REMEMBER THIS NAME
18-year-old Estevan Florial could be the prize of Yanks’ system — barely a year after he was someone else
T AMPA — Each day he would cry. With the arrival of anew spaper, with the revelation that another friend had received a substantial signing bonus with a major league team. With the word that someone else’s dream — but not his — was being launched.
At this point, he did not even have a name, which was kind of the problem. He was Haniel d’Oleo on all the paperwork. But he wasn’t. That was not his real name. And that was the problem.
The boy would soon fully become Estevan Florial, would eventually make it to the States after one year in baseball purgatory — his mind searching for the right word, in English, in Spanish as he eyed a translator. He finally finds the word and turns to me and offers it. “Amazing” Florial said. With that he smiles. The smile of an 18-year-old who has possibilities again. He is not as rich monetarily as if it all had gone well the first time, when he was one of the best prospects in the Dominican Republic. When teams were about to fight dollar for dollar for him.
“When the New York Yankees signed me, it no long mattered how much money it was,” Florial says, sitting in a dugout at the Yankees minor league complex. “I just wanted to play baseball.”
A birth certificate. So routine, right? You are born, you get one. Unless you don’t. And Florial did not. His mother was from Haiti and his father, well, his father disappeared. And so when it was time for school in the Dominican, his mother simply accepted any paperwork that would get her son enrolled, and the name on the paperwork was Haniel d’Oleo, which had no relation to her name nor that of the father.
But there was no resistance. So why fight it? The boy was able to be educated and play ball under this name. Not just play ball, but blossom into something special with quick-twitch, wiry athleticism that brought a power arm and center-field speed and all the hints of lefty power as the dollop on top that begins to make even seasoned scouts like Donny Rowland giddy.
“It wasn’t just us, it was the industry,” said Rowland, who heads the Yankees’ international efforts. “He was at all the major showcases. He was among the most desirable players.”
The Yankees had targeted the international signing period that began in July 2014 for a splurge to restock their farm system. They would blow beyond the allotted pool dollars and incur penalties that would keep them from signing an international free agent for more than $300,000 from July 2015-July 2017.
They viewed Haniel d’Oleo in the same pool with players such as Dermis Garcia, Nelson Gomez and Juan DeLeon, who received bonuses of between $2 million and $3 million.
Except d’Oleo showed up one day in the spring of 2014 at the Yankees complex at Santo Domingo and was barred. He was told he had been suspended by the Commissioner’s Office because his paperwork was not in order. After 9/11, the State Department had become more diligent about issuing work permits and visas to those entering the country, so MLB had to follow. Suddenly, the fudging of paperwork that made Latin prospects, in particular, younger became more difficult, if not impossible.
But Florial insists this was not a situation of trying to skirt the system, merely a decision made long ago to get him into school. It was never an issue. So why change? But now, if he was going to have a baseball future, a change had to be made. So his mother flew to Haiti, got her documents in order, and filed and received a birth certificate for her son.
“He never left our radar in that time, that is how much we thought of him,” Rowland said. “The suspension lifted in early January [2015] and we went full tilt back on him.”
The exit velocity out of his lefty swing hadn’t changed, in the assessment of Yankees evaluators, nor did the big right arm, nor did the athleticism. But, with penalties, the Yankees had spent roughly $30 million on international amateurs.
“Still, I called Brian [Cashman] and said we have to get this guy,” Rowland said.
Ca s h man appealed to Hal Steinbrenner, who in early March approved a $200,000 bonus — about one-tenth of what Florial would have received if his documentation had been in order.
“For me, when God does something, it is incredible, so I do not think I was ready to sign [when I was Haniel d’Oleo],” Florial said. “I used it as motivation to train harder and now I am here.”
The Yankees believe their international splurge has helped
create a volume of high-level positional talent at the lower minors headed by players such as third baseman Nelson Gomez, catcher Miguel Flames, shortstops Diego Castillo and Wilkerman Garcia and, yes, Florial.
Every year in camp, I ask Yankees executives to tell me the name of someone in the organization who I do not know now, but will in six months. On the day spring camp opened, Florial’s name was near unanimous. An hour after I heard it for the first time, Ben Badler of Baseball America tweeted that Florial could emerge as a sleeper from the Yankees’ system.
Nothing stays secret long these days.
Florial, at 17, was the co-MVP of last year’s Dominican Summer League postseason. He impressed enough at the Yankees Instruct i onal Leag ue t hat something occurred that never previously had in Cashman’s two decades as general manager — he had a player who had never played an inning in the United States asked for in a trade.
Florial arrived in Tampa on Jan. 25 to begin workouts and the Yanks included him in Captain’s Camp, which is for the organization’s best prospects.
Florial is likely headed for a short-season Rookie League team in 2016, but the Yanks will not dismiss him getting to Low-A Charleston, even at 18. The tools are overt even in batting practice — there is some swagger in the box and a few balls fly off the black backdrop beyond the center field wall. In body type, think the young Alfonso Soriano.
It is a long way from here to the majors, longer to honoring any kind of prospect level, but Florial has traveled quite a distance already. Not long ago, he literally was someone else.