LANCASTER>> The outfield flags whipped furiously from left to right as the Rancho Cucamonga Quakes took batting practice Monday afternoon. The famous High Desert wind had already announced its presence, and gusts reached 63 mph by first pitch of the Quakes’ game against the Lancaster JetHawks later that evening.
A new teammate, Yadier Alvarez, had just blown in from the Dodgers’ extended spring training camp. The Cuban right-hander with a triple-digit fastball was about to begin his first full season in North America. For all the Dodgers have riding on his $16 million arm, Alvarez’s arrival was even more remarkable for the starting rotation he was about to join.
Walker Buehler was the Dodgers’ first-round draft pick in 2015. Mitchell White was the Dodgers’ second-round pick last year. Dennis Santana was the youngest of the group, having turned 21 a few days earlier. To that point in the season, as the wind wreaked havoc on BP and “Come Together” blasted over The Hangar’s public-address system, none of the pitchers had allowed an earned run.
If there was a coming-together moment for the Dodgers’ next wave of pitching prospects, this was it.
“It’s funny,” White said. “We were talking about the highs the other day. I think I hit 97 (mph). Santana, 98. Then Buehler hit 99. We were talking about ‘We’ve got to get to that next one. We’ve got to get to triple digits.’ It’s fun.”
Enter Alvarez, who started the Monday night game against Lancaster, a Colorado Rockies affiliate. His first start in the California League did not go as planned. That 100-mph fastball topped out at 97 in the first inning and faded late. Alvarez’s slider had its moments dancing around the strike zone, but lacked command overall. Lancaster scored seven runs against him in 2⅓ innings.
White started for the Quakes on Tuesday night. In the second inning he allowed an earned run for the first time as a professional. After Lancaster scored its sixth run of the inning, White was removed with two outs.
The broader takeaway: A pitcher three steps removed from the majors leagues on the affiliate ladder still has a long way to climb.
But for baseball scouts, pitchers that young with fastballs that big are hard to ignore. A half-dozen men with radar guns sat behind home plate for Alvarez’s debut. Another half-dozen members of the Rockies’ staff, including their general manager, attended the game Monday — an off-day for the parent club prior to a two-game series in Los Angeles.
It’s rare for four teammates to advance together from Single-A to Double-A to Triple-A to the majors. Former Dodgers Matt Kemp, Russell Martin, Chad Billingsley and Andy LaRoche did to a degree. That was a decade ago.
Even if they develop at the same pace — a big if — one trade can tear talented teammates apart. So can an injury. Buehler and White have already lost a year of their careers to Tommy John surgery; Santana and Alvarez have not.
You might have to squint down the road just a little, but you can see the four pitchers teaming up all the way to Los Angeles. List-makers unanimously rank Alvarez, Buehler and White among the Dodgers’ top 25 prospects. Santana is creeping into a few such lists as well.
“It’s incredibly exciting to have these four competing the way they are. All are exceptional arms,” said Gabe Kapler, the Dodgers’ director of player development.
Their varying paces of development have already emerged.
White said he pitched about 20 innings as a high schooler in San Jose. He went undrafted after his senior year, was barely recruited by colleges, and didn’t have much of a choice when he chose to attend Santa Clara University. He’s still thrown fewer than 200 innings in his life, by his own estimate.
By contrast, Buehler was a 14th-round draft pick out of Henry Clay High in Lexington, Ky., in 2012. He chose not to sign with the Pittsburgh Pirates and attend Vanderbilt University instead. Two years later, Buehler was a College World Series champion and a big-name prospect.
Santana was primarily a shortstop until he turned 18. His $170,000 signing bonus didn’t tab him as a marquee name, but after becoming a pitcher he shot through the Dodgers’ system quicker than many of his peers.
And then there’s Alvarez, who left Cuba at age 18. By the time he turned 21 in March, he was already married with a young daughter. (They were in Rancho Cucamonga, Alvarez said, when he pitched Monday in Lancaster.) He’s already used his $16 million signing bonus to purchase four cars: a Lamborghini, a Porsche, an Audi S8 and a Chevrolet Tahoe. It seems the rest of his life is merely trying to keep pace with his fastball.
Now, the quartet has a rare opportunity to keep pace with each other.
Buehler was able to wear the same uniform for three straight years at Vanderbilt. He’s in a unique position to understand the perks of friendly competition with teammates at a young age. He and Chicago White Sox pitcher Carson Fulmer were teammates in college. When Fulmer gets married in November, Buehler said he’ll be in the wedding.
“Creating a competitive culture is one of the most important things in creating a team,” Buehler said. “If you don’t compete against each other, I don’t know how you can try to compete against other people. That’s just the way that we were taught.”
Buehler said that ethos was handed down from Vanderbilt’s head coach, Tim Corbin. It jells with the Dodgers’ philosophy.
“We try to create an environment that simultaneously supports our players and raises the bar for them,” Kapler said. “We believe competition amongst our guys can encourage those two initiatives, and we promote it whenever it is beneficial and healthy.”
