for the 2006, ’09, ’13, and ’17 World Baseball Classics. In 2014, he was elected to the Mexican Professional Baseball Hall of Fame. In 2019, the Mexican League retired his jersey no. 34 leaguewide.

First eligible for election to the Hall of Fame in 2003, Valenzuela received just 6.2% on the BBWAA ballot, then fell off after slipping to 3.8% in ’04. Based on his statistics, including 41.5 career WAR and 36.6 S-JAWS (172nd all-time), it was the right call. While there’s a case to be made when considering his role as a broadcaster and ambassador, Era Committee voters have shown little inclination to recognize such hybrid candidacies, most notably bypassing pitcher-turned-outfielder Lefty O’Doul, who won batting titles in 1929 and ’32 before his pioneering work spreading baseball to Japan before and after World War II.

As I told Sherman for Daybreak, Valenzuela’s accomplishments and meritorious service may be a better fit for the Buck O’Neil Lifetime Achievement Award, which is “presented by the Hall of Fame’s Board of Directors not more than once every three years to honor an individual whose extraordinary efforts enhanced baseball’s positive impact on society, broadened the game’s appeal, and whose character, integrity and dignity are comparable to the qualities exhibited by O’Neil.”

Few figures in baseball history have checked those boxes in the manner of Valenzuela. With typical humility, he dodged the tag of “hero,” but beyond his considerable on-field accomplishments, his impact in expanding baseball’s reach, and in serving as “a beacon of hope, inspiration and pride” for Mexicans, Mexican Americans, and other Latinos, is undeniable.

Editor’s Note, 2:45 p.m. ET: This story has been updated to provide additional context about the eviction of Mexican Americans from the Chavez Ravine barrio, a process that began prior to the construction of Dodger Stadium as part of a City of Los Angeles public housing program that ultimately failed to materialize.

Beneath this cynical, empirically motivated exterior, I’m actually a big softie. As such, I love it when an old guy turns back the clock and rediscovers the magic one last time. Almost a decade ago, Giancarlo Stanton was the proto-Aaron Judge: A player who was bigger and stronger than any outfielder we’d ever seen, and capable of hitting the ball much harder than anyone else in the league.

Stanton came of age just as Statcast made exit velocity public knowledge, though his 2017 season — the peak of his stardom — was impressive enough by the metrics Henry Chadwick scrawled on a cave wall 15,000 years ago. Those numbers: 59 home runs, 123 runs scored, 132 RBI, a .631 slugging percentage. Small wonder Stanton was named the MVP of the National League that year. Read the rest of this entry »

Rihanna said it best. Or maybe it was Russell Crowe. This is the main event. The top seed in the American League meets the top seed in the National League. The presumptive AL MVP is leading his team against the presumptive NL winner. Those guys, coincidentally, are the two biggest free agents in history – Shohei Ohtani broke the bank this past offseason, only a year after Aaron Judge signed a historic deal of his own. Juan Soto might eclipse them both this winter. And while those three are the biggest stars in the game right now, they have three previous MVP winners – Mookie Betts, Freddie Freeman, and Giancarlo Stanton – as sidekicks. Oh yeah, and the two highest-paid pitchers in history are the aces of their respective teams. Heck, I’ve allowed this paragraph to run to a ridiculous length, and I’m only now mentioning 2024 Home Run Derby winner Teoscar Hernández.

By any objective measure, this World Series matchup is absolutely loaded with star power. But the current players are only half the story. This is the 12th Yankees-Dodgers matchup in World Series history – the Dodgers have played in 22 of these things, and they’ve faced one team more than half the time. This isn’t quite Doris Kearns Goodwin’s Fall Classic anymore, where the two preeminent teams are a subway ride apart, but the next best thing is a rivalry between the two biggest cities in the country.

Want an example of how good the players in this series are? Here are the top five hitters in baseball by wRC+ this year:

Jay Jaffe dove into how rare it is to see the best player in each league in the World Series – turns out, it’s quite rare! Fifty-homer sluggers have also never faced each other in the Series before now, and that leaves out the fact that Ohtani stole 50 bags too. Soto is an absurdly over-qualified second banana. Betts isn’t on this list, and he was in the MVP running before missing time with injury. The star power on display is simply staggering, as Davy Andrews noted Wednesday. Read the rest of this entry »

Tre’ Morgan is one of the most promising prospects in the Tampa Bay Rays organization. Drafted 88th overall last year out of LSU, the 22-year-old left-handed-hitting first baseman slashed .324/.408/.483 with 10 home runs and a 158 wRC+ in 437 plate appearances between three levels this season. Moreover, he’s only upped his profile by continuing to rake in the Arizona Fall League. As our lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen wrote on Tuesday, Morgan “is making a case to be elevated into the back of this offseason’s Top 100 list.”

Morgan — a New Orleans native with a well-deserved reputation for being both personable and thoughtful about his craft — talked hitting prior to taking the field for the AFL’s Mesa Solar Sox earlier this month.

———

David Laurila: Who are you as a hitter? In other words, how would you describe your style and approach?

Tre’ Morgan: “As a a hitter, I’m definitely contact over power. Swinging and missing is something that just shouldn’t happen too often. That’s how I was taught to hit, by my dad really. If I run into one, it sometimes goes pretty far, but I kind of stick to gap-to-gap, trying to play with the barrel.”

Laurila: What is your father’s background?

