It was late on the night of May 20 when Andres Munoz was called into the office of Double-A Amarillo manager Phillip Wellman and told he was being promoted.

After receiving the good news, Munoz posed a question:

Could he drive himself the 420 or so miles to El Paso?

Wellman looked toward field coordinator Chris Kemp. A text was sent to farm director Sam Geaney. The OK that was returned would have sufficed had Wellman’s fatherly instincts not kicked in.


The baby-faced Mexican with a 104 mph fastball eagerly waiting to pack his bags for the last challenge before an improbable big league debut turned 20 in January.

Twenty.

The spiel that followed went something like this.

Do you know how to check your oil? Do you know where the radiator reservoir is? Check your tire pressure. Fill your gas tank. Text me when you get there.


“And sure as (expletive) he did,” Wellman said.

Increasingly, Munoz is doing what is asked of him.

The grand prize from General Manager A.J. Preller’s first international class, the Los Mochis native has held hitters to a .237 batting average and struck out 14 in 11 innings as the youngest pitcher in the Pacific Coast League. He was also the younger player in the Arizona Fall League two years ago and the second-youngest player in the Texas League when the 2019 season opened.

Before long, Munoz might find himself in San Diego as one of the youngest players on a major league roster if he can continue to harness the command of one of the heaviest fastballs in professional baseball and fine-tune the slider that is the key to unlocking every bit of his true potential.


“He knows he has to develop, has to learn, has things to do to be a good pitcher — not just a hard-throwing, right-handed guy,” Amarillo pitching coach Jimmy Jones said. “There are a lot of those guys.”

Maybe so — but not like this.

Kemp, who doubles as the Padres’ international scouting director, wasn’t even entirely sure what he and international scouting supervisor Trevor Schumm had stumbled across when a 15-year-old Munoz popped onto their radar in Monterrey, Mexico, while scouting the Mexico City Red Devils’ youth team.

The arm throwing fastballs 88 to 89 mph was quick. Although Munoz said he might have hit mid-90s had he been feeling well, Kemp saw enough to dream on a 6-foot, 165-pound kid growing into 92 to 93 mph velocity.


The Padres’ offer totaled $700,000, Kemp’s richest investment that first year on the job (25 percent to Munoz and the rest to the Red Devils, as was the custom before new rules were established in March).

“That was special enough,” Kemp said. “It doesn’t cross your mind that he’ll be throwing 101 and 102 mph.”

A big smile, braces and all, spreads across Munoz’s face as he recounts, with the help of an interpreter in the dugout in El Paso, the first time he touched triple-digits.

It was 2016 in Peoria, Ariz., a year after Munoz left behind his parents and two older brothers to chase his dream, alone, in a foreign country. He no longer cried himself to sleep as he did early on. The Padres’ weight training and nutrition program had helped him add 20 pounds of muscle to a still-developing frame, particularly two thick legs. He was growing more confident by the day.


A familiar face — Isaac Paredes, whom the Padres had eyes on the previous year before the Cubs signed him out of Hermosillo, Mexico — stepped into the batter’s box. This, Munoz deemed, was a time to let it all hang out.

“I told him,” Munoz recalled, “I’m going to throw it as fast as I can. Be careful.”

Then Munoz closed his eyes and blew it past him.

He’s regularly topped 100 mph since then, hit 103 mph last year at Double-A San Antonio and in May in Amarillo touched 104 mph for the first time. Only five pitches in the majors this season, all by the Cardinals’ Jordan Hicks, have matched a velocity that Munoz approaches under only the most extraordinary of circumstances.


“It’s not so much adding effort as it is the day it is and the pressure,” Munoz said. “If there’s a lot of people around the score is close, it just comes out.”

Okay, this is the best I’m going to do for now...here’s the sequence from Andres Munoz to end tonight’s @sodpoodles game:



104 MPH fastball.

85 MPH slider.



Ballgame over. Munoz’s 9th straight scoreless appearance. 3rd save. #PadresOnDeck pic.twitter.com/sl3yBaFtjt — Sam Levitt (@SammyLev) May 16, 2019

Bronswell Patrick, Munoz’s pitching coach in El Paso, foresees the extra giddy-up on its way during a tense turn of a delivery that almost always ends with him falling off the mound toward first base. Pitching coordinator Eric Junge is even more descriptive of the most intriguing arm in the system.

