TORONTO – So, the last time we sat down with Roberto Osuna, he and fellow rookie reliever Miguel Castro were just about the hottest things going in spring training and the 20-year-old Osuna spoke candidly about how both of them wanted to be “superstars.” Yes, he chose that particular word. No, he didn’t do it for yuks or by accident.
We’re now approaching two months into the regular season. Castro was here and gone to triple-A in the blink of an eye. And Osuna? He’s become the most trusted member of manager John Gibbons’ bullpen, and when the superstar comment is relayed to him, he smiles.
“Well, now I’ve changed my mind,” Osuna said with a shrug before a recent game at Rogers Centre. “I play for the team. I only want to do my job.”
Osuna and Aaron Sanchez are the last kids standing for the Blue Jays, who entered the regular season with four rookies on their pitching staff. Castro became Halley’s Comet, somebody who went from unhittable to unpitchable the second time teams saw him; susceptible to early, often and loud contact. Daniel Norris took his van to triple-A Buffalo after one too many deer-in-the-headlights outings.
“I’d just like to see him breathe out there,” catcher Russ Martin remarked after one of his appearances.
Norris is from all accounts learning to breathe – no suggestion that he’s following up the suggestion in ‘Bull Durham’ from Annie to Nuke LaLoosh and breathing through his eyelids – and perhaps more importantly has been a willing student during mentorship sessions with veteran Bisons lefty Randy Wolf, particularly when Wolf discusses holding base-runners and disrupting rhythm. Sanchez has walked a ton of hitters but pretty much kept body and soul together while providing some of the most uncomfortable at bats in the major leagues.
Osuna is coming off his roughest outing with the Blue Jays, giving up two earned runs – doubling his season total – in a 5-3 loss to the Chicago White Sox, although it’s debatable whether Jose Abreu’s lead-off triple would have been anything other than a tough fly had Danny Valencia, an infielder by trade, not been in right field. Whatever, the inning reinforced in the minds of manager John Gibbons and general manager Alex Anthopoulos the need for another trusted right-hander to emerge out of the bullpen.
Among big league relievers, Osuna is eighth in relief innings. The only rookie reliever with more innings pitched is the Milwaukee Brewers’ Michael Blazek and Osuna’s WHIP of 0.81 is third among rookies. The long-term plan is for him to start, and the Blue Jays say that his innings limit for this season – Osuna threw his first side session after Tommy John surgery in late March, 2014 – is a work in progress. But then, what isn’t, when it comes to the Blue Jays pitching?
Osuna and Castro have been joined at the hip since meeting as minor leaguers. As a pair, they approached pitching coach Pete Walker and Gibbons early in the spring and said they wanted to be on the travel squad for Grapefruit League games in order to get a first-hand look at the better left-handed batters in the American League East. They were so close that some club insiders wondered what would happen in the event that only one of the came north. Castro, like Norris, had an electric spring. He was overpowering. Osuna was only marginally less so, and the concern was rendered moot when both made the club because they were easily among the four best pitchers in spring training.
Then, major league reality bit.
“I was sad, because he (Castro) was sad when he was sent down,” said Osuna. “We are like brothers. But I know he will be OK. I know I will be seeing him again very soon.
“Some of us young guys have had trouble but, you know, I don’t think about that when it comes to me,” he said, continuing. “We have different jobs; they are starters and I am a reliever. I have to stay focused because I know I might be pitching on any day. I worry about them … but I know they all have great futures. We all do. We have great arms and minds. We have a lot of time to make good things together.”
During a recent series against the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, as the teams changed between innings, Albert Pujols told Osuna to keep doing what he was doing. Steven Souza Jr., gave him a hat tip in a similar circumstance when the Blue Jays faced the Tampa Bay Rays, and Alex Rodriguez of the New York Yankees, the first batter Osuna retired in a major league game (remember how he asked for the ball for his mother?) sought him out when the Yankees were at Rogers Centre. “He said: ‘Osuna, you have a great future. Keep working hard and I won’t be surprised if I see you in a couple of years and you are like Mariano Rivera.’”
