{"id":85872,"date":"2025-08-21T21:09:11","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:09:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85872\/"},"modified":"2025-08-21T21:09:11","modified_gmt":"2025-08-21T21:09:11","slug":"he-looks-much-more-confident-hard-throwing-edgardo-henriquez-settling-in-with-dodgers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/85872\/","title":{"rendered":"‘He looks much more confident.’ Hard-throwing Edgardo Henriquez settling in with Dodgers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Edgardo Henriquez<\/a> has a gift. He can throw a baseball faster than all but a few humans in history.<\/p>\n

Yet he prefers to think of it as something he and God created together, not something that was just given to him.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWe\u2019ve worked for that,\u201d said Henriquez, who frequently uses the plural pronoun when talking about himself. \u201cAll the work, the effort, the physics. And God’s reward, most of all.\u201d<\/p>\n

Wherever the lightning in his right arm came from, he\u2019s making good use of it. Of the 92 pitches he\u2019s thrown this season through Wednesday’s game<\/a>, when he pitched a scoreless inning, 28 have topped 101 miles per hour. The fastest hit 103.3 mph on the radar gun last Saturday, making it the hardest-thrown pitch by a Dodger<\/a> since Statcast began tracking speed in 2015 and likely the fastest pitch in franchise history.<\/p>\n

Henriquez, 23, shrugs and smiles at the numbers.<\/p>\n

Read more: ‘Different ballclub tonight.’ Alex Call has best game as a Dodger in rout of Rockies<\/a><\/p>\n

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\u201cNow we have to stay consistent,\u201d\u00a0he said\u00a0in Spanish.\u00a0\u201cEven growing up in Venezuela, I always threw hard.\u201d<\/p>\n

What he didn\u2019t do in Venezuela was pitch because when he signed as a 16-year-old in 2018, Henriquez was a catcher. The Dodgers moved him to the other side of the plate a year later, when they got him to their Dominican academy.<\/p>\n

The process was not a smooth one. The right-hander allowed 22 runs in 30 innings in his first season. Then, after sitting out the summer of 2020 because of the COVID-19 pandemic, he came to the U.S. a year later and went 2-3 with a 4.93 ERA in 13 games split between the Arizona Complex League and Single A Rancho Cucamonga.<\/p>\n

The Dodgers projected him as a starter but after Henriquez missed the 2023 season to Tommy John surgery, he came back throwing gas and the team moved him to the bullpen. The results were spectacular, with Henriquez climbing four levels, from Low A Rancho Cucamonga to the majors, in six months to make his big-league debut in the final week of the regular season.<\/p>\n

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And he announced his presence with authority, topping 101 mph twice to earn the save in his third game<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Henriquez\u00a0grew up in\u00a0Cuman\u00e1,\u00a0a historic\u00a0beach city\u00a0of about half a million people wedged between the Manzanares River and Venezuela\u2019s Caribbean coast, 250 miles east of Caracas. The\u00a0oldest continuously inhabited Spanish settlement in South America,\u00a0it\u00a0has been the birthplace of poets and presidents.\u00a0But baseball players? Not so much.<\/p>\n

Pitcher Armando Galarraga, who was robbed of a perfect game<\/a> by an umpire\u2019s call in 2010, is probably the best known of Cuman\u00e1\u2019s big leagues while Maracay, on the other end of the country, has produced more than two dozen players, among them All-Stars Bobby Abreu, Miguel Cabrera and Elvis Andrus.<\/p>\n

\u201cMaracay, yes. They say that is the birthplace of baseball in Venezuela,\u201d Henriquez said. \u201cBut the truth is it\u2019s Cuman\u00e1.\u201d<\/p>\n

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Henriquez took to the game at an early age, playing on local fields and sandlots. And because he was among the biggest of the neighborhood kids, he was put behind the plate. The Dodgers liked his size \u2014 he looks much bigger than the 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds he\u2019s credited with on the roster \u2014 and arm so they offered him $80,000 to sign as an international free agent with the intention of making him a pitcher.<\/p>\n

