Mind over batter
Sports psychologist helps Valdez go from shaky career to special status
LOS ANGELES — The call for help came sometime in 2020. A career hung in the balance because of a wayward mind, the type Andy Nuñez is taught to mold. He heard five years earlier about a Dominican kid on the Astros’ summer league team with an innate ability to spin the baseball. Natural talent is a blessing, but Framber Valdez needed focus.
Valdez made it to the major leagues without much of it. He actualized a lifelong goal but had no idea how to process it. Valdez walked nearly six batters per nine innings between 2018 and 2019. He caved at the first sign of trouble and, at times, became an emotional mess on the mound. His immaturity became an issue. The Astros stowed him in the back of their bullpen as a token lefthander and nothing more.
“If you would have asked me three years ago,” catcher Martín Maldonado said recently, “I never thought he would have been here this long.”
Maldonado would not have been alone in his presumption. The Astros’ pitching development pipeline continued to churn, and Valdez did not seem to have a clear role. Other prospects progressed while his poor first impression persisted. He threw 70 2⁄3 innings in 2019, finished with a 5.86 ERA and ventured home to the Dominican Republic without any assurances for the next season.
Valdez has a strong support system around him. He holds a strong faith and has a close family to whom he can turn for advice. None provided professional guidance, the sort Valdez needed to steady his career. That winter, Valdez picked up the phone and found it.
“Dr. Andy,” he said, “I want to talk to you.”
The two haven’t stopped since. Nuñez is a foundational force in Valdez’s ascension from anonymity to All-Star, a three-year turnaround that will culminate when he appears in his first AllStar Game on Tuesday at Dodger Stadium.
“Andy is like a rock in my life,” Valdez said last week through an interpreter. “After God, after my family and after my wife, he’s one of those people that got a hold of me in a certain way. Ever since 2020, I let myself be guided by Andy and kind of really took to his teachings. That’s when I started to become the player I am.”
Fateful phone call
Nuñez is the only sports psychologist at the Astros’ academy in the Dominican Republic. He heard Valdez’s name when he played with the Astros’ Dominican Summer League team in 2015 — the first season of his professional career — but the two never talked before Valdez phoned him in 2020.
Valdez said he reached out at the behest of Caridad Cabrera, the Astros’ director of Latin American operations. He was not reluctant to seek help — Valdez mentioned he received some breathing techniques and guidance from Alex Serrano, one of the Astros’ minor league mental skills coaches, earlier in his career — but acknowledged instruction sometimes fell on deaf ears.
“Once I got with Andy, someone close to me in the Dominican Republic, someone who could come to my house every day in the Dominican if I needed it, that’s when those things really started to click for me,” Valdez said.
Nuñez counsels almost all of the team’s young Dominican prospects, writing up assessments for the organization to analyze. He has worked in the organization for 12 years and mentored many of its international prospects. Cristian Javier and Bryan Abreu are among the current Astros he’s mentored along with Valdez.
“Latin players come from different realities than American players,” Nuñez said. “If you see our history, our educational system, it’s not able to help the guys to learn easily. Many talented guys can’t reach the goals because they don’t have the education. Framber comes from this reality. But when you do have trust and you help them to recognize and handle the success, they are able to make so much success.”
Trust is the crux of Valdez and Nuñez’s relationship. Nuñez needed to foster belief in advice that Valdez did not initially want to accept. Nuñez said his first few months mentoring Valdez were “difficult.” The allure of major league life — and sudden wealth from a $565,000 salary — went to Valdez’s head.
“When you are a Latin player and you come from a poor reality and you get the big (major league) contract, if you don’t have your feet on the ground, it can get crazy,” Nuñez said. “He was like a muscle car.”
Muscle cars speed down a highway and don’t slow down. Nuñez loves to describe Valdez the same way. The doctor encountered a 25-year-old man armed with the confidence of a person driving one. In one of their earliest sessions, Nuñez said Valdez told him he considered himself among the best players in the world.
“Let me tell you something, Framber, this is the industry. It’s called baseball,” Nuñez said he told Valdez. “If you disappear, the industry will keep going ahead.
“He told me, ‘What are you talking about?’ I said, ‘You’re not the only one here. There’s many players, many talented players, and if you don’t focus (on) the job and your work like a professional person, you’re going to have a bigger problem.”
