NEW YORK — The kid said it was the best day of his life, the happiest day of his life.
Do you blame him? Julio Urias is 19 years old, he was pitching in a real major league game and everyone was rushing to say how great he’s going to be.
Maybe he will be. No matter how bad the numbers were Friday night, when the kid needed 81 pitches to get eight outs and allow three runs, nothing that happened at Citi Field should change anything anyone thinks of him.
Well, almost nothing, because you know the Los Angeles Dodgers were hoping Urias was ready to hand a big spark to their underwhelming team. Manager Dave Roberts said as much Friday afternoon.
“This is a big stage, but we feel he’s ready for it,” Roberts said. “We just feel good that his time is now.”
The Dodgers should never have needed Urias’ time to be now, not with their $250 million payroll. After falling short last year because they didn’t have a third starter behind Clayton Kershaw and Zack Greinke, they never should have begun this year without a second starter behind Kershaw.
It’s not Urias’ fault that they did, any more than it’s his fault that they could also use his help in a bullpen that lost another game Friday night on Curtis Granderson’s walkoff home run off Pedro Baez.
The Dodgers are trying to be overly protective of Urias. No matter how many times anyone brought up Fernando Valenzuela and asked if this young Mexican pitcher could do what that young Mexican pitcher did 35 years ago, it was never going to happen.
They weren’t going to let him make enough starts. They weren’t going to let him throw enough pitches.
He was out there Friday night because they had a need, and he was pitching great in Triple-A. But even before he looked nervous and struggled against the New York Mets, the Dodgers weren’t coming close to guaranteeing that Urias would make even one more start this season.
They were no more forthcoming afterward.
“We’re going to talk and see what’s best for him and for us,” Roberts said.
It may be he makes one more start before Hyun-Jin Ryu comes off the disabled list. It may be he pitches out of the bullpen, either now or later in the season.
Can he help a team that’s now just 25-24 and slipping further behind the hot San Francisco Giants? His stuff suggests that maybe he can, although Friday night we saw more of the 95 mph fastball than the changeup that reports suggest is so good.
The fastball might even play up if the Dodgers use Urias in short relief, but if they needed another reminder that velocity isn’t everything, it came when Granderson turned around a 97 mph Baez fastball and sent them home as 6-5 losers despite their ninth-inning comeback Friday.
You can bet Chase Utley won’t call this the best day of his life, even though he got to figuratively thumb his nose at all the booing fans with his three-run game-tying double in the top of the ninth. Utley is 37, and no day that ends as a loss can qualify as great.
Urias is 19, and no matter how many times scouts say he looks like a veteran when he’s on the mound, he’s still a grateful kid.
“This is the best day of my life, as it is for any big league player making a debut,” he said through an interpreter. “I’ll never forget anything that happened. This is the happiest day of my life.”
We won’t forget it, either, especially if Urias goes on to have a career as good as the prospect people say he will. The prospect people are sometimes right, so it’s worth mentioning that Baseball America had Urias fourth overall and tops among pitchers on its preseason Top 100 list.
Others agree, and Clayton Kershaw told some reporters (including ESPN.com‘s Doug Padilla) Urias is better at 19 than he was.
“Much better,” Kershaw said.
Fair enough, since Kershaw was in Class A at this point in his age-19 season. Oh, and the prospect people at Baseball America had him ranked behind Matt Garza, Mike Pelfrey, Adam Miller and a bunch of other pitchers whom he’s far better than today.
But while it’s fun to read the prospect rankings, it’s hard to completely count on them. Too many things happen, and too many players develop at their own pace.
Urias has developed quickly. He earned his spot as the first 19-year-old to start a major league game since Felix Hernandez in 2006, and the youngest Dodgers starting pitcher to debut since Rex Barney in 1943.
He earned that, but he probably didn’t need to be the guy who might help turn around this Dodgers season. It’s not his fault that the Dodgers were in this bind—the one Los Angeles Times columnist Bill Plaschke tweeted about as Urias was struggling through the three-run first inning Friday:
They have to keep searching, and maybe at some point this season Urias can even be part of the answer.
What happened Friday didn’t change that.
So let the kid enjoy the happiest day of his life.
Danny Knobler covers Major League Baseball as a national columnist for Bleacher Report.
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