Read more: Dave Roberts says Dodgers haven’t discussed moving Mookie Betts to right field<\/a><\/p>\n

Before the elbow-reconstruction surgery, Henriquez touched 101 mph with his fastball. But he came back throwing even harder, averaging 99 mph and reaching 104 in the minors last summer. That earned him a September promotion and a spot on the roster for the Dodgers\u2019 first two postseason series.<\/p>\n

He was also in line for a spot on the opening day roster this season before a metatarsal injury in his left foot landed him in a walking boot, sidelining him for most of spring training.<\/p>\n

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Neither the Dodgers nor Henriquez will talk about how the injury happened.<\/p>\n

\u201cI’d rather keep that to myself,\u201d the pitcher said this week.<\/p>\n

Yet that setback proved just another obstacle for Henriquez to overcome, and after striking out 36 batters in 23 2\/3 innings for Triple A Oklahoma City, he was summoned back to the Dodgers a month ago.<\/p>\n

In some ways, he was a different pitcher.<\/p>\n

\u201cHe looks much more confident,\u201d manager Dave Roberts<\/a> said. \u201cI think he was confident last year, but there was like a fake confidence, understandably. He knows his stuff plays here, so it’s good to see.\u201d<\/p>\n

His record-setting pitch came in his sixth of seven scoreless appearances when he struck out pinch-hitter Ryan O\u2019Hearn on a four-seam fastball in the seventh inning of a win over the San Diego Padres<\/a>.<\/p>\n

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His parents, Edgar and Erika, were visiting from Venezuela and in the stands at Dodger Stadium for the pitch to O\u2019Hearn, one that has generated a lot of attention on social media. As a result, Roberts said pitching coach Mark Prior and bullpen coach Josh Bard are making sure Henriquez understands there\u2019s more to pitching that just lighting up the radar gun.<\/p>\n

As good as the four-seamer is, however, it may not be Henriquez\u2019s best pitch. His cutter, which sits in the mid-90s, can be all but unhittable and he also has a devastating slider. He\u2019ll need every bit of that repertoire to succeed in the majors, said Chris Forbes, the senior director of player development for the Colorado Rockies, because the number of hard-throwers is growing.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf there isn\u2019t deception, there isn\u2019t ride, [hitters] can catch up if you don’t have something else that they can think about,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n

Read more: Shaikin: Can L.A. decide on the Dodger Stadium gondola, or anything, in a timely manner?<\/a><\/p>\n

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So far the hitters aren\u2019t catching up: In eight innings this summer entering Thursday, Henriquez has allowed five hits and walked one while striking out four. Opponents are hitting .167 against him.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s been a rapid rise for Henriquez, who has gone from teenage catcher to big league reliever, surviving a global pandemic, Tommy John surgery and a fractured bone in his foot to pitch for a World Series champion.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s still one goal left, albeit one he talks about only grudgingly.<\/p>\n

On a team without set bullpen roles, Henriquez wants to be a closer, using his blazing fastball not just to demoralize hitters but to shut down games as well.<\/p>\n

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\u201cWhatever God has in store for me. We’ll work wherever and keep going,\u201d he said. \u201cBut yes, I’d like to be a closer.\u201d<\/p>\n

Sign up for more Dodgers news with Dodgers Dugout. Delivered at the start of each series.<\/a><\/p>\n

This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Edgardo Henriquez has a gift. He can throw a baseball faster than all but a few humans in…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":85873,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,5259,25425,64240,6101,591,1830,12419,1189,85,10215,22474],"class_list":["post-85872","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-mlb","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-colorado-rockies","tag-edgardo-henriquez","tag-elvis-andrus","tag-miguel-cabrera","tag-mlb","tag-new-york-mets","tag-robert-gauthier","tag-san-diego-padres","tag-sports","tag-the-dodgers","tag-venezuela"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85872","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=85872"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/85872\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/85873"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=85872"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=85872"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=85872"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}