How Dodgers reliever Edgardo Henriquez threw a 103.3-mph pitch

Denver – Edgardo Henriquez has a gift. He can launch baseball faster than all, except a few humans, in history.

However, he prefers to think him as something he and God created together, not something that was given to him.

“We have worked for this,” said Henriquez, who frequently uses the plural pronoun when you talk about himself. “All work, effort, physics. And the reward of God, especially.”

Wherever lightning in his right arm comes, he makes good use of it. Of the 83 throws he launched this season entering Wednesday’s match, 28 exceeded 101 miles per hour. The fastest hit 103.3 MPH on the radar pistol last Saturday, making it the most difficult ground by a Dodger since Statcast started to follow speed in 2015 and probably the fastest terrain in the history of the franchise.

Henriquez, 23, increases her shoulders and smiles at figures.

“Now we have to remain consistent,” he said in Spanish. “Even growing up in Venezuela, I have always launched hard.”

What he did not do in Venezuela was the pitch because when he signed at the age of 16 in 2018, Henriquez was a receiver. The Dodgers moved it to the other side of the plate a year later, when they brought it to their Dominican academy.

The process was not fluid. The right -hander granted 22 points in 30 rounds in his first season. Then, after sitting in the summer of 2020 because of the Covid-19 pandemic, he came to the United States a year later and went 2-3 with an MPM of 4.93 in 13 games between the Complex League of Arizona and a single Rancho Cucamonga.

The Dodgers projected him as a starter, but after Henriquez missed the 2023 season for Tommy John Plegery, he returned by throwing gas and the team transferred him to the enclosure of the lifts. The results were spectacular, Henriquez climbing four levels, from A Rancho Cucamonga to the Majors, in six months to make his debut in the big league in the last week of the regular season.

And he announced his presence with authority, exceeding 101 MPH twice to get the safeguard in his third match.

Henriquez grew up in Cumaná, a historic beach town of about half a million people wedged between the Manzanares river and the Caribbean coast of Venezuela, 250 miles east of Caracas. The oldest continuously lived in the Spanish colony in South America, it was the birthplace of poets and presidents. But baseball players? Not so much.

The Armando Galarraga launcher, which was deprived of a perfect game by calling a referee in 2010, is probably the best known of the great Leagues of Cumaná while Maracay, on the other side of the country, produced more than two dozen players, among the stars Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera and Elvis Andrus.

“Maracay, yes. They say that it is the birthplace of baseball in Venezuela,” said Henriquez. “But the truth is that it’s Cumana.”

Henriquez took the game at an early age, playing on local fields and sandbits. And because he was among the greatest children in the neighborhood, he was put behind the plate. The Dodgers liked his size – he looks much larger than the 6 feet 4 inches and 200 pounds which he was credited on the list – and Arm, so they offered him $ 80,000 to sign as an international free agent with the intention of making him a launcher.

Before the elbow reconstruction surgery, Henriquez touched 101 mph with his quick ball. But he returned by throwing even stronger, with an average of 99 MPH and reaching 104 among minors last summer. This earned him a promotion of September and a place on the list of the first two series of after-season of Dodgers.

He was also online for a place on the alignment of the opening day this season before a metatarsal injury in his left foot landed in a walking boot, putting him away during most of spring training.

Neither the dodgers nor Henriquez will talk about how the injury has happened.

“I prefer to keep this for myself,” said the launcher this week.

However, this setback has proven that another obstacle to overcome to Henriquez, and after having withdrawn 36 strikers in 23 2/3 rounds for triple in Oklahoma City, it was summoned to the Dodgers a month ago.

In some ways, he was a different launcher.

“He looks much more confident,” said manager Dave Roberts. “I think he was confident last year, but there was a false confidence, of course. He knows that his things are playing here, so it’s good to see.”

His record terrain came in his sixth of seven aimless appearances when he withdrew the striker Ryan O’Hearn on a quick ball with four seams during the seventh round of a victory over the Padres of San Diego.

His parents, Edgar and Erika, were visiting Venezuela and in the stands of the Dodger stadium for the field in O’Hearn, which aroused a lot of attention on social networks. Consequently, Roberts said that hole coach Mark Prior and the coach of the readers Josh Bard ensured that Henriquez understands that there is no more to launch the radular pistol.

As good as the four runners is, it may not be the best field of Henriquez. Its cutter, which is in the mid -90s, can be almost unshakable and it also has a devastating cursor. He will need all this repertoire to succeed in the majors, said Chris Forbes, the main director of players’ development for the Colorado rocks, because the number of hard throws increases.

“If there is no deception, there is no ride, [hitters] You can catch up if you don’t have anything else they can think of, “he said.

Until now, the strikers have not caught up: in seven rounds this summer, entering Wednesday, Henriquez has only granted three strokes and walked one while removing four. The opponents strike 0.120 against him.

This was a rapid increase for Henriquez, who went from the teenager to the big league, surviving a world pandemic, Tommy John Surgery and a fractured bone in his foot to launch a World Series champion.

But there is still a goal, although he only speaks reluctant.

In a team without enclosure roles, Henriquez wants to be closer, using his flamboyant quick ball not only to demoralize the strikers but also to close the matches.

“Everything God has in store for me. We will work wherever and continue,” he said. “But yes, I would like to be closer.”