Jesús Montero (1989-2025) – RIP Baseball

In the span of just 18 games, Jesús Montero made such a splash in the major leagues that he was included in a blockbuster offseason trade that was supposed to bring the New York Yankees a new ace pitcher. Montero, a one-time highly regarded catching prospect, died on October 19 in Valencia, Venezuela, after being involved in a motorcycle accident on October 4. According to reports, he suffered serious internal and lower body injuries after crashing into a truck and had been comatose since the accident. He was 35 years old. Montero played for the New York Yankees (2011) and Seattle Mariners (2012-2015).

Jesús Alejandro Montero was born in Guicara, Venezuela, on November 28, 1989. He was just 16 years old when he began attracting interest among major-league teams. The rule in 2006 was that a team could not sign any players from Latin American countries until July 2 if they had not turned 17. But they could bring those young players in for a tryout, and several teams did. Montero worked out with both New York teams as well as the Boston Red Sox as part of a showcase of his abilities. “He’s raw, but there’s a lot of power there,” said Ben Cherington, vice president of player personnel for the Red Sox. Just two days after the July 2 date, the New York Yankees announced that Montero had signed a $2 million contract with the club. He was seen as a potential successor to Jorge Posada, then 34 and nearing the end of his career. “He’ll instantly become the highest catching prospect in our system,” general manager Brian Cashman said. “One of our scouts believes he’s the best prospect to come out of Venezuela since Miguel Cabrera.” Mark Newman, vice president of baseball operations, later said, “We’ve never had a Latin player with that kind of power.”

Source: Daily Herald, June 2, 2013.

Montero started his pro career in 2007 with the Gulf Coast Yankees. He played in just 33 games due to an ankle injury but hit .280 with 3 home runs and 19 RBIs. His first full season came in 2008, and Montero lived up to the hype. He appeared in one spring training game with the Yankees and hit a home run. Then he batted .326 with 17 homers and 87 RBIs for Class-A Charleston and was named to the World Team in the Futures All-Star Game. He went 1-for-2 with a single in a game that was played, fittingly enough, in Yankee Stadium. “I’m working hard to get better at everything, but especially behind the plate,” he said during the spring. By then, another Jesus Montero had appeared in pro ball. Jesus Rafael Moreno, his younger brother, signed with the St. Louis Cardinals in 2008 and played in the team’s low minors until 2014.

By 2009, Montero had been ranked as the No. 38 overall prospect in the game by both Baseball America and Baseball Prospectus. He started off scorching hot for High-A Tampa by batting .356 with 8 home runs in 48 games. He was promoted to Double-A Trenton and started a little slowly but finished with 9 home runs and a .317 batting average in 44 games. That summer, he played in his second Futures Game. “I wish they gave me the opportunity soon,” he said of the Yankees. “I want to be there right now. But I have to work at it.” Posada was still a productive catcher, so New York didn’t feel the need to rush Montero to the majors. He spent all of 2010 and most of 2011 with Triple-A Scranton/Wilkes-Barre. It took some time to adjust to Triple-A ball, but Montero figured it out. In the second half of 2010, he batted .351 with 14 home runs and a 1.040 OPS. He was considered one of the Top Five prospects in all of baseball, and he kept working on his defense, which had been criticized by scouts. While he always had excellent fielding percentages as he worked his way through the minors, Montero’s passed ball tallies and low caught stealing percentages raised concerns that he wasn’t athletic enough to stick behind the plate. “I’m trying to do my best, trying to help the pitchers, trying to be comfortable with them,” he said in spring training in 2011. But the bat was too good to be ignored. After he batted .288 for Scranton in 2011, with 18 home runs and 67 RBIs, the Yankees brought Montero to the majors in September.

Source: Newsday, March 2, 2008.

