A’s pitcher Montas reflects on his lowest low.
A campaign in which A’s pitcher was riding high hit a low with 80-game ban
MESA, ARIZ. >> Frankie Montas first thought about his family. His mother, Grissel, and father, Francisco, were counting on their 26-year-old son to send money back home to the Dominican Republic. How much would nearly three months with no pay impact his loved ones?
Then, Montas thought about his friends, his teammates. Until that dark June day last season, Montas was the A’s brightest
hope, a welcome surprise. A fractured rotation found its foundation in Montas after he put up a 9-2 record, 2.70 ERA and a careerhigh 103 strikeouts in 15 starts.
That was the day MLB handed down an 80-game suspension to Montas, a penalty for testing positive for Osterine, a banned performance-enhancing drug.
“I was shocked, sad,” Montas said recently. “I wasn’t feeling good at all.”
Montas’ locker in Oakland was emptied that morning. The team’s postseason quest suddenly thrown a devastating curveball.
“I thought we were done,” A’s executive vice president Billy Beane said. “Because we’re so thin in pitching, and he had been such a shot in the arm at the beginning of the year.”
The A’s moved on. They had to. But Montas had to stop, reflect, and — for another time in his career — prove himself again.
Montas returned to his home in Arizona to begin serving his suspension. He couldn’t bear to watch the games. He secluded himself with his wife, Nicholette, and 4-year-old son, Michael. Save for a few texts and calls with Mike Fiers, he didn’t keep contact with any of his teammates because he didn’t want to be a distraction.
“He knows he made a mistake, and everyone makes mistakes,” Fiers said. “It was tough to see that, you saw how much he
helped the team. We were friends before that, we’re friends now. That’s not going to take our friendship away.”
After a few weeks, Montas worked up the courage to view his social media accounts. He opened up his Instagram and Twitter accounts to hundreds of direct message requests. He bore down and read through them all.
“The negative stuff is people trying to get in your head,” Montas said. “One (Tampa Bay Rays fan) sent me messages saying, ‘Hey, I’d wish you die. Your son and mom, I hope they’re disappointed in you.’ You just beat my team the night before your suspension.’”
Fiers said, “He was going through a lot with his family and friends. It sucks to get judged that way.”
Montas was unfazed by the harsh comments. Why anyone cared enough to wish death on him seemed baffling.
“They think they can hurt you with letters. They think they can make you think different because they’re mean to you and trying to bully you,” Montas said. “If you need to feel happy by talking s*** to other people, you have issues. My life is that important, bro? You take all this
time to message me?”
There also was an outpouring of positive messages. Messages that urged Montas to bounce back. That they forgave him. That they knew he had just made a mistake.
So, was it just a mistake? Montas nods ‘yes.’ He says he mistakenly consumed Osterine outside of the A’s clubhouse confines, so the team was unaware of the supplement it was included in. Osterine is an illegal substance, not yet approved by the FDA, that is often included in bodybuilding supplements.
“It was not even on the label,” Montas said. “But I have to take full responsibility for whatever I put in my body. Now I just have to be more careful.”
Although he asserts it was an honest mistake, Montas decided not to appeal his suspension.
So now he heads into the season with his time served, although under a wary eye.
For a variety of reasons, including his PED use and a history of inconsistency, some scouts around the league question if Montas can repeat his breakout success of the first half of last season.
A’s pitching coach Scott Emerson said Montas had turned a corner during his very first bullpen session last spring. He rushed to the A’s brass to report the good news, to which Beane and Co. scoffed.
“I put zero stock into the first bullpens, I’ve heard it multiple times, I know this guy looks good, it means nothing,” Beane said.
It was a turnaround sparked by the advent of a splitter the 26-year-old right-hander was tinkering with that winter. He abandoned his changeup, and his splitter became a crucial element for Montas to create the deception he’d lacked. It gave him room to mess with the timing of his pitches, too, paired with his high-90s fastball and an underrated slider.
His 2018 xBA of .293, among the worst in baseball (bottom 3%, according to Statcast), dropped to .233 last season. Montas’ barrel rate plummeted from 7% to 4%, which was among the top 4% in the league. In his first spring start on Wednesday against the Arizona Diamondbacks, he didn’t need to throw but one splitter to get through a hitless inning. This winter, he went home to the Dominican Republic to play in the Dominican League, where he held a 1.44 ERA in five starts with 26 strikeouts and six walks in 25 innings for the Leones del Escogido.
“I haven’t in one year seen one guy make that big of a transformation, and I will no longer discount the first week of bullpens,” Beane said.
One American League scout says the key to Montas’ success came years before he exchanged his changeup for a splitter. The big right-hander struggled with his command during his three seasons in the Chicago White Sox system. The scout noticed that Montas flipped when he found rhythm, consistency in his delivery.
“Anyone who can throw 100, that’s a foundation (the team) can never turn on. And it’s an easy 100, because his arm action is so short,” he said. “But … he just has ‘the feel.’ That’s something some pitchers just have. (Greg) Maddux had it. Montas has it.
“It’s not something you can necessarily teach.”
“The feel,” simply put, enables a pitcher like Montas an innate ability to locate his secondary pitches. Command, rhythm and ‘the feel’ along with that splitter all combined to loft Montas to a career peak in 2019.
An All-Star appearance seemed evermore in reach by mid-June, but only the tiny digits on Baseball Reference can inform and remind the public of that sliver of season was all Montas left on the table. Montas went to Arizona depressed, but motivated to
prove to all his supporters, doubters and, most importantly, his teammates that he could keep this up.
He kept his every-fiveday routine in Arizona, working with a man he calls “Lefty,” real name unknown. His parents would call every day to check on his mental state.
“As parents, when you see your son in a tough spot, that doesn’t make you feel good,” Montas said. “They’re making sure my head is right. I said, ‘Don’t worry about it, I know what I have to do.”
Montas vows to be more cautious about what he puts in his body. He wants off the roller-coaster that brings him back to points in which he must prove himself again.
Montas returned to the field once more in September and looked like he’d never left, dealing a six-inning game against the Anaheim Angels.
After that, he felt at peace enough to watch baseball. He watched his team get crushed in the wild card game. The A’s were down, but have never been farther from out.
“This year is going to be our year to win the division, I believe so,” Montas said. “I believe in every guy in this clubhouse. As a team, we’re young, but we learned a lot the past two years, and every year we’re better.”
Montas, too.