"Cambio" Blanco. The Car Wash Man Who Threw a No Hitter
At 22, Ronel Blanco worked part time at a car wash. It was a long journey to a major league mound, but thanks to an improved change up, he threw a no hitter last night.
At the age of 22, Ronel Blanco worked at a car wash in his hometown of Santiago, Dominican Republic. It’s about as far as you can possibly be from a major league mound.
Jake Kaplan detailed Blanco’s story in 2022.1 He trained for baseball in the mornings, and had try outs with the Yankees, Mets, Pirates, and Rays. None signed him, so he washed cars in the afternoon to help support his mother, Maria.
Scouts knew who Blanco was—because his training partner was Julio Rodriguez. But Astros scout Francis Mojica saw something in Blanco and convinced a higher ranking scout—Roman Ocumarez—to give him a tryout. And they signed him to a $5,000 signing bonus.
International players can sign contracts at the age of 16 and for a lot more money than $5,000. For example, Rodriguez signed at age 16 on the first day he was eligible to sign a contract for a signing bonus for $1.75 million.
But Blanco had to wait. He even had to change positions, converting from an outfielder to a pitcher at age 18. But when you reach 22—well, Blanco said last night in a postgame interview with MLB Network: “It was almost impossible to sign at that age.”
The Astros have had a lot of success in signing “older” international prospects who had seemingly been overlooked. Examples include Framber Valdez, Luis Garcia, and Cristian Javier.2 But unlike those players, Blanco seemed stuck in AAA. He reached that level in 2019, but pitched there every year since (excepting the 2020 COVID season). Before last night, he had thrown only 58 innings over 2 major league seasons.
But Josh Miller, who worked his way up from coaching in the Astros minor leaguers to the team’s pitching coach, noted back in 2022 that Blanco “has proved resilient and his stuff’s gotten better along the way.”
We saw that better stuff last night. In particular, Blanco’s changeup was really effective. He threw it only 9% of the time against major league hitters in 2023. But over the winter, Assistant pitching coach Bill Murphy “tinkered” with Blanco’s changeup grip on a winter trip to the Dominican Republic. Catcher Yainer Diaz noted that “every single time I called it in Spring Training, he always commanded it well.”
Blanco threw the changeup more than any other last night—on 34% of his 105 pitches last night. The chart below shows how effective the pitch was last night. He threw it for strikes 29 times and for a ball only 7 times. He induced 24 swings on the pitch, and on ten of those Blue Jays hitters swung and missed. 11 of those swings were on chases—swings on pitches out of the strike zone.
In writing last month about Blanco needing to step into the rotation due to injuries to Justin Verlander and Jose Urquidy, I noted that while “Blanco gets a lot of swing-and-miss,” he had been held back by a “high walk rate.” In Spring Training, Blanco showed improved command (see the Diaz quote above) and that continued last night.
The heat map below is for Blanco’s change up last night, and shows that he was able to keep the ball both down and in the strike zone. He was also able to work his change up to both sides of the plate. And when Blanco induced chases, they were on pitches below the strike zone. Blanco got 12 outs on ground balls last night and only 3 on outfield fly balls. This gives you a sense of how he did that.
Blanco’s improved changeup so impressed Todd Kalas and Geoff Blum in the broadcast booth that Kalas started referring to the pitcher as Cambio Blanco—cambio being the Spanish word for changeup.
A shoutout to Yainer Diaz, who not only caught Blanco’s no hitter,3 he also slugged a pair of home runs of his own. It’s the first time in MLB history that a player caught a no hitter and hit two homers in a game.
What was the best week of your life? I’m not sure I know.
Ronel Blanco does. Last Tuesday, his wife gave birth to his second child. Later that day, he then threw 4.1 shutout innings in the team’s final Spring Training game and learned he had made the Opening Day roster from Joe Espada.
Six days later, he got his 8th major league start, and threw the best game of his life. While his wife was at home with their newborn, Blanco’s mother Maria and his oldest daughter did get to witness the game.
After the game, Maria reflected on Ronel’s journey to the majors and how they supported each other. “The only thing I would tell him was ‘Para ‘delante. That triumph is with you, God willing.’”
Go for it, Ronel. You certainly did last night.
The official position of the Orange Fire Substack is 1) we miss Jake and wish him well, and 2) recommend subscribing to Jake’s Substack (Jake’s Takes) for his Grammy predications and other pop culture commentary.
Fun fact. Of the last 7 no-hitters in the majors, 4 have been have been thrown by Dominicans who where “older signs” for the Astros.
If I understand these tweets from Dominican journalist Hector Gomez properly, Blanco is the 10th Dominican to throw a no-hitter. The 9th was Framber Valdez last season. Blanco and Diaz are the 3rd fully Dominican battery to be responsible for a no hitter.