They call Rainer Nunez ‘Mosquito’ — and he’s creating some buzz with Blue Jays

DUNEDIN, Fla. — Rainer Nunez was engaged on some issues with Santiago Espinal within the batting cages final week when Guillermo Martinez, the Toronto Blue Jays hitting coach, stopped by with news.

“Hey, man — you’re starting against the Yankees tomorrow,” Martinez instructed Nunez, a 22-year-old prospect who reached high-A Vancouver final season. “And they’ve got Cole going.”

That can be Gerrit Cole — MLB’s 2022 strikeout chief, a number of time Cy Young finalist, and so on. and so on. You know who he’s. Of course, Nunez did, too. He’d by no means confronted a pitcher anyplace close to Cole’s degree for the reason that Blue Jays signed him out of the Dominican Republic in 2017. You don’t see many fastball-slider mixes like Cole’s in A-ball. So, Nunez requested Espinal and Martinez how he ought to method the problem.

Easy. Stay up the center, they instructed him. That’s precisely what Espinal and Nunez have been engaged on that day — protecting their bats on aircraft by the zone towards premium velocity and motion thrown inside, and never pulling these pitches to their lefts. Cole’s actually good, Espinal admitted. But not something Nunez couldn’t deal with. You’ve obtained all of the bat velocity and pop you want. Just let the ball journey and belief it.

“I reminded him in BP before the game, like, ‘Hey, you don’t have to pull anything. Trust your swing. Trust your power. Just stay back, see the ball, and react,’” Espinal says. “And then dude goes up there, first-pitch slider — boom. Right-centre. Frigging drilled it.”

That first-pitch Cole slider got here in fast at 89 m.p.h. And it left even faster, leaping off Nunez’s bat at 106 m.p.h. and crusing 407 toes over the right-centre discipline wall. The recreation wasn’t broadcast, so the most effective visible we will provide is the next shaky smartphone video from the stands — however even that picked up the totally different sound Nunez’s bat makes when he connects:

“You could see it in BP, like, ‘Dang, this guy’s got pop.’ But then to go do it in the game? First pitch? That’s crazy,” Espinal says. “He’s got that kind of power where he can do whatever he wants with the ball. Left-centre, right-centre, wherever. I wish I had that pop.”

Lots of gamers want that they had that pop. Just about everybody within the Blue Jays group. Ask membership builders who has the most effective uncooked energy in all the system they usually return the identical three names. Vladimir Guerrero Jr., clearly. Peyton Williams, a six-foot-five, 255-pound first baseman who put up 61 extra-base hits over his 107-game school profession. And Nunez.

The hulking, right-handed hitting first baseman wasn’t even speculated to be at major-league spring coaching this yr, however impressed so totally throughout early-camp alternatives filling in for Guerrero, who was sidelined for 11 days with an damage, and Brandon Belt, who’s coming off knee surgical procedure, that the Blue Jays gave him an official invite and a locker lower than two weeks after video games started.

With the common season looming, and Guerrero and Belt each again in motion, Nunez has returned to the minor-league facet of camp. But the facility he displayed continues to be inflicting reverberations. He holds 5 of the 20 hardest-hit tracked balls to come back off a Blue Jays bat in major-league video games to this point — together with the toughest certainly one of all, this 114-m.p.h. walk-off:

“Yeah, that was a missile,” Martinez says. “You forget that he’s 22. That’s how good he’s looked. I remember seeing him when he was 17 years old in the Dominican — completely different type of hitter. He was just your typical young kid, hacking, lot of swing and miss, no approach. But now he’s got a plan. You can see that there’s an approach now at the plate. It’s really impressive how he’s adjusted. He’s continued to progress every single year.”

Nunez is from Los Mulos, a small neighbourhood close to La Romana on the Dominican Republic’s east coast. He grew up taking part in baseball on the street with a sawed-off broomstick and a ball customary out of rolled-up socks. There was all the time a ardour for the sport — he idolized Adrian Beltre and Miguel Cabrera. But he by no means noticed himself taking part in it professionally.

“Baseball was just a part of my day,” Nunez says by membership interpreter Hector Lebron. “I’d wake up, I’d go to school — and right after school, I’d run home to play baseball in the street. I was just in love with it.”

When he was 9, Nunez joined a small baseball league close to his hometown named El Rescate, the place a scout from El Niche Academy noticed him play and recruited him to dwell and practice out of the academy’s Santo Domingo facility. Getting uncovered to the next degree of competitors, to not point out baseball-specific coaching and conditioning routines, was eye-opening for a child used to swinging broom handles.

“At Niche, their goal was to get as many players signed as possible every year. They’re winners. I remember a year when out of 15 players at the academy, 13 signed; if there were 20, 18 of them signed.,” Nunez says. “I saw that right away when I got into their environment and that gave me motivation. I said, ‘I’m not going to be the only one left here.’ So, I made getting signed my focus. I started working very, very hard. Because I wanted to achieve my goal.”

It’s true — El Niche develops lots of expertise that finally ends up making its method into affiliated ball in North America. Perhaps you’ve heard of a younger outfielder by the identify of Juan Soto. He lower his tooth at Niche as a uncooked 15-year-old lengthy earlier than he turned among the finest hitters on the planet.

Toronto’s signed a slew of gamers out of Niche through the years, together with Otto Lopez, Steward Berroa, Cristian Feliz, and Railen Tejada. Lopez describes the academy’s tradition — cast by its proprietor, Cristian Batista — as “super competitive.”

“It was all baseball, all day. Training, lifting, conditioning. From early in the morning all the way through the afternoon,” Lopez says. “It’s good for us because it makes you know the game better. You get to know your swing really well. It’s just a bunch of young dudes trying to make it. It’s really fun.”