“It’s violent,” Junge said. “It’s all rubber-band, highly-stretched, flexed, volatile, ballistic, whatever you want to call it.”


Injury concerns come with the territory when developing pitchers and studies have shown correlations between peak velocities and increased injury risks. Toward that end, Munoz required a platelet-rich plasma injection for a bothersome forearm that delayed the start of his 2018 campaign. The ongoing conversations on how to handle young pitchers are the same in the Padres’ front office as they are across the industry.

Save bullets or let them go?

The Padres, across the board, have generally leaned toward a hybrid of the latter, systematically increasing pitchers’ workloads over the course of their paths to Petco Park.

“I don’t subscribe to saving bullets,” Junge said. “I don’t believe that there are bullets to save. I think you need to work. You need to throw. You need to practice your craft. Ultimately that will allow you to at least get closer to your ceiling and if you’re not at your ceiling, you’re not going to pitch in the big leagues because those hitters are too good.”


Certainly too good to be fooled solely by triple-digit heat.

That’s why a great deal of Munoz’s focus has been harnessing sometimes erratic command as well as sharpening a developing slider that at its best is an 86-87 mph wrinkle to get hitters off his four-seam fastball.

“I know that at this level,” Munoz said, “I need to mix it up. If I threw the same straight fastball they are going to get on it.”

To be sure, that heater is Munoz’s first instinct, especially when falling behind earlier in the year in Amarillo. But the Padres had mandated slider usage. At times, he had to throw a slider inside the first two pitches to a batter. He had to go to the slider when he got to two strikes. The target was 20 percent sliders.


Which was fine — unless he fell behind a hitter.

“I’ve gone out to the mound before and he is livid,” Jones said. “It was like, ‘Man, I’m here to get outs. That’s all I’m here to do is get outs and I can’t throw my slider right now. I don’t want to throw my slider. I want to throw my heater to get the guy out.’

“I’d say, ‘Hey, man, this is what we’ve got to do. You still have to throw strikes with your fastball and you’re not doing that. If you’re throwing your fastball for strikes, we’re fine right now.’

“He was livid that day.”


Some of the pressure was removed by pitching him in the sixth and seventh innings. The mandate didn’t budge. Slowly, Munoz began to buy in. By the time he’d reeled off 11 2/3 scoreless innings for Amarillo, with 25 strikeouts, he was closing games, sometimes throwing two or three sliders in an at-bat.

“Often times we’ll nudge a player along,” Junge said, “and if he continues to throw 80 to 90 percent fastballs, then you have to bring him into the office and say, ‘OK, one of the first two pitches has to be a slider. This is good for you. We’re going to throw you in the sixth and you’re going to work on it.’

“Then you’re in the seventh. Then you’re back in the ninth and you have a slider, and he’ll look up and say thanks.”

That’s precisely the place Munoz was in as he loaded his black 2016 Chevy Malibu — the one indulgence he’s allowed himself from his original signing bonus — for the drive to El Paso. His grandmother convinced him to wait until morning to make the trip, which was nothing compared to the 55,000 miles he’s piled up while driving to and from Los Mochis between seasons.


Rule 5 eligible after this season, Munoz’s next solo trip could very well be a plane ride to a big league city. The Padres, in need of reliable middle relief help, could get a look at him this year the way they did with Jacob Nix last year. They could wait until the following season as they did Chris Paddack.

Either way, Munoz’s time is coming quick.

He will be ready, braces and all.

“Every time I’ve received an opportunity I’ve stepped up,” he said. “I’ve performed every time I’ve had the chance.”


Amarillo Sod Poodles pitcher Andres Munoz (20) pitches against the Corpus Christi Hooks on Saturday, April 20, 2019, at HODGETOWN in Amarillo, Texas. (John Moore / Amarillo Sod Poodles)

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The Andres Munoz file