Over the month of September 2011, Montero played regularly, but as a designated hitter. He only caught 3 of his 18 games. He debuted in Boston on September 1 and was 0-for-4 with a run scored after being his by a pitch. His first major-league hit came in his next game on September 3, in New York City against Toronto pitcher Ricky Romero. Two days after that, Montero blasted a pair of home runs off Baltimore’s Jim Johnson, driving in 3 runs and providing the margin of victory in an 11-10 Yankees win. They were more than just his first two major-league long balls. The Yankees clinched a playoff berth with that win, and it was the 21-year-old rookie who put them there. Montero was called out onto the field for two curtain calls. “I’ve seen everybody doing that,” he said. “I saw Jeter, Posada, everyone doing that before, and I was telling myself one day I’m going to be that guy.”

In those 18 games, Montero slashed .328/.406/.590, with 4 doubles and 4 home runs. He drove in 12 runs and was even intentionally walked twice, a sign of respect to the 21-year-old rookie. His work behind the plate was done more out of necessity. Manager Joe Girardi said Montero had not caught major-league pitchers since spring training, but some late-year injuries to the team’s catching corps forced Girardi to put both Montero and Posada (who had spent most of the year as a DH) were pressed into action. In the 3 games, Montero caught 22 innings and threw out 1 of 5 base-stealers. The Yankees fell to Detroit in 5 games in the AL Divisional Series. Montero appeared in Game Four, which New York won 10-1. He replaced Posada as DH with the game well in hand and singled twice with an RBI. Montero’s brief stay in the majors reinforced what the scouting reports promised. Maybe he was a work-in-progress as a catcher, but he possessed a big, dangerous bat.

Source: Daily News, May 31, 2010.

So what happened next came as a shock. In January 2012, New York traded Montero and pitcher Hector Noesi to the Seattle Mariners for pitchers Jose Campos and Michael Pineda. Pineda, a 6’7″ right-hander, had just finished his rookie season with an All-Star Team selection and a fifth-place finish in the Rookie of the Year vote. He had a 9-10 record and 3.74 ERA and struck out more than a batter per inning. In making the trade, the Yankees were counting on Pineda to take his place at the top of the Yankees’ rotation for years to come. The Mariners had similar expectations and envisioned Montero becoming one of the team’s top hitters, either as a catcher or DH. Cashman called him the best player he’d ever traded. The trade didn’t quite pan out that way. Pineda didn’t even appear for New York until 2014, thanks to injuries, and he won 31 games for the Yankees over 4 seasons. Montero topped 100 games played in a season once.

Montero’s first hit as a Mariner came on March 29 in the Tokyo Dome, as Seattle and Oakland were chosen to open the 2012 season in Japan. Once the Mariners returned to the U.S., Montero had a hit in 7 straight games, including a solo homer and 2-run double on April 14 that helped beat the Athletics 4-0. He spent much of the year as the cleanup hitter and slashed .260/.298/.386 in 135 games. He hit 20 doubles and 15 home runs, and he drove in 62 runs. Seattle finished in fourth place with a 75-87 record, and Montero was among the offensive leaders, along with Kyle Seager and Michael Saunders, He appeared in 78 games as a DH and 56 as a catcher, including the June 8 game where six Seattle pitchers combined on a 1-0 no-hitter against the Los Angeles Dodgers. Montero’s .993 fielding percentage was league average, but he had 7 passed balls and threw out just 16.9 percent of base stealers. The bright side was that Montero turned in a perfectly good season as a 22-year-old rookie catcher. He slumped at times and was impatient at the plate (he drew 29 walks), but he realized some of the potential that made him such a highly touted prospect.

The Mariners decided to name Montero as the team’s starting catcher in 2013. The young ballplayer hit better in 2012 when he was a catcher, with a batting average above .300 and a slugging percentage of nearly .500. “I’m preparing myself to catch every day if I can catch every day,” he said in January. “Everybody knows that sometimes I get tired, everybody gets tired. I’m going to try to be behind home plate every single time.” The team pulled the plug on the experiment after a month or so. Montero’s productivity plummeted, and his impatience at the plate increased. After 29 games and a .208 batting average, Montero was sent to Triple-A Tacoma in late May. The move came as such a shock that Wedge and general manager Jack Zduriencik had to explain it to him. “Eric and I sat in there together and we explained that sometime you have to take a step backward to take two steps forward,” Zduriencik said. “We appreciate his effort. He’s done an awful lot to try and become a catcher. He’s worked very hard at it.” The move effectively ended Montero’s career as a catcher, as the Mariners’ GM added, “He’s going to be playing a lot of first base.” Montero hit .247 in 19 games in Tacoma, much of it as a first baseman. He made one appearance as a catcher in early June and promptly injured his knee while trying to stop a pitch in the dirt, requiring surgery for a torn meniscus. Just as he had recovered from that injury, Montero was one of 13 pro ballplayers who were suspended for violations of Major League Baseball’s Joint Drug and Prevention Program. Those players, including Alex Rodriguez, Nelson Cruz and Jhonny Peralta, were all caught up in the investigation into Biogenesis of America, which was accused of distributing performance-enhancing drugs.

