SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — It was compelling theater on Wednesday when Justin Verlander took the mound at Scottsdale Stadium and threw live batting practice for the first time in a San Francisco Giants uniform. Aside from Heliot Ramos, who tanked one that nearly hit the scoreboard beyond the left field fence, Verlander’s new teammates mostly whiffed or took mis-timed swings while the future Hall of Famer kept a running verbal commentary that entertained the handful of fans in attendance.
Live batting practice in the first week of spring training usually provides a few interesting and fun kicks. This spring, it’s Verlander vs. Matt Chapman and Willy Adames. A decade ago, it was Madison Bumgarner vs. Buster Posey. Before that, you didn’t want to miss Kirk Rueter guffaw on the mound while boasting that he was about to overpower Barry Bonds. It’s more than iron sharpening iron. When teammates face each other, there’s plenty of pride at stake, too.
What’s been the most intriguing live BP matchup for the Giants thus far this spring? You might argue that it took place Tuesday on the back field at Scottsdale Stadium, with non-roster left-hander Enny Romero on the mound and Jerar Encarnacion in the batter’s box.
You might make that argument, anyway, if you followed Águilas Cibaeñas in the Dominican League this past winter.
Romero was hands-down the best pitcher in LIDOM — a performance that seemingly came out of nowhere. The globetrotting 34-year-old hadn’t appeared in the major leagues since 2018, and even more remarkably, he hadn’t pitched in any full-season league since he spent 2022 with Chiba Lotte Marines in Japan. He missed 2023 with a shoulder issue that cropped up when he was in spring training with SSG Landers in Korea. (He’s a globetrotter, all right.) Then he missed all of last year with three fractured vertebrae after taking a fall on the tile floor of his kitchen one day before he was set to report to Tijuana in the Mexican League. This past June, his longtime LIDOM team, Escogido, traded him to Águilas almost as an afterthought. It turned into a heist of a deal. Romero was named LIDOM’s pitcher of the year after he went 6-1 with a 1.24 ERA in 10 starts for Águilas. He led the league in strikeouts and faced 201 batters without allowing a home run.
¡DE PIE Y APLAUDIENDO A ENNY!
Nuestro Enny Romero sin lugar a dudas fue el lanzador más dominante durante toda la serie regular. Hoy es nombrado “Lanzador del Año” en los premios oficiales de la Liga de Béisbol Profesional de la República Dominicana (LIDOM).
¡Felicidades… pic.twitter.com/SjFIEGpKps
— Águilas Cibaeñas (@aguilascibaenas) January 9, 2025
Romero’s Águilas teammate, Encarnacion, was one of LIDOM’s most dangerous hitters. He played in 43 games and hit .297/.391/.469 with four home runs, nine doubles and two triples. He finished second in the league in hits, second in extra-base hits and fourth with 24 RBIs. It was the continuation of a remarkable career turnaround for Encarnacion, a former Miami Marlins prospect who found himself out of affiliated baseball after striking out 200 times for Triple-A Jacksonville in 2023.
Giants fans already know the rest: Encarnacion began last season with Oaxaca in the Mexican League and slugged his way back into a major-league roster spot in San Francisco after he hit 19 home runs in 25 games for Los Guerreros and then, after signing a minor-league contract with the Giants, followed up with 10 home runs in 33 games for Triple-A Sacramento. Encarnacion enters this camp with a clear path to at-bats as the Giants’ designated hitter. And he enters with momentum, too. In 169 plate appearances for Águilas, the 27-year-old right-handed hitter drew 20 walks and struck out just 33 times.
¡Le dio una bestia! 🦍
Jerar Encarnación sonó a Jonathan Aro y las Águilas toman el frente. @LaPelotaDeAqui pic.twitter.com/JrFtObsgUB
— Eliezer González Caraballo (@ElTioElie) November 3, 2024
While the Giants kept close tabs on Encarnacion’s at-bats over the winter, they couldn’t help but notice what Romero was doing on the mound. So the 34-year-old left-hander was invited to his first major-league camp since 2018 with the Washington Nationals. And because Erik Miller is the Giants’ only lefty reliever on the 40-man roster, Romero has an avenue to pitch his way into contention for a place on the opening day roster.
