I don’t watch as much baseball as I’d like. But like any good Yankees fan, I check the box scores from all 162 games. The Yanks were playing the White Sox the other night, and I noticed “M. Banuelos” under the list of Chicago pitchers. And like any good Yankees fan, I know who Manny Bañuelos is.
That couldn’t be Manny, could it? Is he still playing?
It was, and he is. Here’s a common sort of baseball story.
The Killer B’s
The Yankees signed Bañuelos from the Mexican League (Liga Mexicana de Béisbol) in 2008 when he was 16 years old. From then until he turned 20 in 2011, he impressed pretty much everyone who saw him pitch. Even without the accolades, his stats from those days are impressive in their own right.
Mariano Rivera, probably the best relief pitcher in baseball history, called Bañuelos the greatest pitching prospect he has ever seen. The New York media loved him, too. The covered him alongside two other top pitching prospects named Dellin Betances and Andrew Brackman. Together they were the Killer B’s.
Brackman was the oldest of the three, and he never really made it. He pitched in a few games for the Yankees, dropped back to the minor leagues, and then left the sport.
Betances struggled in the minor leagues for a number of years. That is, until he finally made the Yankees’ major league roster and thrived. He’s now a four-time all-star and one of the best relief pitchers in one of the best bullpens in the game. He’s currently injured, but that’s a minor setback. He’ll return soon.
That brings us to Bañuelos.
He’s the youngest Killer B, and in some ways he was the most promising. He worked his way quickly through the minors despite his young age. By age 19, he was striking out close to 12 batters per 9 innings. And by age 20, he was playing AAA ball. Just one step from joining the Yankees roster.
Injury and Trade
Bañuelos never pitched for the New York Yankees. He went down with a ‘bone bruise’ early in the 2012 season. The Yankees shut him down for the season, but a late season MRI led to the conclusion that he needed Tommy John surgery. If you’re not familiar with the surgery, I’ll spare you the details. The point is that the recovery time for pitchers is a year. So not only did Bañuelos miss most of the 2012 season, he also missed the entire 2013 season.
He didn’t pitch very well in the minor leagues in 2014, and the Yankees kept moving him further down. His pitch speed was down, his strikeouts were down, and his ERA was way up.
After the 2014 season, the Yankees traded him to the Atlanta Braves for David Carpenter and Chasen Shreve, a couple of decent relief pitchers. Carpenter never panned out for the Yankees, but Shreve pitched well for one season and decently for two others. Even more importantly, the Yankees later traded Shreve to the St. Louis Cardinals for Luke Voit. Voit’s now a major part of the Yankees lineup.
Bañuelos didn’t fare so well. He made the Braves roster and made his major league debut in 2015. And then he went down with another injury. He spent several years in the minor leagues trying to recover his pitching form, until he finally put in a good season in 2018. At age 27.
After a few trades, he’s with the Chicago White Sox as a 28 year old (more or less) rookie. The White Sox seem enthusiastic about giving him a shot.
Bañuelos and Drabek
Tommy John surgery is fairly common. The recovery rate’s about 85%, though not everyone recovers their exact pitching form. Some never make it back to full effectiveness.
A distant cousin of mine, Kyle Drabek, went through the same surgery. Except he had the surgery twice. He never really recovered his pitching form after the second surgery, and he’s not currently playing major league baseball.
Bañuelos and Drabek’s careers look much more like the average baseball player than does, say, CC Sabathia’s. Fact is, most players never make it as far as any of these guys. Even the ones who don’t quite get there are still very, very good players. And sometimes the ones who do make it are lucky one of a million things didn’t go wrong.
The Future of Manny Bañuelos
That game against the White Sox wasn’t especially close. Bañuelos entered with runners on first and third and one out in the 9th inning. The Yankees were up 7-4. He struck out the first batter, intentionally walked the second, walked in a run on the third, and then got out of the inning with a pop out. The Yankees won the game 8-4.
Not a bad outing. But not impressive, either.
Will Bañuelos make it? Will he get close to being the great pitcher people predicted him to be? It’s possible, and I don’t want to rule it out. But it’s not likely.
That’s how it is with most baseball players.
Image Source
Edward Linsmier, The New York Times