Blue Jays scouts are always monitoring the youngsters popping out of Niche, which introduced them to Santo Domingo in 2016 to look at a exercise that includes then 14-year-old Robert Puason, who finally signed with the Oakland Athletics for a startling $5.1 million in 2019, and Nunez, who was a shortstop on the time.

Yes, all of them begin as shortstops. And Nunez was a lean, six-foot, 150-pound one at that. Which was after a development spurt. When Nunez arrived at El Niche, he was nearer to five-foot-nine and 135 kilos. That’s when Batista gave him the nickname that also follows him to today — “Mosquito.”

“When I saw him, the thing that stood out to me was the defensive skills. He moved well at short. He made plays. He threw well. He had actions,” says Andrew Tinnish, Toronto’s vice chairman of worldwide scouting. “I thought there was an ability to hit. But an average power profile. He was so wiry. At 16, you figure he could sprout up one more time, gain some strength. But I did not think the body was going to look like this.”

This is the six-foot-four, 240-pound “Mosquito” at the moment. He’s absolutely the unit with the chain on within the photograph above. Safe to say he’s not a shortstop anymore. Probably not even a 3rd baseman. Nunez has grown so huge, so quick that he’s been restricted to taking part in first base for the reason that starting of 2021. At one level, he blew all the way in which as much as 260 kilos and needed to trim some weight.

It’s the results of Nunez’s diligent deal with power programming and vitamin for the reason that Blue Jays signed him to a $350,000 bonus in 2017. Particularly as he moved to North America at 18 and started climbing Toronto’s affiliated system after spending a summer season taking part in out of the membership’s Dominican academy.

Results-wise, these early years have been unimpressive. But in 2021, Nunez walked almost as typically as he struck out within the Florida Complex League and began flashing a few of these 110-m.p.h. exit velocities that get growth departments buzzing. Then he opened 2022 with 9 homers in his first 28 A-ball video games, finally posting an .810 OPS on the degree — Nunez put a number of balls in play up over 114 m.p.h. — earlier than incomes a high-A promotion in August.

After ending his season hitting .321/.379/.491 over 28 video games with Vancouver, Nunez was despatched to the Dominican Winter League — LIDOM — for extra plate appearances and to proceed honing some changes the Blue Jays have been difficult him to make. Nunez’s new-found energy was talking for itself, however self-discipline was a difficulty — he was making an attempt to hit every little thing.

Toronto builders wished Nunez to refine his plate method towards superior pitching and work on making higher swing choices. They figured he’d get a pair weeks of LIDOM video games — the place the typical age is seven years his senior — after which shut issues down for the yr.

Only one downside. After these two weeks, Nunez’s LIDOM workforce — Estrellas Orientales — stated he wasn’t allowed to go away. He was too useful. Nunez saved taking part in with Estrellas by their whole schedule, main LIDOM in residence runs and successful its rookie of the yr award.

“That’s impressive. I can tell you — hitting like that in winter ball, that’s tough to do,” says Lopez, who’s performed in LIDOM every of the final 4 off-seasons. “It’s the pitching — that’s the hardest half. You’ll see a man who’s throwing stuff from, like, 82 to 89. All these loopy breaking pitches you’ve by no means seen earlier than. You don’t know the place this man’s coming from. And then within the seventh inning, they bring about in some man throwing 100. And you don’t have any data on these guys as a result of they’ve been taking part in in Mexico and all these different leagues you’ve by no means heard of.

“At the plate, you just don’t know what to do. Being able to hit a guy who you’ve never faced, it’s tough. And how many home runs did he hit in his rookie year? Seven? Nobody can hit more than five there. That’s crazy.”

Ultimately, Nunez hit .263/.303/.445 with 11 extra-base hits over 145 plate appearances with Estrellas. Putting up these numbers in that atmosphere at 21 is actually one approach to get observed. But what impressed the Blue Jays most over the winter was the way in which Nunez continued engaged on his physique whereas taking part in so typically.

“That’s one of the challenges of playing winter ball. The off-season’s a time for getting stronger, working on your swing, things like that. It’s really hard to do those things while you’re playing winter ball,” Tinnish says. “But he stayed on his program while playing games every night. He remained really, really focused on doing both of those things.”

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Two months later, Nunez rolled into Dunedin and continued mashing baseballs. Through solely 26 plate appearances this spring, Nunez put eight balls in play with exit velocities over 105 m.p.h. That 114-m.p.h. walk-off is the Eleventh-hardest tracked ball in play throughout each Grapefruit and Cactus Leagues this spring. Only 42 big-leaguers hit a ball that onerous in 2022.

Of course, the separator for Nunez, because it’s been for numerous gamers with huge energy like his, might be strike-zone administration and swing choices. That’s the way you survive within the huge leagues. Nunez’s strikeout and stroll charges went within the improper instructions in 2022 as he moved up minor-league ranges. His largest problem going ahead might be reversing that.

But Nunez has been doing the sudden for some time. It wasn’t so way back he was swinging a brush deal with at balled-up socks within the streets of Los Mulos. Now he’s taking Gerrit Cole deep to right-centre. If you noticed him up shut 5 years in the past, you’d perceive why they referred to as him Mosquito. Now, he’s a mountain. Having seen a number of the balls Guerrero’s crushed this spring, you wouldn’t guess there’s a 22-year-old child in camp who’s hit one tougher.

“I enjoy challenges. I enjoy just being here,” Nunez says. “That’s what I think about at the plate. Just go in there and enjoy it. Enjoy the at-bat. Don’t worry about who you’re facing, the hitters that were ahead of you, if they didn’t look good at all. Don’t worry about that. Just go in there, have fun, and see what you can do.”

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