SE: K-State Opportunity Helps Torres to Unlikely MLB Career
Apr 06, 2017 | Baseball, Sports Extra
Carlos Torres has a storied baseball career. Not in the award-winning, championship-clinching type of way, but it's storied, nonetheless.
Since graduating from Aptos High School in California, Torres has thrown more than 1,500 innings for more than 15 teams. He's moved more times than he can count. He's made mistakes. He's lost jobs. Entering his eighth season in Major League Baseball, Torres never lost the resiliency needed to bounce back, however.
It's a trait he credits, at least partially, to his short time with K-State. Torres only pitched one season at K-State, in 2004, and his journey to the Wildcats was, for lack of a better word, complicated.
After his junior year at San Jose State, Torres found himself without a team when an incident in a summer league game cost him his scholarship. Oddly enough, Torres said a coach from the other team in that summer league game passed along the phone number for Sean McCann, K-State's pitching coach at the time.
Ultimately, K-State gave Torres another chance, one he would not squander. However, he didn't exactly arrive to an established program. It was Brad Hill's first year as the Wildcats' head coach, and of the 30 players listed on K-State's 2004 roster, 19 of them were either transfers or true freshmen.
"Right off the bat, everything is almost like a debacle, a big cluster," Torres recalled. "You lose your scholarship and you have to transfer schools. You show up, it's the coach's first year and there's lots of people who have played at other schools but it's their first year at K-State. Very few guys were returning, so it was confusing in that way, but the guys were great. We played hard every day and I actually enjoyed the experience. I really did."
In 113 2/3 innings of work at K-State, Torres recorded a 4.12 ERA and a 6-7 record. The team went 26-30, an 11-win jump from the previous year and a personal reminder for Torres of how important hard work, attitude and resilience are in baseball.
"We played hard every game, no matter what. We worked hard so that no matter what happened, we could play hard. You could be down in the ninth inning of a ballgame but you still battle back," he said, soon referencing a 21-inning battle against No. 1 Texas that season. K-State lost the marathon game but gave the eventual national runner-up a much stronger fight than most. "We played them hard the entire way, and it was the way we trained, the way we worked and the way we played. That's definitely something I took away from that season."
K-State would go on to six winning seasons in the next seven years. Torres would go on to something he never saw coming: a career in baseball.
The Unexpected
Most professional athletes can refer back to a certain time period or moment — usually in high school or college — when they realized their sport could become their career.
For Torres, this realization hit him no sooner than the day he was drafted in the 15th round of the 2004 MLB Draft by the Chicago White Sox.
"I never imagined even getting drafted," said Torres, the 449th pick of his draft. "The idea of being a professional baseball player never even occurred to me. Fortunately, this opportunity presented itself and I was able to pursue it."
Torres moved up the minor league ranks a year at a time, reaching AAA in 2008 and making his major league debut in 2009 with the White Sox. His first MLB appearance — a spot start for White Sox starter John Danks — personified Torres' role as an "anything guy."
In the minors, 121 of his 217 appearances were as starts. In the majors, Torres has shifted predominantly to a mid-inning relief pitcher, making only 16 starts in 282 appearances.
"They've always used me in numerous amounts of roles," said Torres, whose last MLB start was with the New York Mets in 2014.
While Torres said the "anything guy" role is far from ideal, mostly because of the lack of comparative value in it, he doesn't let that soil his daily approach.
"I would do anything for my team. I believe that kind of attitude gets you more jobs than it takes away. Although I may be getting less dollars than a lot of dudes, in the long run I'd like to imagine I also find more jobs when other guys might not," he said. "No matter what, I'm going to put the team in front of my own personal desires or needs."
Torres' 2016 campaign with the Milwaukee Brewers was, without question, his best in the MLB. It helped him earn him a respectable one-year deal with the Brewers for the 2017 season that was reportedly worth $2.175 million.
In 2016, he posted a career-best 2.73 ERA in 82 1/3 innings of work. It was his third-biggest workload for an MLB season but his largest solely coming out of the bullpen. Torres also limited opposing hitters to a mere .217 batting average, another career-best mark, while collecting 78 strikeouts to 30 walks.
He attributed last season's success to his teammates, pointing out a number of timely defensive plays and situations when others from the Brewers' bullpen inherited his jams but kept runs from scoring.
More or less, Torres said: "You never do things by yourself."
Family Focus
Life in professional baseball isn't for everyone. Having lived it, Torres is sure of this. He described his own career as "trying," a confusing portrayal without context.
Torres has a nine-year-old daughter, Ava Ayn Wesley-Torres, who lives with her biological mother and who he gets very little face-to-face interaction with during the season.
"She forgives me for having to leave every year. It's one of those things that wears on you in the bad times, in the valleys. You have your peaks where you feel like whatever you throw up there is going to be just fine, your team's winning and everyone's happy," Torres said. "Then you have your valleys where everything you throw up there, it doesn't matter how good it is, it's getting smashed somewhere. Your team might be losing and it might be one of those times where you get down on yourself and you start remembering leaving your child every single year… you start remembering some of the sad things.
"But she cheers me up, and we talk on Facetime. Thank goodness for technology in this day and age. It is hard. It is tough, but my daughter will see me through it."
Family is almost always on the forefront of Torres' mind. It's important to him, even if he's never really experienced it in a traditional setting.
His father, Jose, hailed from Zacatecas, Mexico, but raised five children — Torres the middle child — in the Bay area of California. The family moved frequently and often lived in less than ideal circumstances.
"Where I grew up wasn't the best place to live, but it teaches you an aspect of life that hopefully a lot of people don't get to experience," he said, "but it teaches you things, nonetheless."
Torres described the relationship he has with his father as "complicated." Still, the former Wildcat said he understands the sacrifices his father made to give him and his siblings the best life he could.
Growing up, Torres said he never knew how to say thank you for this. Through baseball, he found a way.
Torres played for Mexico in the World Baseball Classic in March, fulfilling a dream he set out for since the inaugural international tournament in 2006.
"It was one of the greatest honors ever given to me. Given the opportunity to play for Mexico, represent my father and the entire country of Mexico, was a way for me to say thank you to my father for giving me the chance to live this life that I have because if it's not for your parents, a lot of times you probably wouldn't be where you're at," Torres said. "No matter how good or how bad it was, usually kids forget that simple fact. It wasn't wasted on me. It was an opportunity I had to show him that I respected him as a man and I wanted to represent him."
Along the same lines, Torres has approached his playing career as a way to give his daughter a better life, one where she won't need an athletic scholarship to pay for a college education. When he was without a MLB contract in 2011, he played for the Yomiuri Giants in Japan for a higher salary than he could draw in the U.S., signing with the Colorado Rockies the following season
"That's something that baseball has rewarded me with. I never thought I'd get a college education," he said. "The fact that I can actually provide that for my daughter, the ability to actually pay for college is… if you've never lived that life where you didn't think you were going to be educated, it's kind of hard to understand how much that means to you that you're going to be able to educate your children."
It's hard to say where Torres would have ended up if K-State didn't give him a uniform nearly 15 years ago. What's certain is what followed, a long career and an opportunity to thank those who helped him get there.
"They gave me a job when other people weren't and they gave me an education… much respect and praise for that," he said. "I can't say enough about K-State."
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