Victor González knew he wasn’t the identical pitcher, the shutdown reliever from 2020, when he walked off the mound at Dodger Stadium one Monday evening final summer time.
It was mid-July. He entered the sport, his first off the injured checklist, in opposition to the San Francisco Giants with one out within the seventh inning. A debacle adopted. Single. Single. Sacrifice fly. Double. Double. He was charged with three runs by the point he received Darin Ruf to strike out to finish the inning.
His earned-run common, already climbing over the earlier three weeks, leaped from 2.57 to three.45. He was again on the injured checklist three weeks later with a 3.82 ERA. By the tip of August, he was a minor leaguer once more.
“I didn’t know how to get them out,” González stated in Spanish.
The issue wasn’t simply execution. The main league life-style chewed González up in Los Angeles and spit him out in Oklahoma Metropolis. That, in a nutshell, explains González’s sharp decline final summer time, from out-of-nowhere World Series hero in 2020 to triple-A.
Gone was the potent fastball-slider mixture that fueled his rise because the second Mexican left-hander rousing the Dodgers’ fan base. It disappeared after months of unhealthy choices.
“To be honest, I didn’t take care of myself,” González, 26, stated. “I wasn’t paying attention to the amount of food I was eating.”
The abrupt fall impressed change. González reported to spring coaching final month weighing 214 kilos, greater than 30 under his taking part in weight final summer time. This wasn’t in regards to the clichéd reporting to spring coaching in one of the best form of his life. This was about saving his main league profession earlier than it cratered as shortly because it launched.
The slimmer González solidified himself within the competitors for a spot within the Dodgers’ deep bullpen with encouraging performances. His fastball was clocked at 97 mph. His slider command has room for enchancment however the chew was there. His changeup, which he hardly ever used over his first two massive league seasons, is a pitch he plans to include extra in 2022.
“I congratulated him,” Julio Urías, the Dodgers’ different revered Mexican left-hander, stated in Spanish. “I think it’s a good thing that it happened because we’re now seeing the work that he put in during the offseason. So he learned from that and I know it’s going to be a lot better for him.”
For the primary 4 months final season, earlier than his elite capability to get hitters out all of a sudden vanished, González gorged. He had the cash to eat no matter he needed at any time when he needed in a post-shutdown world for the primary time in his life. So, he ate.
He ignored the warning indicators. The inflated quantity on the dimensions. The garments becoming tighter. It was simple to ignore the proof. He nonetheless owned a 2.10 ERA by June. His place within the bullpen appeared cemented lower than a 12 months after securing a few of the greatest outs through the membership’s postseason run the earlier fall.
“He was large for us in ‘20,” pitching coach Mark Prior said. “We can’t do what we do without him. Obviously everybody’s important, but he came out of nowhere and did a lot of unbelievable things.”
González showed up at Camelback Ranch a year ago weighing 225 pounds. By July, he was at 245. The extra weight became a burden. He went on the injured list in July with plantar faciitis and in August with a knee injury.
“You don’t look at it like, ‘I’m going to get fat,’ ” González stated. “You eat and eat and when you get to the point where you can’t make a pitch like you want to, you don’t realize it.”
Alex Vesia, in the meantime, snatched González’s standing because the Dodgers’ greatest left-handed reliever. On Aug. 25, González was optioned to triple A and didn’t pitch properly sufficient for a name again as much as the majors.
“I got very negative,” González stated. “I didn’t want to pitch. I only went to the stadium, I got in the game, I threw the ball and whatever happened, happened. I didn’t go to the mound with a plan. So, I wasn’t the same. I was in my own world.”
In October, earlier than they went their separate methods, Urías supplied González some recommendation: End up a private coach and work with him across the clock.
González already had a plan. He requested an previous buddy to maneuver from Mexico Metropolis to dwell with him 500 miles away in Tuxpan, his small hometown in Nayarit, for the offseason. He paid him to control each facet of his life.
Raúl Rico arrived on Nov. 17. He established a weight loss program, a exercise plan and a sleep schedule. González ate 5 small meals a day. Eggs. Three tortillas. A spoon of rice right here, 250 grams of hen there. Protein shakes after exercises. He reached his aim by February.
“He knew what he needed to do,” Rico stated in Spanish. “He knew that if he wanted to pitch in the major leagues again, he had to make changes.”
The distinction was startling to everybody when González arrived at Camelback Ranch in March. He was greeted with double takes and compliments. On the mound, he was the pitcher the Dodgers remembered, the one who unexpectedly surfaced two years in the past.
Competitors for a spot on the opening-day roster is stiff, even with rosters expanded to twenty-eight for the season’s first month. Vesia, David Value, Tyler Anderson, Garrett Cleavinger and Justin Bruihl are among the many left-handed aid choices. However González has pitched his method into consideration, desirous to rebound from a forgettable 2021.
“I don’t want to go to triple A anymore,” González stated. “Who doesn’t like the big leagues?”
This story initially appeared in Los Angeles Times.
