Ex-MLB 1B pitches five hitless frames, gets win for Puebla

North American baseball fans who remember Dan Johnson's time in the major leagues will recall a 6'2" first baseman who belted 42 homers and drove in 157 runs for the Oakland A's between 2005 and 2007, hitting .275 with 15 dingers in 2005 and socking 18 longballs with 62 ribbies two years later.

After that three year stretch, the University of Nebraska alum struggled to stay in MLB, putting in stints with Tampa Bay, the Chicago White Sox, Baltimore, Toronto and St. Louis over the next eight summers, last appearing in 2015 with the Cardinals.  Johnson was also a respected slugger over his 15 seasons in minor league ball, batting .280 with 254 homers and 944 RBIs while being selected to four postseason All-Star Teams.  He was voted MVP for the Pacific Coast League in 2004 and received similar honors in the International League in 2010.

However, by last summer, Johnson was 36 years old and mostly out of organized baseball.  While he put in seven games for the Dodgers' Tulsa affiliate in the AA Texas League, he split the rest of the season between independent teams in the Atlantic League (Bridgeport and Long Island) and American Association (St. Paul), hitting a combined .236 with 13 homers in indy ball.  It was at this time that the right-handed Johnson was reinventing himself as a knuckleball pitcher.  Johnson put in four relief appearances with Tulsa and started 11 times in 12 mound appearances with Bridgeport (0-2 with a 7.50 ERA) and St. Paul (4-2/4.50) while not playing first.

This year has been Johnson's first south of the border after he was signed as a free agent by Puebla on May 15 to shore up one of many holes left when Pericos owner shifted most starters from the 2016 Mexican League champions to his Monclova franchise in the offseason, including first baseman Daric Barton. Johnson has since provided the Parrots some stability at the initial hassock, hitting .290 with five homers and 19 RBIs over 30 games, but it was Puebla's game last Saturday at Durango where he really raised eyebrows.

Facing a Generales lineup featuring four .300 hitters, including All-Stars Daniel Mayora (he of the 35-game hitting streak) and Yadir Drake (he of the LMB-leading .385 batting average), Johnson was handed the game ball by manager Tim Johnson and proceded to pitch five innings of near-perfect ball, with Drake the sole Durango batter to reach first base after being plunked by a Johnson pitch in the fifth after the ex-MLBer had retired the first 13 batsmen he faced.  While knuckleballers usually deal with a relatively high ratio of walks as one of the hazards of throwing such a pitch, Johnson gave up no bases on balls while throwing 36 of 57 pitches for strikes.  Although he recorded no strikeouts, Johnson induced eight groundouts, four popups and three flyouts for his 15 outs.

It's a good thing he was lights-out on the mound, as his Puebla teammates were no more successful scoring against Generales hurler Francisley Bueno, a Cuban expat who himself spent parts of four season in MLB pitching for Atlanta and Kansas City.  Bueno gave up seven hits over his five-inning stint but the game was scoreless going into the sixth, when the Pericos exploded for eight runs (including catcher Cesar Tapia's 100th career homer, a three-run bomb) off Durango relievers Erubiel Gonzalez and Sergio Sierra.  Puebla went on to post a 12-2 win, with Johnson getting credit for the victory in front of 5,470 fans at Estadio Francisco Villa.

Johnson had been tinkering with the knuckler since he was a kid growing up in Minnesota before floating them in earnest playing indy ball in 2016.  Last year, he told Marc Tomkin of the Tampa Bay Times during training camp (where he was trying out as a pitcher), "It's not the first time I've tried this out, but this is the first time I feel like I can take it seriously.  This is the time.  I'm 36 and ready to go on this."

The Durango Generales and Tim Johnson are probably taking him seriously, too.

VAZQUEZ BELTS 32 HOMERS, NAMED INTL LEAGUE 2011 ALL-STAR

Although Jorge Vazquez has yet to receive that call to play for the New York Yankees, the 28-year-old Culiacan native made the most of his season with the Yanks’ AAA affiliate at Scranton/Wilkes Barre by cracking 32 homers, driving in 93 runs and being named an International League All-Star for 2011.

Vazquez’ 32 longballs was tops in the IL, leading runner-up Stefan Gartrell of Gwinnet by six, and “Chato” drove in 93 runs for the year, one behind Gartrell for the league lead. The 5’11, 225-pounder batted .262 for Scranton/Wilkes-Barre, picking up 119 hits in 118 games but also striking out 166 times (second in the IL to Ryan Strieby of Toledo). Vazquez finished the season in strong form, hitting .314 with six homers in 24 games the final month of the schedule. He was selected Player of the Week twice this year.

The 2011 season was Vazquez’ third in the Yankees system after he was signed by New York as a free agent on December 7, 2008. In that time, he’s hit 63 homers with 217 RBIs in 261 games at the AA and AAA levels Prior to that he’d spent ten seasons in the Mexican League, mostly with the Tigres franchise playing in Puebla (Angelopolis) and Cancun (Quintana Roo). His top two seasons were in 2005 and 2005, when he hit .379 and .359 while whacking a combined 64 homers and 194 RBIs.

VAZQUEZ STRUGGLING FOR YANKS' AAA AFFILIATE AFTER HOT START

Two months into the season at the end of May, Jorge Vazquez looked like a candidate for a call-up to New York Yankees. Although the Culiacan native had cooled down after a torrid April in which he hit .323 with nine homers and 27 RBIs (including Player of the Week honors April 11-18) in just 23 games for the International League’s Scranton/Wilkes-Barre Yankees, Vazquez ended May with a decent .281 batting average and 18 roundtrippers.

Then came June.

During the first 19 days of the month, the right-handed first baseman was hitting just .188 with two homers and seven RBIs. The worst of it has come after June 13, when he singled and doubled in a game at Syracuse. Since then, Vazquez has gone 0-for-18 with nine strikeouts in five games and a call-up to Yankee Stadium seems far away. On the surface his current average of .257 with 20 homers and 52 RBIs in 65 games looks respectable, but the parent club has got to be concerned about Vazquez’ 93 strikeouts in 261 at-bats, a pace that would put him over 200 for the IL season.

Still, it would be foolish to write the season off for the 5’11” 225-pounder. After all, this is a guy who was named the Caribbean Series MVP in February after leading Obregon to the first Mexican CS crown since 2005, then impressed the Yankees with his bat during spring training. “He’s got some thunder,” said Yanks senior director of pro personnel Billy Eppler.