“Any lefty right now, we’ll sit up and take notice,” Giants manager Bob Melvin said of Romero, who was throwing 88 mph in his bullpen sessions but ramped up to 93-94 mph once he had a hitter in the box. “He has as much a shot as anybody else.”
Romero is well removed from his last productive major-league season when he became a trusted member of Dusty Baker’s bullpen in Washington. He made 105 appearances over the 2016-17 seasons and still thinks of Baker as a second father. He spent three seasons with Chunichi and Chiba in Japan from 2019-22 and credits that league with helping him adjust from a radar gun darling with a penchant for walks into a pitcher who can change speeds and hit corners.
“The hitters in Japan are so intelligent,” Romero said. “Their baseball IQ is so high that you have no choice. You have to learn how to pitch. I saw pitchers throwing their splitter in 3-1 counts, 3-2 counts. You learn how to throw your pitches at different speeds. So now I’m not afraid to use my secondary pitches in any count.”
Managers and coaches always say that the players who participate in winter ball arrive ahead of everyone else when they report to spring training. So the matchup of Romero vs. Encarnacion on Tuesday was more like a regular-season confrontation.
Romero knew Encarnacion wouldn’t be tracking pitches. He knew that his Águilas teammate would be in swing mode.
“This guy in winter ball was f—ing loud,” said Romero, who didn’t allow any contact harder than a ground ball to first base. “Jerar is my boy. This guy is a good hitter. I’d talk to him every day about the game. He just needs an opportunity to play in the big leagues.”
“He was the key pitcher for us,” Encarnacion said of Romero through Spanish interpreter Erwin Higueros. “He was dealing, throwing 97 mph and working the corners. The main thing is he stayed healthy all season. I was very happy for him to come here, especially having another teammate from Águilas. We’re very good friends and we get along very well.”
One other Giants player with a locker in major-league camp got to see both Encarnacion and Romero up close. Non-roster infielder Christian Koss, who arrived last summer in a trade from the Boston Red Sox, logged 14 games for Águilas. Koss also played alongside Encarnacion at Sacramento last season.
“Pretty much saw the same thing there that I saw in Sacramento,” Koss said of Encarnacion. “He gets his good swing off and he usually hits the ball hard. The pitching there is is a little different, the umpires are definitely a little different. But he never got out of his zone or tried to expand. He took his knocks when he could get them.”
Luis Matos is the other Giants player in camp coming off a banner season on the winter ball circuit. The 23-year-old outfielder long desired to play in front of family and friends in Venezuela, including his parents, who had made several unsuccessful attempts over the past two years to secure a U.S. travel visa to see their son play in the major leagues. But Matos didn’t play in Venezuela after the 2023 season because Giants officials requested that he dedicate his offseason to putting on muscle and spending more time at their Papago Park complex in Arizona.
This past winter, Matos suited up for Tiburones de la Guaira in Venezuela and made an immediate mark on the league he grew up watching. He hit .300/.345/.536 with 10 home runs and a league-best 20 doubles in 55 games. He only struck out 23 times in 235 plate appearances and was named the league’s rookie of the year.
Mostly, Matos got to experience enjoying himself on the field — something that didn’t happen last season other than one brief stretch in mid-May when he drove in 16 runs over a five-game span and won NL Player of the Week honors. The league quickly adjusted. Over his final 100 MLB plate appearances beginning May 26, Matos batted .177 with a .200 on-base percentage.
The Venezuelan League provided precisely what his development required.
“They threw a lot of breaking pitches, which is something I needed to work on,” Matos said through Higueros. “I was glad to see that and just have fun. To play well in a very competitive league gives me a lot of confidence. As a matter of fact, taking batting practice, it feels like the season didn’t end.”
