Fernando Valenzuela Burned Brightly, Then Burned Out
Fernando Valenzuela Burned Brightly, Then Burned Out
ALSO: SAN DIEGO'S PENDING FREE AGENT EXODUS COULD POSE PROBLEMS
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Reader Reacts
Please tell Doug Lyons that his "suggestions" for improving the baseball playoffs [published here last weekend] are truly superior! I have thought the same on most of his ideas. He forgot to mention to get rid of those silly, laughing females who pretend to be knowledgeable broadcasters (not during the playoffs, but during the regular season)!!
— Bob Luchs, Succasunna, NJ
Pregame Pepper
Did you know…
Not only did Shohei Ohtani steal 59 bases but was caught stealing only 4 times, for a 93.7 per cent success rate. Only Max Carey, who went 51-for-53 (96.2%) in 1922, has ever had a higher rate among players with 50+ steals in a season . . .
The presumptive National League MVP had an end-of-season scorching-hot stretch that nearly netted him the league’s first Triple Crown since 1937; in his last 10 games, he hit .628 (27-for-43) with 6 homers, 20 RBI, and 10 steals in 10 tries, while slugging 1.186 . . .
In the wake of Hurricane Milton, which ripped the roof off Tropicana Field, the Tampa Bay Rays haven’t confirmed they’ll be able to play all or any of the 2025 season there — even though the facility is unlikely to be repaired by Opening Day. The team plans to open a new stadium in St. Petersburg in 2028 (the same season the Athletics are expected to open their new facility in Las Vegas). If the Tampa Bay timeline isn’t delayed, the team and and city may not find it worthwhile to repair Tropicana Field if the team is still leaving it after three years . . .
None of the 44 Mets at-bats in NLCS Game 5 at CitiField resulted in a strikeout, enabling the denizens of Flushing to become the first team since the 2002 Angels to avoid a single K in a postseason game . . .
The Angels beat the Giants, 11-10, in Game 2 of that World Series, the first to feature a pair of wild-card winners but no first-place teams . . .
Shota Imanaga of the Cubs signed for $272 million less than Yasanobu Imanaga of the Dodgers but pitched a whole lot better.
Leading Off
Fernando Valenzuela, RIP: Use, Misuse, Abuse
From Fernandomania to how-not-to-sustain a career
By Jeff Kallman
The best thing to happen to the Dodgers in 1981 turned out to be the worst thing that could happen to Fernando Valenzuela, who died Tuesday at 63. He was the child prodigy who was too good, too young, and thus deceived one and all into thinking he was indestructible.
“If only Valenzuela had really been three or four years older,” wrote Thomas Boswell in Spring 1993, “maybe the Dodgers wouldn’t have incinerated his career and left the best of him in the past before he ever reached his 25th birthday. But he was so good, so legendary, so unbelievable, that they could not keep from abusing him with overuse. And Fernando was too polite, too dedicated, too in love with the game to say, ‘No’.”
1981: Valenzuela owned the game, in spite of the strike-disrupted season. Fernandomania wasn’t limited to Los Angeles alone. Even if the roly-poly kid with the snaggletooth grin and the skyward glance as he wound up did do huge lifting in bringing southern California’s Latino community back to the Dodgers despite years of sometimes-appropriate suspicion.
Like Mark (The Bird) Fidrych out of Detroit a few years before, Valenzuela was what future generations would call must-see TV no matter where the Dodgers played on the road. He looked about as athletic as a loaf of rye bread. You couldn’t tell if that eyes-to-the-sky windup meant he was praying to the Father, the Son, the Holy Spirit, the Bambino, or all the above.
Then he threw fastballs that drove right-handed hitters to the rye bottle, curve balls that turned left-handed hitters into frozen fish sticks, and screwballs that made those pitches look like batting practice service.
He’d start the All-Star Game, win both the National League’s Rookie of the Year and Cy Young Awards, help his Dodgers push the Yankees to one side in the World Series, and tie a rookie record despite the short season by pitching eight shutouts—including five in his first seven starts, by the way.
There was, in other words, no telling whether Valenzuela had a ceiling. Until he hit it with a skull-splitting crash after his 25th birthday. By 1988, the phenom-that-was missed a World Series with a shoulder that didn’t bark; it roared. By 1989, observers watching other teams but casting eyes upon fresh young meat tried to warn them.
Valenzuela himself suspected his erosion from virtuosity to junk merchant was all but pre-ordained. “It would have happened anyway,” he told the San Bernardino Sun in 1989. “It was a lot of years. I pitched a lot of games. And it’s not the innings, but how many pitches. I know why it happened. I threw a lot.”
The Dodgers and the whole baseball world seemed too enchanted by the early months of Fernandomania to think have might another Fidrych on their hands. The Bird at age 21 had 24 complete games. At age 22-25: too many injuries, premature comebacks, and done.
Or, another Frank Tanana. (And he was damaged goods before he arrived in the Show: he pitched his senior year of high school with a shoulder injury, then dealt with tendinitis his first year in the minors.)
Ages 19-24: averaged 260 innings a year, threw 83 complete games (including an unconscionable 14 straight in one season), developed elbow tendinitis and welcomed shoulder tendinitis too. Age 25 forward: Reinvention as a junk-baller to stay in the game another 15 years.
The Top Tanana was an outlier of a sort. Most who reinvent themselves as junk-ballers may be lucky to last a few more years, never mind a decade-and-a-half. Valenzuela got eight. He also got a fluky no-hitter out of it in 1990 before the Dodgers cut him loose unceremoniously. (Remember Vin Scully hollering, “If you have a sombrero, throw it to the sky!”)
