Speed limit helps Valadez
Riverside hurler can change pace now
Here it is, try to hit it. That’s the approach Milwaukee Riverside’s Antonio Valadez used when he became a pitcher his freshman season: fastballs and more fastballs.
“Nobody was touching it, so why not?” said Valadez, now a senior. “I knew about (off-speed pitches) but I didn’t care because fastballs worked, so why not?”
Eventually though, he found out he had to add pitches to his repertoire to remain successful.
“He just blew the ball past people,” said Tigers’ coach Matt Turner. “But playing on varsity, especially against suburban opponents, you can’t get by just throwing 90 mph gas past guys.
“So watching him the last couple of years learn how to mix speeds, change location, keep other batters off-balance, has been a fun maturation process to watch.”
Valadez, who throws in the mid-80s, was an outfielder in Little League and first became a pitcher when he was on Riverside’s freshman team.
He was called up to varsity for the postseason that year and realized he’d need to learn skills such as changing speeds, working on his location and knowing what hitters look for.
“If I’m in a 1-1 count, I know they’re going to look fastball,” Valadez said. “So I have to throw something off-speed on the outside corner.
“To me, it was hard because I always threw as hard as I could. I’d throw a changeup and it wasn’t going where I wanted it to be. That was the hardest part, just locating my change-up.”
Valadez made varsity as a sophomore and started to work on changing speeds. Improvement started to show when he was a junior, even though Valadez says it was a work in progress.
In conference games last year, he was 4-0 (6-3 overall) and held batters to an .094 average. He allowed just six hits and two earned runs in 201⁄3 innings (0.69 ERA) to go with 40 strikeouts.
He won City Conference player of the year honors despite pitching behind team ace Josiah Roundtree.
“There were a couple of times you wanted the ball in Antonio’s hand, even if Josiah was a better pitcher,” Turner said.
“There was a game against Milwaukee Madison. Josiah struggled a bit and our defense struggled a bit. Antonio came to me in the third or fourth inning and said he could go.
“He ended up coming in the top of the fifth and struck out nine. He struck out every batter in three straight innings. We were down five or six runs at that point and he hits a walk-off single in the bottom of the seventh.”
The process continued for Valadez this past off-season, and he says everything has come together his senior season.
Valadez, who will play at Ellsworth Community College in Iowa next season, is 3-0 in the City (4-1 overall) and has 31 strikeouts in 181⁄3innings. He has given up nine hits and owns an 0.76 ERA in helping Riverside to a 10-6 record.
Valadez opened league play with a five-inning no-hitter against Milwaukee Hamilton.
“I walked the first batter, otherwise it would’ve been a perfect game,” he said.
The Tigers moved into a first-place tie with Milwaukee Reagan on Tuesday as Valadez struck out nine and al- lowed five hits in a 6-2 victory.
“We didn’t have a lot of pitching left after a doubleheader on Saturday,” Turner said. “So we really needed an outing from Antonio that was going to save the rest of our staff. He came out and threw a great game for us. He pretty much shut them down.”