Who is Ronald Guzmán, the former 1B throwing 98 mph in Giants camp?

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — Growing up in La Vega, a city of about 200,000 in the Dominican Republic two hours north of the capital Santo Domingo, Ronald Guzmán developed his love for baseball. He did so, first and foremost, on the pitcher’s mound. He loved Randy Johnson.

“I really thought and felt I was going to be 6-11 throwing 100 mph when I was 4 or 5 years old,” Guzmán said.

Well, life happens. And few paths are ever straight.

So 6-foot-5 and throwing 98 mph at 28 years old isn’t bad.

And Guzmán’s journey to the pitcher’s mound at Scottsdale Stadium on Thursday, where he struck out the side while expertly intermixing his high-90s heater with an array of mid-80s offspeed pitches, has been more circuitous than most. A former top-100 prospect as a first baseman, Guzmán signed with the Rangers at 16 years old in 2011 for a $3.5 million bonus and made it to the big leagues, where he has hit 31 homers in 743 career at-bats.

He is in camp with the Giants because he wants to pitch, and San Francisco was the only club willing to let him in major-league camp. He wants to pitch because, three years ago, he discovered his left arm could had the potential to be one of the liveliest in baseball. One day, he said, “hopefully I get to hit a homer in the eighth and come in in the ninth and close the game.”

But about that left arm, which hangs proportionate to the rest of his hulking 6-foot-5, 235-pound frame. (Guzmán was a popular answer among teammates when asked by the Giants’ social media team to pick a tag-team wrestling partner. “That dude’s huge,” Michael Conforto said.)

It was during the pandemic season of 2020, when Guzmán was at the Rangers’ alternate site, that the inspiration to pitch popped into his head. It had taken Guzmán seven years in the minors, including three at Triple-A, to crack the majors. His top prospect status was long gone, and he had been passed over in the organizational depth chart.

Good thing, then, that scoreboard was on.

Messing around one day, Guzmán

threw a ball with all his might. The stadium radar gun picked it up and displayed the reading on the scoreboard: 95 mph.

“They were all impressed,” Guzmán said. “It kind of started there.”

Guzmán, however, has not been pitching for the past three years.

He went off to winter ball that offseason and continued to play the field. The following April, in the 10th game of the season, Guzmán tore up his right knee while pursuing a fly ball — his first ever start in the outfield — which required surgery and cost him the remainder of the 2021 season. He signed with the Yankees in 2022 and spent most of the year at Triple-A, still playing the field (and even making a brief cameo in pinstripes), but he expressed his ultimate desire — to play both ways — and they allowed him to develop as a pitcher on the side.

Finding a team that saw his arm as more than side project, however, proved difficult.

“That was a big issue, to be honest,” Guzmán said. “The Giants were the only team that wanted me as a pitcher only. … Some other teams, they kind of rejected me because I knew what I wanted: I wanted to do both. And I knew I have the capability of doing both. They didn’t really trust that I could do it.”

Guzmán devoted this past offseason to pitching. He worked with weighted balls to increase his velocity. He continued to develop his arsenal, which includes four pitches (a four-seam fastball, a two-seamer, a slider and a changeup). Mostly, he worked to get comfortable on the mound.

This camp, where few players have generated as much buzz, it is paying off.

“All of his stuff is elite,” said starter Alex Cobb, who is as intrigued as anybody by Guzmán’s potential.

Cobb, entering his 12th major-league season and his 17th as a professional pitcher, has watched the video from all of Guzmán’s spring appearances, as well as two of his bullpen sessions, and dissects each one with him.

“It’s really cool to just talk with him about pitching,” Cobb said. “He’s got a real savvy mentality for just beginning. … There’s some stuff that’s not quantifiable in pitching, instinctual stuff, and you just wonder how much of a separator or important that is. Talking about his experience, when he’s got his stuff, does it just translate immediately? And I think we’re seeing that it does.

“We’ve been doing this our whole life and he’s just able to just step on the mound and go right into big league camp and dominate.”

Guzmán, slated to pitch again Sunday against the A’s (televised on NBC Sports Bay Area), turned in easily his most impressive outing yet Thursday, striking out all three Brewers he faced, including established major-leaguer Jesse Winker. He threw a steady diet of offspeed pitches for strikes, freezing Eddy Alvarez and Skye Bolt for strike three, then blew a 98 mph fastball past Winker to end the inning.

“He came into the dugout after that,” manager Gabe Kapler said, “and was like, ‘That’s me! That’s me!’ Like, that’s cool. Great. We hope so. He just has a lot of bravado.”

With his lack of experience, Guzmán is likely destined for Triple-A Sacramento. He has continued to regularly take batting practice this spring, and said the Giants told him he would get a chance to try doing both, but it is his arm that could get him to the big leagues this season.

“It’s just really cool to see those types of stories happen, being a part of it and watching it happen,” Cobb said. “I’m not excited about it for the two-way part. I’m just excited for somebody that came to an end of the road in one area of life and could’ve just packed it up and went home but picked himself up and put himself out there and gave it another shot. That’s what I’m excited about.

“If it works out that he gets a couple at-bats in and does some cool things, that’d be an even better story. But I think we’re definitely going to see him in the big leagues at some point in the near future.”