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It was December in Orlando, and Yohel Pozo was calling from a 2011 Hyundai Sonata in a Wal-Mart parking lot. He was not there to pick up Christmas gifts — he and his wife and 9-month-old son had been living in the car for two weeks. He was looking for a way out, and when his old team drafted him back in the minor-league phase of the Rule 5 draft, it sparked hope that help might be one phone call away.
Some stories are too big for a simple narrative of “redemption” or “underdog.” They come with unpleasant limbs in shapes for which we do not have containers, and they refuse to shrink for us. Any attempt to disguise them as something easier becomes an act of dishonesty.
A decade has passed since 2011. That was the last year that the Rangers made it to the World Series. It is also the year that they signed Rougned Odor out of Maracaibo, Venezuela. His younger brother (also named Rougned Odor) joined the ranks in 2017. Their childhood friend and teammate — Pozo, who still calls them his best friends — signed for $100,000 in 2013.
Pozo’s Sonata is an old car now. The lights don’t work properly. It has 260,000 miles on it. Time is a balanced equation — from one place, it takes: Rust, age and decay break down what once was. In other places, time leaves behind little gifts: Growth, maturity. Pozo is 24 now, and his coaches and Rangers front office members uniformly suggest that he has matured. There is a good reason for them to want to make this point.
In 2016 Pozo and the younger Odor — then 19 — took part in a hazing incident in the Dominican Republic, recorded and posted online, with an underage player that reportedly involved forced masturbation while holding the player’s arms and legs down. It was originally reported by Jeff Passan of Yahoo! Sports.
“I know nothing like what they say, like sexual abuse or whatever, happened because it wasn’t,” Pozo says. “It was just playing around. I mean (guys in) the big leagues do it — when you get to the big leagues, and they put some baby powder on your legs or whatever, that was what happened. And they put it from this to (sexual abuse).”
All of the involved players had their passports temporarily revoked until the Dominican government completed its investigation. In the end, no charges were filed.
“The investigation by Dominican authorities has been concluded and he’s been let off without any charges,” director of minor league operations Paul Kruger said at the time in a report in the Spokane Spokesman-Review . “From our end, it’s a closed case. We’re moving forward with Yohel.”
Says Pozo of the incident: “That (helped) me mature too. That was a hard time for all my family, all my friends, including me. … Before that, I was here,” he says, holding his hand at eye level. “Then I went here,” he says, putting his hand below his knees. “And now I’m here,” he concludes, putting his hand back where it started.
That conversation happened in early August, at a picnic table near the left-field wall at the Dell Diamond in Round Rock. At the time, Pozo was in Triple A, a level he jumped to this season after skipping Double A altogether. The fact he was with the Rangers organization at all was an unlikely outcome. After hitting well in the Dominican Summer League in 2014-15, he torched rookie ball in 2016 after returning from suspension. The following year, between short-season A-ball and Low A, his production flourished, hitting for a combined line of .323/.351/.478 (.828 OPS) over the two levels. But back-to-back disappointing seasons in 2018 (at Low-A Hickory) and 2019 (at High-A Down East) meant Pozo was not one of the select few to be added to the Alternate Site training camp with the Rangers in 2020 when the minor-league season was canceled.
In the meantime, Pozo and his wife Paola welcomed their first child Paul just as the sport began to shut down in March 2020.
“We got out from the hospital and everything was normal; that’s what the doctors said,” Pozo says now. “But it wasn’t.”
With the baseball season shuttered, Yohel, Paola and Paul moved to Orlando. The plan was to prepare there, where the weather would allow year-round workouts, then return to spring training in 2021. Meanwhile, Paul began to display concerning symptoms. He struggled to move the right side of his body and showed difficulties with balance. As the young parents worked to seek out a diagnosis, their life took a turn for the worse. Pozo’s minor-league deal with the Rangers expired. He was a free agent — an exciting opportunity if you’re an established star, but in Pozo’s case, “free agent” essentially translated to “unemployed.” Then the family received more difficult news: Paul had suffered a pediatric stroke .
“We ran out of money because my boy was in the hospital for a month and I didn’t have insurance for him,” Pozo says. “So we had to pay for all the medicine, all the treatments, all the pediatrics visits, the neurology visits. For the pediatrician, it was $250 each (visit), and the neurologist was $400 each. He would see the pediatric doctor four times a week and the neurologist three times a week.”
The family could no longer afford their apartment. They packed all their stuff into the Sonata but couldn’t leave the Orlando area because of the frequency and intensity of Paul’s care. Yohel worked as a food delivery driver to help make ends meet, and friends brought food to the family once a day at 3 p.m.
“And then we were surviving with water,” he concludes.
As the situation began to veer from dire to hopeless, there was a glimmer of hope. The Padres had signed Pozo to a minor-league deal. But he would still have to find a way to survive until spring training began in mid-February. When the minor-league phase of the Rule 5 draft came a couple of weeks later, the Rangers swiped Pozo back from the Padres. More familiar with the Rangers organization, Pozo at that point picked up the phone. He called Kruger. He called Roy Silver . Roving catching coach Turtle Thomas. Down East Wood Ducks manager Carlos Cardoza.
The Rangers did help. They immediately checked Yohel and his family into a hotel in Orlando to allow them a couple of weeks to get on their feet. They sent money to help pay for Paul’s appointments. Then once they were able to set up proper care for Paul in Arizona, they told Yohel to bring his family to the new minor-league complex in Surprise, where he would be able to live until spring training started.