Osuna paused. For someone who pitched professionally in Mexico at the age of 16, and who impressed the Blue Jays — and nearly 150 other scouts — during a showcase, simulated game against a group of Texas Rangers minor leaguers in Arizona when he was just 15 years old by standing in even as the collection of 20-something professionals tied into him, the respect engendered from his peers has been a pleasant surprise. “I just didn’t ever expect anything like that,” he said.
The Blue Jays famously streamlined their approach to international scouting under J.P. Ricciardi, but they’ve become bigger players under his successor as general manager, Alex Anthopoulos, and assistant GM Tony LaCava notes that as part of that process the club has now established a presence in Mexico, which for the longest time wasn’t producing as many top-level prospects as the Dominican Republic and Venezuela. The sport has a rich tradition in Mexico, and not just as a winter ball destination.
“There’s something different about pitchers from Mexico,” said Gibbons, using as a comparable Joakim Soria, who was with the Kansas City Royals when Gibbons was bench coach. “You see a lot of the pitchers from the Dominican Republic, for example, and they’re all loose-armed, physical guys who are throwers. But the Mexican pitchers … they’re less throwers. I mean, they’ll toss in an off-speed pitch when they’re behind in the count. They approach things differently.”
When Osuna debuted at Yankee Stadium on April 8, he was asked afterward whether he felt nervous. He chuckles at the question, now. “I felt nervous the first couple of games I pitched in Mexico,” said Osuna, who pitched 13 games for Los Diablos Rojos del Mexico at the age of 16. “When they asked: ‘Osuna, how do you feel?’ at Yankee Stadium, I said, ‘Well, to be honest … I feel kind of normal.’ I’d faced good hitters before with the bases loaded … tough situations … crowds. I just had to do my job.”
Osuna’s father was a mainstay as a pitcher in various levels of Mexican baseball. His uncle, Antonio Osuna, had a fine MLB career, with over 400 games mostly for the Los Angeles Dodgers. The story about Osuna’s teenage years is well-known. His parents made a decision to take him out of school as a teen to let him focus on pitching, and it worked: the Blue Jays anted up $1.55 million (U.S.) to sign Osuna.
“He was on our radar when he was 13 or 14, because Marco Paddy (formerly the Blue Jays chief Latin-American scout) had seen him in some international competitions,” said LaCava.
Then came the showcase in Arizona. The perfect narrative would have Osuna lighting up the radar gun and dominating hitters almost a decade older than him. But this was no perfect narrative.
“It was under difficult circumstances, to say the least,” said LaCava. “I mean, he got hit. He certainly didn’t dominate. But he kept coming at them; he kept working through things and we got to see resiliency that you don’t sometimes get at these things. He was in the high 80s (miles per hour) and his delivery just worked and his arm was so free and easy … I mean, he was just so projectable.
“And the thing is, the whole time the game didn’t seem to speed up on him.”
The Blue Jays tracked Osuna the rest of that summer before signing him. And, yes, there have been some blips along the way – in addition to the Tommy John surgery, Osuna had a difficult time keeping off weight.
“What he had going for him was the bloodlines – his father, his uncle – and his makeup,” said LaCava. “He figured out how to eat, how to work out and get stronger and in turn gain velocity. He understood what he needed to do … and after he got hurt? I mean, he just got after it like nobody’s business.”
Osuna smiled when he was told that one of his veteran teammates said he’d never been around a young player that respected the game to the degree Osuna did while managing to walk with a bit of swagger. “I learned that playing with men in the Mexican league,” Osuna said. “If you respect the game and everybody in it, it makes it easy to work as a team. And when you work as a team … to me, that makes everything easier for everybody.”
Maybe even the path to superstardom.