Montero reportedly showed up to training camp in 2014 40 pounds above his target weight, and it seems like the Mariners’ patience had run out. “It’s up to him,” Zduriencik said when asked about his future with the team. “I have zero expectations for Jesus Montero. Any expectations I had are gone.” Montero admitted that he did nothing but eat once he finished playing winter ball. He apologized to the Mariners organization and his teammates for his suspension and vowed to start over again. He began the 2014 season back in Tacoma and batted .286 with 16 home runs. He was rewarded for his perseverance with a promotion to the majors in June as a DH and first baseman. He played 6 games for Seattle and hit safely in 4 of them. His first major-league home run in more than a year helped lead Seattle past Boston on June 17. Montero batted .235 in his short stint before his comeback was cut short by a strained oblique. He was rehabbing with the Short-A Everett AquaSox when he was involved in a wild fracas in Boise, ID. Butch Baccala, a team cross-checker (scout), had an ice cream sandwich sent to Montero in the Everett dugout. Reportedly, he was upset at the slowness that Montero showed in going to a coaching position at first base — it is not uncommon for minor-league players to perform double duties as a base coach. Montero, according to an MiLB.com report, “approached the stands with a bat while screaming profanities and threw the sandwich at the cross-checker.” The Mariners sent both men home and later fired the scout. In the offseason, Montero worked hard at the Mariners’ spring training complex, impressing management with his dedication. He made the most of his extra chance by ripping the cover off the ball in Tacoma in 2015. In 98 games, he homered 18 times, drove in 85 runs and batted .355. Seattle recalled him in July, and he had 3 hits and 3 walks in his first 5 games. Aside from a brief demotion in a roster crunch, Montero remained with Seattle for the rest of the season as a first baseman and occasional DH. He suffered through an 11-game stretch in August where he went 2-for-35, which contributed to a .223/.250/.411 slash line, with 5 home runs in 38 games. Remove that drought in August, and Montero was nearly a .300 hitter.

Source: The Spokesman Review, February 21, 2014.

Montero was believed to be a strong candidate to return to the Mariners in 2016 as part of a platoon at first base, as he was out of minor-league options. However, he failed to make the team and was put on waivers. The Toronto Blue Jays claimed Montero, and he spent the year playing for the Triple-A Buffalo Bisons. He batted .317 with 11 homers and returned to free agency after the season. He played briefly in the Baltimore organization in 2017 but was released after being given another 50-game suspension after testing positive for a banned stimulant. The suspension ended Montero’s career in professional baseball in the United States. He played in Mexico and Venezuela for several more seasons, ending his playing career by appearing in a handful of games for Zulia in 2020-21.

Montero’s MLB career lasted for 226 games over parts of 5 seasons. He slashed .253/.295/.398, and his 204 hits included 31 doubles, 1 triple and 28 home runs. He drove in 104 runs and scored 73 times, and he had an OPS of .693 and an OPS+ of 94. He batted .308 in 10 minor-league seasons and .305 in foreign leagues, primarily Venezuelan Winter Ball.

Montero was formerly married to Taneth Gimenez, a fitness instructor who, according to a 2018 article for LVBP.com, helped him lose around 60 pounds. “Many people are surprised to see me because they knew me when I was overweight, but this was me, this is how I looked, when I made my dream of debuting in the major leagues come true,” he said. They had two children, Loren and Jesus.

Jesús Montero (1989-2025) – RIP Baseball

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