“I’m so grateful (the car) drove a whole 38 hours without a stop,” the catcher says. “We had to make a stop sometimes because the baby was crying. We’d stop at stations, drink some Red Bulls, and then start again.”
Once the family got to Arizona, Pozo continued working side jobs to pay for food and save up — once the minor-leaguers reported to camp, the complex would be full, and Paola and Paul would need a place to live.
“When the big-league camp started, they started giving me some money for live-out,” Pozo says. “I was paying for a house there, too. But they were paying me (for) that so I was fine. I worked a lot for Uber, DoorDash; I did all that. I did a lot of Instacart — I’d buy food for people and take it to their home. And that was the way that I had something, at least, to eat until the season started.”
When camp began, say team officials, Pozo’s performance was impressive. But given his struggles in 2018-2019, Pozo assumed that even a strong spring would only get him as far as Double A.
So when Rangers field coordinator Matt Hagen gave him a heads up that his name might not be on the Low-A, High-A or Double-A rosters, Pozo wondered what was going on. Hagen said he would let him know “tomorrow.”
The next day, Hagen called him into the office.“Congratulations,” he said. “You’re going to Triple A!”
The jump from High A to Double A is supposedly the most difficult in the minor leagues. The jump from Double A to Triple A comes with its own challenges. Former big-leaguers and guys on rehab assignments are there. The percentage of players on the roster who have played (or will play) in the big leagues increases significantly. But Pozo approached the season with a renewed commitment to success. Now it was no longer about only him: He knew that Paola and Paul were not only relying on him but waiting for him at the end of every game.
“He makes me strong; just seeing him and how he lives, it makes me strong.” Pozo says. “If I have a bad day on the field, I’ll just go back home and play with him, and I forget about it. Tomorrow is another day. That’s the big thing from this year. They are with me all season long. When I go out on the road, they go with me. That’s part of my maturity: my baby and my wife. They make me so different.”
That arrangement isn’t a special allowance by the team. Yohel and Paola have paid for her flights all season long out of their own pocket — a significant commitment on a $700-per-week Triple-A paycheck, no?
“Yes,” Pozo nods solemnly. “Yes. But I have to. That’s what I’ve got to do. They travel with me everywhere.”
On the field, the season has been remarkable. Pozo hit .337/.350/.608 (.958 OPS) in his first season in Round Rock with 19 of his 44 career minor-league home runs coming this season. The power is new, but the short distance between batting average and on-base percentage is indicative of a trend: Pozo rarely walks or strikes out. He only walked six times in 280 plate appearances in Triple A, but also only struck out 33 times.
“The swing-and-miss is always extremely low compared to his peers,” Kruger says. “This year, it’s the 98th percentile in his league; that seems to be about par for the course throughout his career. He’s never been below 95th percentile in swing-and-miss at any level he has been … On the flip side, his chase percentage is typically in the bottom 10 percent. He’s got that Vladdy-esque type of approach where he knows he can — and has shown the ability to — barrel baseballs no matter where they are, in and around the zone.”
From the picnic table in Round Rock on August 10, Pozo ponders the question: Does he need to walk more if he’s going to make it to the big leagues?
“I don’t know,” he says, tilting his head to one side. “Because you can say that I’m an aggressive hitter. So if I’m an aggressive hitter, and you throw the first pitch right there, I’m going to swing it. So that’s not a walk.”
Three days after the conversation in Round Rock, Pozo was called into the office of Triple-A manager Kenny Holmberg, who cried as he broke the news to his player: He was being called up to the big leagues. Yohel said he cried too then didn’t sleep all night. In his debut, he played DH and batted eighth. The first pitch he saw was “right there” and he swatted it into center field for a single. In fact, he swung at all seven pitches thrown to him that night, including the fifth one, a hanging slider from Sergio Romo that Pozo clanged off the left-field foul pole for his first big league home run, a three-run shot that helped propel the Rangers to an 8-6 victory.
“He gets in the rectangle looking to swing the bat at something over the plate,” Holmberg said before the call-up. “He’s got some ability to even find the barrel a foot off the plate, a foot out of the zone. He can battle with two strikes with balls over the plate, down and away. This guy can just hit, man. Some guys were put on this earth to hit a baseball and he’s one of them. He’s got a hitter’s heartbeat.”
After Pozo’s third big-league game, another win over the Oakland A’s on Sunday afternoon, it is the annual Family Day on the field. Rangers players are able to bring their families on the grass to play catch or Wiffle ball, or just run around in the wide-open outfield. In center field, Yohel, Paola and Paul are together, as usual. They stroll through the outfield turf and into the bullpen.
“He’s doing great in therapy; he’s way better than when he was five months ago,” Pozo says of his son. “He’s now sitting by himself. He says ‘mama,’ ‘papa,’ ‘daddy.’ I mean, he’s way better. It’s going to be hard for him to walk, to speak, to do all the things a normal person can do.
“But the doctor says we have to wait until he grows up and see.”
(Top photo: Tony Gutierrez / Associated Press)
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Levi Weaver is a staff writer for The Athletic covering the Texas Rangers. He spent two seasons covering the Rangers for WFAA (ABC) and has been a contributor to MLB.com and Baseball Prospectus. Follow Levi on Twitter @ ThreeTwoEephus
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