Kirby Yates has been the most lights-out, dominant closer in Major League Baseball this season.
With an MLB-leading 25 saves, a 1.16 earned-run average and a ratio of 6.5 strikeouts to every walk, the San Diego Padres’ relief specialist is, by all accounts, a cinch to make the National League All-Star team when the full squads are announced June 30.
But you get the feeling he’d much rather embrace a bases-loaded situation with no outs in the ninth inning than talk about pitching in the July 9 All-Star Game in Cleveland, at least until the invitation is firmly in hand.
His family on Kauai is the same way, which is why, he says, nobody is talking about making plans to see his all-star debut. Just yet, anyway.
“That’s the way I kinda feel and Tyler (an older brother who pitched for five MLB seasons) is the same way,” Kirby said. “We don’t want to talk about it until we know it is happening, for sure.”
He has come by this grounding the hard way in what was, until last year, a mostly journeyman big league existence. “We’ve made plans in the past about trying to meet up at different times and it has kinda backfired,” Kirby said.
There was the time his father, Gary, was going to see Kirby in a New York Yankees uniform for the first time in 2016. Right up until the time he got sent to the minors. And the time Tyler was going to fly up to see a game and…
“So, we try to wait until something is 100%,” Kirby said.
One thing that is 100% is Kirby on the mound in a save situation. In 26 save opportunities this season, he has converted all 26. Over the past season and a half he is 38-for-39 in save situations.
His biggest save, however, is what he did for his once-flagging career. Through 2016 he’d bounced around on a circuitous journey from Kauai High to the majors with time in the minors and on the waiver wire.
Drafted in the 26th round by Boston in 2005, he attended junior college in Arizona to improve his skills and stock. But Tommy John surgery cost him two seasons and he went undrafted in 2009 before signing a free-agent deal with Tampa Bay. After that came a trade to Cleveland and, a couple of months later, it was off to the Yankees. He was taken by the Angels on waivers but saw just one inning of work.
In the winter of 2016 came the realization “that my career could be coming to end if I didn’t figure this out pretty quickly,” Kirby said. “I felt like I had to really bear down and not waste an opportunity. Not that I’d wasted some before, but I just felt like there were some adjustments to be made, and if I did that I could really be successful.”
So, he spent the offseason in Arizona, where he hit the gym religiously, painstakingly overhauled his mechanics, refocused his preparation and hitter study and worked diligently on adding a split-finger fastball that he’d come to experiment with.
When the Padres picked him up on waivers for 2017, they liked the addition of the splitter. They liked it even better as he mastered it as an out pitch that complemented the fastball, eventually trading Brad Hand and turning over the closer role to Kirby last season.
“I was kind of a late bloomer, I guess,” Kirby said. “Here I am six, seven years into my major league career and I’m the best I’ve ever been. I feel like I’m still getting better.”
For somebody who had, at one point, “thought I’d never have a prayer at being an all-star,” Kirby last year suddenly found himself a legitimate contender. “Even though I didn’t make it, it helped me realize that I probably could make the all-star team this year,” Kirby said.
Just don’t count on him celebrating it until they hand him the ticket to Cleveland.
HAWAII’S MLB ALL-STARS
(Hawaii born and raised MLB All-Stars)
PLAYER / POS. / YEAR(S)
Sid Fernandez P (1986 & ‘87)
Shane Victorino OF (2009 & ‘11)
Brandon League P (2011)
Kurt Suzuki C (2014)
Reach Ferd Lewis at flewis@staradvertiser.com or 529-4820.
