“One day a scout said, ‘Do you want to play baseball in the major leagues? If you do, you should be a pitcher.” Dominican native Jojanse Torres was recounting to a reporter how his diamond dream began.

“I left everything to go pitch.”

Before the spin rate sorcery and deep-dive data can be employed at the major league level by Houston Astros’ pitching coach Brent Strom (and by coaches throughout their system), the team’s international scouting department has to kick into gear.

Regarding the right-hander Torres, now plowing through Carolina Leaguers on the Astros’ High-A Fayetteville Woodpeckers affiliate, early returns seem to suggest the scouts may have hit pitcher paydirt.

Foreign Talent Factories

The Astros became the first team to open an academy in Venezuela, in 1989, and for two decades they led the charge in finding and signing players from the South American country.

Among the many who reached the majors prior to the academy’s 2009 closing were Richard Hidalgo, Bob Abreu, Carlos Guillen, and Freddy Garcia, the latter two traded to the Seattle Mariners in 1998 for Randy Johnson.

The Astros still monitor Venezuelan talent —Jose Altuve was signed just before the academy’s closing— and the signing of Torres’ fellow Woodpeckers rotation ace Luis Garcia in 2017 at age 20 continues to prove the depth of that country’s talent. Garcia, ranking #29 on Houston’s prospect list, has just finished a two-game strikeout binge, piling up 23 Ks in his last 12 innings, with a total of 139 whiffs in 93.2 innings on the year.

Houston’s Dominican presence actually began in 1985. The academy has begun gathering some notable talent traction, with a particular focus on slightly older players. Houston signed Dominican southpaw Framber Valdez at age 21 in 2015, and while he’s still trying to feel his way through a big league career as either a starter or reliever, the Astros still have high hopes for the 25-year-old’s breakthrough.

The Astros became startlingly aware of Torres’ talent on the mound during tryouts at their Dominican academy in 2017 and promptly signed him to a contract at age 22 in April 2018.

Torres was raised in the Dominican Republic city of San Pedro de Macoris, known in baseball circles as the “Cradle of Shortstops” due to the high number of major league players brought up there at that position.

San Pedro de Macoris has produced nearly 100 MLB players, including former big league shortstops Tony Fernandez, Jose Offerman, Manny Alexander, and Mariano Duncan, along with current luminaries like Robinson Cano and Fernando Tatis Jr.

Like many of those players, Jojanse (pronounced “joe-HAHN-say”) Torres began his baseball career at age five playing shortstop, according to The Fayetteville Observer. But at 15, while participating in one of the many workouts conducted by major league scouts, Torres received the infield-to-mound suggestion that altered the course of his career.

Armed with a 100-mph fastball, the 24-year-old has quickly and quietly emerged as one of the Astros’ top minor league prospects, although he’s yet to enter Houston’s top 30 prospect list.

“Power Starting Pitching Profile”

“His profile is pretty similar to a lot of guys we’ve signed,” Oz Ocampo, the Astros’ special assistant who formerly served as international scouting director, said recently. “He’s a power starting pitching profile in terms of his physicality, his mechanics, his athleticism, his stuff. The stuff is probably more plus than most guys who we’ve signed from the beginning of their careers,” Ocampo told Chandler Rome this past spring.

Torres, a thin 6’2″ and 175 pounds, comes armed with a three-pitch bag he has refined in just one pro season.

Though Torres has tickled the magic 100 mark with a four-seam fastball he can elevate, he comfortably sits around 95-97 mph. His slider and changeup have each developed into plus pitches in the past year. “Seeing a young Dominican pitcher with feel for a changeup is peculiar,” Ocampo said, candidly.

Torres’ short and quick slider resides in the upper 80s and plays best complementing his fastball. Ocampo said that Torres’ slider was his third pitch when he signed, but it has since evolved into a considerable weapon.

“He’s been able to refine his stuff, refine his pitches and just have more consistency with his delivery, more consistency with his command,” Ocampo detailed. “Basically, he started out at a pretty high level, but he’s added a pretty solid progression in terms of his development in the Dominican, and now coming to the States.”

Torres, Torrid

Torres has a combined 9-0 record and 2.00 ERA, with 40 walks to 95 strikeouts between Houston’s Class A Quad Cities and the Advanced-A Woodpeckers in 81 innings in 2019. He’s held opposing batters to a teeny .179 average, with a 1.14 WHIP.

Since earning his promotion to Fayetteville on May 22, he has gone 6-0 with a 2.35 ERA in 14 games (eight starts) through games of August 14.

Among Torres’ most impressive performances with the Woodpeckers have been a nine-K effort in only four innings on May 30 against Wilmington, and a five-inning shutout of Winston-Salem on July 12.

But on July 25 against the Lynchburg Hillcats, Torres delivered his best outing so far. He became the first Fayetteville pitcher to hurl a seven-inning, one-hit complete-game shutout in a doubleheader nightcap. He walked just one batter in that game and struck out eight while retiring the final 15 batters in a row.

“He was dominant,” Fayetteville manager Nate Shaver told reporters, vastly understating the obvious. “Every time he came into the dugout after an inning we told him, ‘Vas siete,’ — you’re going seven (innings). He just kept getting better. It was great to see.”

As a result, Torres was honored as the Carolina League Pitcher of the Week in late July. While the closing curtain approaches on the 2019 season, Houston brass may want to get a glimpse of Torres at their AA Corpus Christi Hooks before season’s end.

If not, Corpus should be Torres’ landing spot to begin 2020.

Related: Fellow International Signee, Venezuelan Pitcher Luis Garcia, Also Opening Eyes With Woodpeckers