NEW YORK — Summoned into the middle of baseball’s Bronx Zoo, Alex Vesia’s job was binary. The Los Angeles Dodgers reliever’s task was simple, yet ripe for implosion. He replaced rookie Gavin Stone with two outs in the sixth inning and the Dodgers leading by two.
The high-powered New York Yankees had the bases loaded. Vesia views such challenges simply.
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“I basically have about 15 to 25 pitches,” he said earlier that afternoon, “to either be a failure or a success that night.”
In this case, it was a triumph. The left-hander unfurled the type of slider he’s wanted all year to bear in on Yankees shortstop Anthony Volpe. The pitch induced a harmless fly ball to get out of the inning. Vesia came back out for the seventh and delivered a perfect inning to protect a 4-2 lead. Then the Dodgers’ onslaught began as they pulled away for an 11-3 victory.
“That kind of flipped the game for us,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said.
Vesia has flipped much for himself in the last few months. Just months ago, the 28-year-old was teetering on the edge of the Dodgers’ roster, having been relegated from his integral role in Los Angeles’ bullpen to the fringe. As one of the few left-handed relief options on the 40-man roster, his inclusion in the Dodgers’ Opening Day plans appeared largely due to circ*mstance. After all, he’d gone from pitching the most critical inning of his club’s season in 2022 to being optioned back to the minors multiple times the following year.
Alex Vesia, Elevated 96mph ⛽️ pic.twitter.com/DBtPd2A39v
— Rob Friedman (@PitchingNinja) June 9, 2024
Before that, Vesia rose from Division II college baseball anonymity at California State East Bay to the big leagues on his fastball. Yet in 2023, he seemingly could no longer blow it by hitters. He couldn’t locate his slider, allowing opposing lineups to tee off.
Now, he appears very much back. Vesia has a 1.20 ERA. His fastball is almost unhittable — batters are hitting just .097 against the pitch after hitting .273 against it last year. And as the Dodgers bullpen has struggled with injuries to three of their top leverage options (Brusdar Graterol, Joe Kelly, Ryan Brasier), Vesia has reemerged as a critical cog.
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The resurgence, he said, started with an outing that got him sent down.
His return flight to Oklahoma City might’ve already been booked by the time he took the mound last June 21 against the Los Angeles Angels; a designed bullpen game would require some shuffling, and Vesia was well-trained on the shuttle and had options remaining. Still, he worked a clean outing, retiring Shohei Ohtani and Mike Trout in what would be a combined shutout victory. Vesia was struck by how calmly he walked out of Roberts’ office in Anaheim, Calif., after getting news of his demotion the following day. The message had been a positive one. Vesia had shown himself, even for an outing, what was still possible.
“When you feel good,” Vesia said, “you’re kind of numb to getting sent down.”
Since that day almost a year ago, in 61 big-league appearances, Vesia has a 1.78 ERA.
The Dodgers feel this can keep going, particularly as they’ve uncovered why his dominance in 2021 and 2022 (a combined 2.19 ERA over a 104-outing span) faded in 2023.
Vesia noted how his offseason training program, lifting weights seven days a week in his home gym in Arizona, had left his body wound tight. “Some guys, they like to hang out in the clubhouse,” closer Evan Phillips said, “Ves, he likes to hang out in the weight room. He finds his relaxation in there.”
This winter, Vesia ratcheted it down to five days a week, while maintaining what Phillips called a “bit of a crazy” lifting regimen. That allowed the Dodgers’ pitching brain trust to start making adjustments to his mechanics in the spring.
Those started with Vesia’s setup. Whether it was the implementation of the pitch clock last season, or a body that was unable to move as fluidly, something sapped Vesia’s fastball velocity and its unique movement profile.
“If your first domino is not in the right spot, you’re not going to go down the chain properly,” assistant pitching coach Connor McGuiness said.
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Tweaking the positioning when he prepared to throw a pitch, along with the direction of his hips, had other benefits. The Dodgers’ staff noted last summer that hitters could decipher between Vesia’s fastball and slider before the ball was out of his hand; how his arm finished removed much of the deception from the pitch. Even more so, Vesia had struggled to find the right place to start the pitch to induce swings and instead left many sliders well out of the strike zone for easy takes. Vesia’s eroding confidence in the pitch left him forcing fastballs that weren’t as effective as they once were.
The opponents’ attack plan against him remained simple, even into the early part of this season, when the Minnesota Twins’ Ryan Jeffers and Edouard Julien got to Vesia for home runs — both on fastballs — on consecutive days in early April.
Vesia said then he felt close to where he wanted to be, a dubious claim given all that preceded it. He reflected on that outing again this week. He’s only allowed one earned run since.
The tweaks to his mechanics have erased much of his troubles. His slider is not only landing for strikes but has added depth. His fastball once again is playing.
He retired Volpe on Saturday night on the very pitch his tweaks were hoping to restore. It was a slider that looked like a fastball in the strike zone out of his hand and broke into the right-handed hitter.
An inning later, he reached back for the type of showdown that spoke to his ceiling. There might not be a more feared hitter on the planet at the moment than Aaron Judge, who homered twice Saturday and again Sunday night and paces the majors in nearly every offensive metric. The Yankees slugger has obliterated every pitch type, but especially fastballs.
Vesia threw six pitches against him, all fastballs, and struck him out, blowing a 95.5 mph heater past the former MVP.
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“That,” McGuiness said, “was really cool to watch.”
The Dodgers reliever fell toward the edge of the roster. Now, he’s pitching as well as ever. The Dodgers bullpen needs him.
“It’s never easy doing the journey that he’s gone through, but he’s come out of it so much stronger,” McGuiness said. “He’s not scared of any moment.”
(Photo of Alex Vesia: Charles LeClaire / USA Today)
Fabian Ardaya is a staff writer covering the Los Angeles Dodgers for The Athletic. He previously spent three seasons covering the crosstown Los Angeles Angels for The Athletic. He graduated from Arizona State University’s Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication in May 2017 after growing up in a Phoenix-area suburb. Follow Fabian on Twitter @FabianArdaya
