Roberto Osuna’s brown eyes narrow as he focuses on his target. The Blue Jays’ rookie right-hander gets his signal. He’s down 3-0 to J.D. Martinez in the top of the ninth against the visiting Detroit Tigers.
CLOSER TO HOME: Watch Stephen Brunt’s TV special Roberto Osuna: Sinaloa to the Show on Sportsnet, April 2 at 4 p.m., following Red Sox vs. Blue Jays in Montreal
What happens next is clinical. Osuna, whose average fastball clocks in at 95.4 mph, delivers three straight strikes, and Martinez goes down swinging. Nick Castellanos follows on three swings. James McCann doesn’t get a piece of anything. Whiff. That’s nine strikes in a row. The Jays win 5–3, the sold-out Toronto crowd rises to its feet cheering, and the youngest player in the majors earns his 16th consecutive save.
It’s no surprise to the guys in the Blue Jays clubhouse that the 20-year-old Osuna has taken over as closer and was perfect in the role through the end of August. They all saw the blend of heat and command before he made the team. And now that he’s consistently shown poise beyond his years, what goes through catcher Dioner Navarro’s head when he sees No. 54 emerge from the bullpen on any given night is “Game over.”
Hours before he makes it game over against the Tigers, Osuna sits in the dugout, wearing an almost straight-brimmed cap. The Mexican-born kid talks quickly and says “unbelievable” a lot. And though he’s been speaking English for only a couple of years, Osuna has mastered talking about how he deals with high-stress situations. “I tell myself my inning is the seventh or sixth, so I don’t feel any pressure,” he says.
Osuna doesn’t look like he feels it, as reliever Liam Hendriks points out: “The calmness that he shows no matter what situation he’s in, no matter what’s going on—it’s incredible.”
He developed that poise back in Mexico, as the kid they called “Little Cannon,” a nickname that hasn’t caught on with his Blue Jays teammates—yet. “Little Cannon?” says fellow bullpen arm LaTroy Hawkins. “I like that. I wonder how you say that in Spanish.” (FYI: It’s Cañoncito.)
Osuna’s back story, other than small details like his nickname, is now well-known: He dropped out of school at 12 to focus on pitching and to help bring in more money for his family by working in fields picking peppers and tomatoes. At 16, he was pitching professionally in Mexico, following in the footsteps of a line of great Osuna arms.
His uncle Antonio pitched in the majors, and his dad pitched in the Mexican league. It’s Osuna’s namesake—his dad, Roberto—and the guys in the Mexican league whom Osuna credits for his maturity. “I’ve always been around old guys who play baseball,” he says. “I’m always trying to learn as much as I can, since I was young. That’s why I’m here.”
As early as his education began, though, he was still terrified as a 17-year-old when he got promoted to play single-A ball in Vancouver—Osuna didn’t yet speak English, and he had to fly to Vancouver on his own. “Oh my God,” he says, eyes wide, remembering. When he arrived, Osuna—whose home state, Sinaloa, is also where you’ll find one of the world’s largest drug-trafficking organizations—was detained by Canadian immigration officials at the airport for five or six hours until a member of the team’s staff showed up with his baseball contract. “That’s one of the problems being a Mexican,” he says. “They think you’re from the cartel.”
Once he gained entry into the country, Osuna did not expect to make the big club so fast, especially after Tommy John surgery in 2013. And even though he’s now the guy they all rely on to shut things down, he’s still very much a sponge, in and outside the clubhouse.
Third baseman Josh Donaldson describes Osuna as “quiet,” and that’s all part of the rookie’s master plan. “You gotta be really quiet, you gotta do everything right,” Osuna says, nodding. “In the clubhouse, you don’t want to be the loud guy, like, ‘Ooooh!’ Not as a rookie, right? I try to learn as much as I can. The good way to learn is to listen to everything and don’t talk too much.”
Osuna’s most valuable resource is the guy he sits next to, who has been pitching professionally a year longer than Osuna has been alive. It was Hawkins who told Osuna to approach the ninth as though it’s any other inning, the line the rookie’s living by. “He’s one of the guys you gotta follow, the guy you want to learn everything from,” Osuna says. He also talks to his dad daily, and baseball comes up “always, always, always.” Senior’s latest tip to his son: Stay focused.
If you ask Aaron Sanchez, who first saw the Jays closer pitch when Osuna was 16, his teammate has always had that ability. “I knew that none of these situations that he’s been put in would ever faze him,” Sanchez says. “And you guys are witnessing it now, just like I did a few years ago. It’s what he does.”
For Osuna, coming in during the ninth inning to protect a one- or two-run lead is in the job description. “Those things are normal, part of what I do,” he says before the Detroit game. “That’s how I think about it.”
That night, he threw nine straight strikes. Game over.
