Edgardo Henriquez has a gift. He can throw a baseball faster than all but a few humans in history.
Yet he prefers to think of it as something he and God created together, not something that was just given to him.
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“We’ve worked for that,” said Henriquez, who frequently uses the plural pronoun when talking about himself. “All the work, the effort, the physics. And God’s reward, most of all.”
Wherever the lightning in his right arm came from, he’s making good use of it. Of the 83 pitches he’s thrown this season entering Wednesday’s game, 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 since Statcast began tracking speed in 2015 and likely the fastest pitch in franchise history.
Henriquez, 23, shrugs and smiles at the numbers.
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“Now we have to stay consistent,” he said in Spanish. “Even growing up in Venezuela, I always threw hard.”
What he didn’t 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.
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.
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.
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And he announced his presence with authority, topping 101 mph twice to earn the save in his third game.
Henriquez grew up in Cumaná, a historic beach city of about half a million people wedged between the Manzanares River and Venezuela’s Caribbean coast, 250 miles east of Caracas. The oldest continuously inhabited Spanish settlement in South America, it has been the birthplace of poets and presidents. But baseball players? Not so much.
Pitcher Armando Galarraga, who was robbed of a perfect game by an umpire’s call in 2010, is probably the best known of Cumaná’s 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.
“Maracay, yes. They say that is the birthplace of baseball in Venezuela,” Henriquez said. “But the truth is it’s Cumaná.”
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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 — he looks much bigger than the 6-foot-4 and 200 pounds he’s credited with on the roster — and arm so they offered him $80,000 to sign as an international free agent with the intention of making him a pitcher.
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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’ first two postseason series.
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.
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Neither the Dodgers nor Henriquez will talk about how the injury happened.
“I’d rather keep that to myself,” the pitcher said this week.
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.
In some ways, he was a different pitcher.
“He looks much more confident,” manager Dave Roberts said. “I 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.”
His record-setting pitch came in his sixth of seven scoreless appearances when he struck out pinch-hitter Ryan O’Hearn on a four-seam fastball in the seventh inning of a win over the San Diego Padres.
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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’Hearn, 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’s more to pitching that just lighting up the radar gun.
As good as the four-seamer is, however, it may not be Henriquez’s best pitch. His cutter, which sits in the mid-90s, can be all but unhittable and he also has a devastating slider. He’ll 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.
“If there isn’t deception, there isn’t ride, [hitters] can catch up if you don’t have something else that they can think about,” he said.
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So far the hitters aren’t catching up: In seven innings this summer entering Wednesday, Henriquez has allowed just three hits and walked one while striking out four. Opponents are hitting .120 against him.
It’s 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.
But there’s still one goal left, albeit one he talks about only grudgingly.
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.
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“Whatever God has in store for me. We’ll work wherever and keep going,” he said. “But yes, I’d like to be a closer.”
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This story originally appeared in Los Angeles Times.
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