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Ricardo Velez finds himself closing out games for the Cedar Rapids Kernels
Despite not throwing hard, right-hander is 5-for-5 in save opportunities this Midwest League season, including saving a 2-1 win Wednesday over Peoria
Jeff Johnson
May. 1, 2024 11:14 pm, Updated: May. 2, 2024 9:54 am
CEDAR RAPIDS — The typical closer comes in throwing gas.
It’s a fastball in the upper-90s in velocity, sometimes the 100s. Here it comes, try and hit it if you can.
Ricardo Velez is not your typical closer.
The Cedar Rapids Kernels relief pitcher has a fastball that hits 90. Maybe every now and then.
Instead he’s got five pitches he can rely upon: a fastball, sinker, changeup, cutter and sweeper. That last pitch he picked up this year in spring training.
The Midwest League’s leader in saves gets you out not by blowing you away as much as by guile. Movement and guile.
“I love it because you’ve got the hitter guessing what pitch is going to come,” Velez said Wednesday night, after he threw a perfect ninth inning to preserve a 2-1 Kernels win over Peoria at Veterans Memorial Stadium. “That helps me a lot.”
The 25-year-old right-hander has five saves in nine outings, a nice little earned run average of 1.64. He’s given up just six hits in 11 innings and has struck out 14.
Velez said he’s used to late-inning roles because that’s what he had in winter ball in his native Puerto Rico. Truthfully, there are no true closers in the minor leagues.
Guys are scheduled to throw on certain days during a week, and it just so happens Velez’s days have mostly been in save situations. Why not? It’s working.
“He does a good job of getting movement on his fastball, with the sinker and the cutter that he throws,” said Kernels Manager Brian Dinkelman. “He throws strikes and keeps the ball off the barrel pretty good. The velocity sometimes isn’t always there, but when you get the movement, you can get a few guys out.”
Velez’s baseball career has been circuitous in nature. He went from his home in Lajas, Puerto Rico, to junior college ball in Oklahoma and Texas, then two years at NAIA school University of Science and Arts of Oklahoma.
Then it was independent baseball for the Eastside Diamond Hoppers of the United Shores Professional Baseball League in Michigan. The Minnesota Twins signed him in the summer of 2021 and he pitched a few games in Rookie ball.
An 80-game suspension for performance enhancing drugs (specifically nandrolone) cut into his 2022 season. He began 2023 in Rookie ball, got moved up to low-Class A Fort Myers then to the high-A Kernels at the end of the season.
Now he’s back in Cedar Rapids, performing very well.
“To be honest, I cried when the Twins called to offer me a contract,” Velez said. “First the (Diamond Hoppers) coach told me. I was going to throw they day, but they pulled me out. So I called my mom and dad and told them. They cried, too. Meaningful.”
The Kernels are 11-11 after Wednesday’s win, with four more games left in the series. Keoni Cavaco hit a two-run home run here, with Misael Urbina saving the lead with one beautiful, home run-stealing catch of a ball hit to left in the eighth by Peoria’s Zach Leverson.
Urbina went back on the ball, got to the fence and jumped, his glove going over the fence but securing the baseball. As good as you’ll see.
“The situation in the game, the toughness of the catch, yeah, that’s about as good as you can get,” Dinkelman said. “When he hit it, it looked like a home run. But Urbina had a good beat on it, knew where he was with the fence, jumped up there and was able to bring it back.”
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