Sox offer creative license to Velazquez
PORT CHARLOTTE, Fla. — The keyword with Hector Velazquez is creativity, from how the Red Sox worked out a clever deal to acquire him to how he fits the roster.
The 28-year-old from the Mexican League doesn’t throw very hard, so his pitching is creative to begin with. The righty’s fastball is in the high-80s to low-90s, with a split-change, slider and cutter.
His first game of any sort in a Red Sox uniform was yesterday, a 7-3 road loss to the Rays in the Grapefruit League. Velazquez started and threw two innings. He fanned four and allowed one run on three hits and a walk.
“A very efficient delivery. Repeatable. He threw strikes,” manager John Farrell said. “There was decent depth to his cutter, slider. But he looked very comfortable on the mound for just joining camp and getting on the mound in a game setting in roughly three weeks. So he’s got the benefit of winter ball on his side right now. But I thought it was a good twoinning look for him.”
But he wasn’t a traditional signing, even by Mexican League standards. The Red Sox added him once spring training had begun, beating out the Yankees, who also approached his team in Mexico, Campeche.
When you sign a player from the Mexican League, the negotiation is with the player’s team, and the player gets some cut of that deal.
The purchase price for the Red Sox: a low-risk $30,000, a baseball source told the Herald. To begin with. There are escalators built into the deal, based on consecutive days Velazquez spends on the major league roster — a clever and perhaps new approach to the market.
One general manager from another team said they had not heard of such a deal before.
There was a large Sox contingent involved in the signing, from senior vice president for player personnel Allard Baird and vice president for player personnel Jared Banner, to player personnel assistant Marcus Cuellar and crosschecker Edgar Perez.
“He’d been around for a while,” Baird said. “Statistically always kind of a target guy, and through this process as well as you know looking at our situation in Triple-A, we thought it was a good match for us too. Conversion guy, former positional player that in 2010 turned into a pitcher.”
Baird and Sox president of baseball operations Dave Dombrowski were among a group of front-office members who made the relatively short road trip to watch Velazquez yesterday.
“Our goal is to try to acquire talent any way we can and Dave really does a good job allowing us to do that and allowing us to try and be creative in acquiring that talent,” Banner said by phone. “We identified Hector a while ago, we had been following him for a little bit and we had a couple scouts down at the Caribbean Series who saw him throw a couple games and really liked him.
“Hector’s an older, experienced player. It can be a little tricky trying to figure out how a guy like that is going to adjust. But we saw enough that we wanted to give him an opportunity.”
Velazquez is not an ace. He’s potentially serviceable. Serviceable pitchers are still worth a lot of money, and this one has a full slate of minor league option years. He can ride that shuttle between Triple-A Pawtucket and the majors, and those pitchers aren’t usually available via free agency — and the Sox have a dearth.
As for what made Velazquez more effective as he’s aged, and therefore more desirable, he noted his approach.
“The biggest change was being more brave and throwing more strikes,” Velazquez said through translator Daveson Perez. “I think that aggressive approach I started taking and the fact that I was throwing strikes and getting outs gave me a lot more confidence. In addition to that, being healthy and that health allowing me to be on the field more consistently and seeing more batters.”