Morgan: “He played football, mostly — he played college football and had a couple of tryouts for the NFL — but he taught me everything I know about baseball. He said that he was better than me [at baseball] when I was growing up.”

Laurila: You said that the ball sometimes goes far when you run into one. What have you had in terms of exit velocities and distances? Read the rest of this entry »

Let me be very clear: This doesn’t matter. What I’m about to show you is small sample size theater. It’s not statistically significant. It has no bearing on what’s actually going to happen in the World Series. We are here for a fun fact rather than a learning opportunity. Are we all in agreement? Okay, then let me show you something wild. Here are Aaron Judge’s career numbers against the Los Angeles Dodgers.

So, uh, yeah. A .389 batting average is good. A slugging percentage in the thousands is good. A wRC+ over 300 is also good. Just in case you were wondering how good those numbers are, here’s a table that shows the best career numbers against the Dodgers, minimum 40 plate appearances, courtesy of our splits leaderboard. Read the rest of this entry »

Player Development Affiliate Intern

Locations: Charlotte, NC – Birmingham, AL – Winston-Salem, NC – Kannapolis, NC – Glendale, AZ

Summary:
The Chicago White Sox are seeking multiple seasonal Player Development Affiliate Interns. This entry level opportunity will provide individuals with a wide range of experiences across professional baseball. These positions will report to the Minor League Video Coordinator, while supporting Minor League coaching staffs at affiliate locations throughout the season. There will also be opportunities to work on various baseball operations projects depending on skillset. 

Program Details:

• The internship is an hourly, non-exempt position. Housing or a housing stipend will be provided.
• The position will take place at one of our 5 affiliate locations: Charlotte (AAA), Birmingham (AA), Winston-Salem (A+), Kannapolis (A), or Glendale (RK).
• All positions will start during Minor League Spring Training and end upon the conclusion of the Minor League season with the potential of extending into Instructional League.
• Candidates must be fully available for the duration of the internship (March 1 – September 30).
• Hours for this position may vary week to week; candidates must be available and prepared to work irregular hours, including nights, weekends and holidays.

Essential Duties & Responsibilities:

• Directly support players and coaching staff with all day-to-day video and information needs
• Film and chart each game and any early work requests
• Compile advanced scouting reports to be utilized prior to each series
• Manage the setup, operation and data management of all baseball technology
• Travel with the team on all road trips
• Aid in the execution of players development plans
• Complete independent projects as assigned by scouting/analytics/player development/front office staffs

Qualifications:

• Strong communication, organization skills, and eagerness to learn
• Strong knowledge pertaining to information technology including proficiency with all Microsoft Office software
• Knowledge of baseball technologies such as Hawkeye, Motion Capture, TrackMan, Edgertronic Cameras, Rapsodo, Blast Motion, etc. is strongly encouraged
• Must have a valid driver’s license and ability to lift and carry up to 50 lbs.
• Ability to work evenings, weekends, and holidays

Additional Skills:

• Prior coaching/playing experience
• Advanced understanding of hitting/pitching biomechanics
• Ability to speak conversational Spanish a plus
• Video editing skills
• Prior baseball/performance related research. Use of SQL/R/Python languages.

To Apply:

• Please email PDJobs@chisox.com with the subject line “PD Affiliate Intern” and include your resume, a PDF of the application questions below and two references. 

Application Questions – answer 5 of the 10 that best showcase your overall skillset (limit 250 words per question): 

1. What is your favorite defensive metric to use when evaluating a position player and why?
2. How would an automated strike zone at the MLB level affect how catchers are valued?
3. Identify one player the White Sox should look to acquire via trade or free agency this offseason. What would it take to acquire this player? Why do you recommend the White Sox target this player?
4. In a hypothetical situation you are the Amateur Scouting Director of an MLB team. Your team has the first overall pick and the top two players available are a high school position player and a college pitcher. Both players project to have the same career WAR and neither has any known injury history. Assume both will sign for slot value. Which would you select and why? What other factors would you consider in making the selection?
5. Who is one prospect outside MLB.com’s Top 100 that you believe is underrated? Provide a brief scouting report.
6. Willy Adames and Luis Severino are impending free agents for the upcoming offseason. Project their next contracts (years/dollars) and support your answer.
7. You’re a pitching coach preparing for a series against a new team. What are some of the key statistics/metrics on the opposing hitters that you would consider in compiling an Advance Scouting Report? Please support your answer.
8. In terms of analytics and technology, where can MLB organizations look to gain a competitive edge in the coming years?
9. In recent years, baseball has seen a move from more traditional marker-based motion capture systems (Motion Analysis, Qualisys, Vicon) to marker-less systems such as Hawkeye and KinaTrax. What are some of the pros and cons to each? If you were in charge of putting one motion capture system in a team’s Spring Training facility, which motion capture system (marker-less or marker-based) would you choose and why? 
10. Using the dataset in the link below, write a function to create the following measures of performance: Contact Rate, Exit Velocity, and OPS.

Dataset: https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/rk96asjrnf9r59ie9nf3s/ACHi4oHJh5OKWw9gGtF5nSY?rlkey=r63x6xbr07l9dhjujwi7c2ahv&st=86vgbb3s&dl=0

• Which player with at least 100 PAs has the highest OPS? Contact%?
• What percentage of players with at least 100 PAs have an OPS of .800 or greater?
• What is the correlation between Contact% and OPS for players with at least 100 PAs?

The content in this posting was created and provided solely by the Chicago White Sox.