Matos was a fan of Leones de Caracas while growing up in Bobures on the shores of Lake Maracaibo. But he couldn’t have picked a better situation than what he experienced with Tiburones. He received plenty of counsel from manager Ozzie Guillen, who played 16 years in the major leagues and managed for nine more. Shortstop Alcides Escobar and outfielder Yangervis Solarte were among the players with big-league experience who took him under their wing.
“Every way you look at it, it was a great, positive experience,” Matos said. “My family was able to see me play. And I was able to see my family see me play.”
Even better, his family will get to see him play this spring. After a long odyssey that included a fruitless trip to the U.S. Consulate in Brazil, they finally secured their visas and were able to enter the country.
Encarnacion also has family with him this spring. His mother is making sure he gets plenty of workout fuel away from the ballpark. But for so many more friends and relatives, the only chance to see him play is when he suits up in his bright yellow Águilas uniform.
“You’re playing for your country and your people,” Encarnacion said. “The road trips are longer, the games are longer, but at the same time, you’re having fun. You’re in your country where everyone speaks your language. You’re very confident. I don’t know how else to describe it.”
When it comes to winning roster spots and earning some major-league runway, spring training performance will carry more weight than anything that happened in the winter leagues. But a strong spring on the heels of a strong showing in Venezuela or the Dominican Republic? That might mean a little more than it used to. Major league evaluators have access to more video of winter league games than before.
“We’re also fortunate that we have a lot of staff in those countries working in winter ball,” Giants GM Zack Minasian said. “So we rely on that. What’s the competition? How did the at-bats really look? Are they squaring balls up? Do they look good defensively? So there’s a lot of communication around that.”
The quality of the competition might be a little better, too. While rosters continue to be populated with older players who are no longer skilled enough to hold down a spot with a major league-affiliated team, there’s been a trend in recent years to devote more playing time to younger players.
“That’s why I didn’t play a lot of games in winter ball,” said Adames, who hails from the town where Águilas is based but was drafted by Licey and ended up appearing in just 11 games over two LIDOM seasons. “An older guy would show up who had been in that league for so long, year after year, and they’d say to me, ‘You can go home now.’ I think that is changing now and it’s good to see younger guys get more opportunities because it’s a good learning experience. Winter ball is not easy. It’s a tough league. There are guys from all over the place and you don’t have as much information on them. And the energy there is crazy. It’s a different environment, the fans are right on top of you. It almost takes a little pressure off when you come to the States. People can yell whatever you want and it doesn’t matter.”
Encarnacion has already beaten the odds a couple times. He didn’t draw any interest when he first became eligible to sign and he was nearly 18 when the Marlins offered him a $78,000 bonus. Although he fulfilled a dream when he made it to the major leagues in 2022 and played in 23 games, hitting a grand slam in his stirring debut against the New York Mets, he was cast adrift barely a year later.
“I was positive that I was going to continue playing baseball,” Encarnacion said. “I’m a strong-minded individual. Once I got to Mexico, I told myself, I’m still playing baseball. I’m young. I know I’m going to get another opportunity. I was very confident I knew what I was doing.”
Encarnacion’s at-bat quality has been as impressive as his hard contact. In 35 games with the Giants last season, he posted an average exit velocity of 95 mph. The only MLB hitters (minimum 50 batted-ball events) who hit the ball consistently harder were Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani and Oneil Cruz.
“He can not only swing the bat for power in our ballpark, but can DH and play some first and play some outfield,” Melvin said. “We’re going to take a hard look at him. He impressed us last year.”
Encarnacion traded his yellow Águilas jersey for Giants orange this spring, but he kept one accessory. He wears a little diamond-encrusted pendant of a goat around his neck. He calls it his cabrito. After the winter he had, why shouldn’t he think of himself as the Greatest of All Time?
“I try,” he said, smiling.
(Photo of Encarnacion: Suzanna Mitchell / San Francisco Giants / Getty Images)
