TORONTO – Detroit Tigers center fielder Max Clark first noticed him in Florida. This dude just mashing the ball at Single-A Lakeland. This guy named Eduardo Valencia.
“I didn't really know him, but I played with him,” Clark said. “It's just like, oh yeah, this guy can handle the bat. It’s really cool to watch. It's fun.’”
Then Valencia got hurt with a quad injury, and Clark started climbing through the Tigers minor leagues. But they met up again at Double-A Erie.
“In Double-A, he was just like homer, double, homer, homer, homer, backside double, homer,” Clark said. “It was unbelievable.”
So, no, Clark is not surprised by what Valencia is doing with the Tigers.
Not one bit.
Because Clark has seen the same thing for several years now in the Tigers'
minor league system. This is who Valencia is. A dude who just rips the cover off the ball.
Valencia started at catcher and went 1-for-3 and scored a run in the Tigers' 10-1 victoryover the Toronto Blue Jays on Tuesday, Sept. 15.
It was the Tigers’ sixth-straight win, and they will go for the three-game series sweep against the Blue Jays on Wednesday.
“The thing about being a backup, I know what it feels like,” Tigers manager A.J. Hinch said. “You want to catch a winner and you want to get a hit. I mean, everybody wants to feel good at the end of the night, but in that order is what Val's priority is. He finds a way to do that almost every game. He knows [Dillon Dingler] is the starter and he's going to be in there every two or three or four games. But he's very prepared, and whether it's the routine in the cage with our hitting guys or the game-planning stuff, he wants to win and he wants to command the game when he's catching. That's a valuable guy who knows his contribution can come on both sides.”
Valencia, a 26-year-old rookie, has exactly 100 at-bats in the big leagues – a benchmark that starts to reveal what a player is − and he’s hitting an eye-popping .320 with a ridiculous .946 OPS.
I mean, just remember: He's a rookie. And rookies aren't supposed to hit like this.
“The guy works, man,” Clark said. “Everybody crapped on his defense. First of all, he's a good catcher. Second of all, he's continuously working on that, which is really cool to see. You can appreciate that because for a guy who bangs, him becoming an elite defensive catcher would only increase his value. That’s so sick. You can appreciate it.”
But being a backup catcher has been part of the trick for Valencia. Trying to stay sharp when he’s not always in the lineup.
Sure, he’s gotten some action as a DH. But it’s not like playing every day.
“I'm gonna be ready always to get the opportunity to play,” he said. “I love baseball, and I'm gonna be ready every time to play and just trying to help the team win.”
Tigers developed him with a detailed plan
The Tigers certainly appreciate what he’s doing.
But if you take a step back and look at the big picture, this is an example of how the Tigers have developed a player behind the scenes, getting him ready for this moment. Obviously, the Tigers saw Valencia hitting his way to the big leagues, so they created a program to prepare him.
“His game management is advanced,” Hinch said. “We had a dedicated process in Triple-A with [Doug Bochtler] and [Jimmy Robbins] and [Mike Hessman] and [Gary Jones] to challenge him before he got to the big leagues in his game calling and in his pairing pitches and how to attack hitters and in the game planning part of it. I think he really adapted well.”
It gave him confidence, and his intelligence is showing.
“How he runs the game has been exceptional,” Hinch said. “His explanations behind his thought process, when he's audibled off the game plan, when he has stuck with it, his reasoning, the way he has convinced pitchers to work with him, I think has been a truly a good thing.”
Now, is he gonna unseat Dingler?
Of course not.
Is he a step down defensively from Dingler? Yes. But everybody is.
“Every catcher in baseball is a little bit of a fall from Dingler,” Hinch said. “We just happen to have the gold standard. So, I don't want Valencia to get the notion that it's a risk to catch him. Because it's not. He manages the game extremely well.”
Still, here’s the really encouraging part: he’s not a finished product. He has only started 14 games at catcher.
“Where he's going to continue to advance is just the confidence in throwing and blocking and receiving,” Hinch said. “He's still pretty good at it, and he's going to be good at it.”
So, he keeps working to improve at catcher.
All while he’s doing the other thing. The thing Clark saw long ago.
This dude can bash the ball.
Contact Jeff Seidel: jseidel@freepress.com. Follow him on X @seideljeff
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Tigers rookie Eduardo Valencia just keeps mashing, but that should be no surprise