Few ever doubted Valdez’s stuff. He did not start pitching until age 16, when other Latin prospects are signing their first contracts. Houston signed him for a meager $10,000 in 2015.
Valdez wielded a threepitch mix that made him feel invincible. He had one of the organization’s most menacing curveballs, even though he could not command it. His twoseam fastball had so much natural movement and spin that hitters could not square up or elevate.
Enticing opponents to swing became another adventure. Valdez threw 56 percent of his pitches for strikes in 2018, a season in which he walked 5.8 batters per nine innings. He issued 5.6 walks per nine in 2019 and tossed 60 percent strikes.
Valdez made eight starts in 2019, the season before he sought Nuñez’s help. He lasted four or fewer innings in half of them. The issues plaguing him became apparent. He allowed one bad atbat, blown call or error behind him to derail any dominance. Innings snowballed, and his outings became unsalvageable. His future as a starter seemed bleak.
Amid the downturn, Houston pitching coach Brent Strom maintained some semblance of faith, clinging to one postgame comment Mike Trout made during Valdez’s rookie season. Trout, a three-time Most Valuable Player, called Valdez’s stuff some of the nastiest he’d ever seen. Strom figured there had to be some way to harness it.
Calling Nuñez precipitated that development. The two men now talk before and after each of Valdez’s outings.
Watch one of them, and Nuñez’s influence is apparent. When his control wavers or chaos seems imminent, Valdez will close his eyes and draw a deep breath. He smiles more frequently — but it’s not in jest. Nuñez taught him the technique to center himself and relax on the mound. Yoga, meditation and reading helped, too.
“If there’s an error in the field or I give up a home run, have a bad inning, I think about those things he’s taught me,” Valdez said. “I think that’s why, so far, I’ve been able to come back and have success after an inning where I give up some runs or an inning where I lose my focus. I think about some of the teachings he’s taught me — especially the breathing part of it. I’ll breathe. I’ll calm myself, refocus and get back out there.”
Not finished product
An All-Star appearance does not mean Nuñez’s work with Valdez is done. Asked how far the pitcher has come, Nuñez gave it only a six on a scale of 1-10. Valdez still battles bouts of emotion. He acknowledged they overtook him during a dreadful start in Game 1 of the World Series last year. He appeared to throw his hands up in disgust during his last start against the Angels after a series of close pitches during a hard-luck third inning.
“He’s come a long way,” Maldonado said. “Every year, he’s growing up a little (more). Last year, some big spots still got to him; this year, not as much … There’s some days he still is showing a little bit, but not as bad as what it used to be. I feel like every pitcher has that on them. I feel like he’s not showing that much emotion or frustration out there like he used to be.”
Little this season has caused Valdez much consternation. Only five American League starting pitchers have a lower ERA than his 2.66 mark. He is walking just 3.4 batters per nine innings and throwing 64 percent of his pitches for strikes. Maldonado called him “one of the top five lefties in the game, if not the top three.”
Major League Baseball agreed. Earlier this month, the commissioner’s office selected Valdez to his first All-Star Game. The news sent Valdez scrambling for a new suit — he spent most of the team’s off day last Monday in Anaheim shopping — and a new hairstyle. Valdez now boasts long braids, some “show flow” for his first Midsummer Classic.
On the day Valdez learned of his selection, one of his first messages was to Nuñez. The honor brings more success Valdez must learn to handle. He’s earning $3.1 million this season but, now an All-Star, is in line for a sizable raise during his second trip through the salary arbitration process.
“I work with other players, but Framber is a special case,” Nuñez said. “Now I can tell you I feel so happy. For someone like Framber to go to the AllStar Game — you can see his records and everything. I watch every single game, and I feel so proud. The organization, the support they give me, the trust to work with the players, I can’t tell you (how happy) I am.”
More of the world will know who he is and monitor Valdez’s every move. He now seems equipped to handle it.
“I have my parents, I have my wife, I have other people I go to for advice, but having him, having a professional who has results — who has shown me results, especially,” Valdez said of Nuñez, “I know where I stand with him. I know where my feet are. It’s hard to say exactly where I’d be (without him), but he’s very important to me.”