Stops with the Angels, the Orioles, the Phillies, the Padres, and the Cardinals didn’t do him many favors other than paychecks and occasional reminders of what he once was, too briefly. What he now remained was a lesson against letting too-young pitchers shoulder workloads suited better to pitchers age 24-25 and up.
“When we see a [young pitching phenom] who’s in imminent danger of being too good too soon,” Boswell wrote, “we now know what to do: Tell ‘em to remember Fernando’s fadeaway.”
At least Valenzuela and the Dodgers reconciled well enough that he joined their Spanish-speaking broadcast team as an analyst and they elected to break their uniform retirement rule for only a second time to retire his number 34. (The rule: only Hall of Famers get their numbers retired. The previous exception: Junior Gilliam’s 19.)
Considering what he injected into the Dodgers in 1981 and the price they extracted from him from that point forward, that was probably the least they could have done. Now we mourn a nice guy who made a lot of people smile awhile but made his wife, children, and grandchildren smile for life, until they meet again in the Elysian Fields.
Jeff Kallman is an IBWAA Life Member who writes Throneberry Fields Forever. He has written for the Society for American Baseball Research, The Hardball Times, Sports-Central, and other publications. He has lived in Las Vegas since 2007, where he plays the guitar and writes music when not writing baseball. He remains a Met fan since the day they were born.
Cleaning Up
Free Agent Defections Could Reverse Rise Of Padres In NL West
By Dan Schlossberg
After giving the Dodgers a run for their money in the National League West this season, the San Diego Padres face massive free agent defections this winter.
Shortstop Ha-Seong Kim, recovering from shoulder surgery, could leave — if he finds a team willing to wait a month or two into next season — but also headed out the door are catcher Kyle Higashioka and All-Stars Jurickson Profar, the left-fielder, and left-handed closer Tanner Scott.
That’s a tall order and one that will be difficult to replace, even though the Padres have a history of spending like a big-market club in the free-agent market.
San Diego would like to keep all of its potential free agents, according to President of Baseball Operations AJ Preller, but that won’t be possible because of recent payroll paring coupled with arbitration-inspired raises for many on the roster.
Bringing back Juan Soto, the top free agent this fall, seems out of the question — especially with the Yankees, Mets, Phillies, and Dodgers expected to bid heavily.
San Diego is solidly mid-pack with a $159 million payroll, according to Roster Resource, but has six free agents this year and four more, including three-time batting champ Luis Arraez, next fall. In addition, the team must replace erstwhile workhorse Joe Musgrove, a San Diego native who authored the only no-hitter in Padres history.
Musgrove tore his UCL while dueling the Dodgers in the NL Division Series earlier this month. He will miss all of the 2025 season and possibly more.
The Padres closed the gap in the NL West to five games while finishing a solid second, four games up on the Arizona Diamondbacks, the defending NL champions.
Since the Dodgers are expected to bring in more top talent, including Southern California native Max Fried and maybe even Juan Soto, the Padres will have a tough time finishing first in an extremely difficult division.
In fact, it may be difficult for them to avoid dropping into fourth place, behind the Dodgers, D’backs, and Giants but ahead of the moribund Rockies.
San Diego took pains to slice $90 million from its payroll before the 2024 campaign, letting Blake Snell and Josh Hader ride free agency to greener pastures, but still has four players earning $20 million each plus another (Manny Machado) who’s close.
Xander Bogaerts, whose 11-year contract runs into 2033, is the highest-paid Padre at $25,454,545 and Fernando Tatis, Jr. will reach that level in 2027, as his 14-year contract stipulates. That same season, Machado’s escalating contract will put him at $39,090,909.
At least San Diego has an enthusiastic and healthy fan base, who flock to Petco Park on foot or by streetcar (light rail in the modern vernacular). They help pay the freight but will they turn out if the team falters?
Keeping Profar, who became a surprise All-Star while playing for peanuts ($1 million deal when he found no other takers), and Higashioka, an unexpected power source in the playoffs, makes sense.
Their bullpen, headed by Robert Suarez, seems strong enough to sustain the loss of Scott, while Bogaerts, Tatis, and Jake Cronenworth all could fill in for Kim — at least temporarily.
But it could be a long hot summer in San Diego, since pitching ace Yu Darvish is pushing 40 and there could be too many holes in the 2025 lineup.
Here’s The Pitch weekend editor Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is the author of Home Run King: the Remarkable Record of Hank Aaron and 40 other baseball books. His email is ballauthor@gmail.com.
Timeless Trivia: Three Yankees Go For Gold Gloves
“I noticed he was up there on all the right field stuff in a lot of areas. Plus he’s ahead in a ton of assists out there.”
— Yankees manager Aaron Boone on much-maligned Juan Soto as a Gold Glove finalist
Soto’s nine assists tied for most in the majors by a right fielder . . .
Teammates Alex Verdugo, in left field, and Anthony Volpe, at shortstop, were also named 2024 Gold Glove finalists in the American League . . .
Volpe, who won it last year, could be overshadowed by MVP contender Bobby Witt, Jr. (Royals), a shortstop finalist . . .
Good thing the playoffs don’t count: fellow shortstop finalist Brayan Rocchio made the fatal error that set up Soto’s pennant-winning home run in the ninth inning in Cleveland last weekend . . .
Verdugo’s competition in left field includes Colton Cowser (Orioles) and Steven Kwan (Guardians).
Know Your Editors
HERE’S THE PITCH is published daily except Sundays and holidays. Benjamin Chase [gopherben@gmail.com] handles Monday and Tuesday editions, Elizabeth Muratore [nymfan97@gmail.com] does Wednesday and Thursday, and Dan Schlossberg [ballauthor@gmail.com] edits the weekend editions on Friday and Saturday. Readers are encouraged to contribute comments, articles, and letters to the editor. HTP reserves the right to edit for brevity, clarity, and good taste.