La Grasa grabbed his Louis Vuitton bag and pulled out a pivotal piece of his pre-start routine. Framber Valdez wears Baccarat or a Louis Vuitton fragrance for bullpen sessions, but on start days, only one smell will suffice.
Valdez brought out his bottle of Bleu de Chanel, and cracked a wide smile.
Advertisement
“For me, obviously, it’s a thing that I like to dress nice, have perfumes, things like that,” Valdez said last week through an interpreter. “For a lot of other people, they may see me and say ‘Hey, I want to dress like that guy.’ All the Latin guys, that’s the nickname they have for me now. They see me and they think La Grasa.”
Translated literally, grasa means “grease” or “fat.” It carries a different connotation in Dominican culture, where the word is reserved for those with supreme swag or style.
Valdez has both in spades.
“If you get a new perfume or fancy shoes, you say ‘Oh, look at the grasa I got today,'” Astros reliever Bryan Abreu explained. “If you get a really nice belt, really nice T-shirt, it’s ‘Look at the grasa I got today.’ It’s an expression to say ‘Look at that really good thing I got.'”
Few seem to flaunt their good things more than Valdez, the Astros’ swaggy ace known in the clubhouse for his love of shoes, suits, chains and cologne. In that group, his passions are so well known that teammates rarely call Valdez by his given name. La Grasa or Grasa is heard far more from all corners of the clubhouse, dugout and field.
“I feel like he embodies it,” shortstop and fellow Dominican Jeremy Peña said. “I don’t know who gave him that nickname or where it started, but it’s a great fit. You see it when he’s out there. He has that swag to him, that cockiness, that confidence. He gets it done.”
Valdez credited the Astros’ four other Dominican pitchers for his new pseudonym. Explaining its origins prior to a game in Seattle last week left the quartet howling in laughter after almost all of Valdez’s answers in Spanish. Valdez listed his favorite fashion trends and threw some shade on his four teammates, who seemed to take it in stride.
“Of the whole group, I’m the one that has the most flow,” Valdez said. “In the (Dominican Republic) the guy that has the most flow, all the chains and all that stuff, they call them La Grasa.”
Advertisement
Valdez estimated he has 50 pairs of shoes at his Houston residence. More than 200 others are at his home in the Dominican Republic — and “that’s not an exaggeration,” he said in perfect English. Valdez wears at least one gold chain during each of his starts and sports many more off the mound. Rolexes are a favorite.
Grasa’s genesis may date back to last July, when Valdez earned his first American League All-Star selection. A few days before the 2022 Midsummer Classic, Valdez changed his hairstyle to the braids he now sports. He debuted them during the team’s final first-half series at Angel Stadium and kept describing them as his new “show flow.” During that same series, Valdez purchased the suave suit he wore on the All-Star red carpet from a salesman he still visits on the Astros’ trips to Anaheim.
View this post on Instagram
Valdez acted no different than most first-time All-Stars, but there may be a bigger meaning behind his makeover. Baseball remains a hierarchical sport, where sustained success and service time allow players to feel more comfortable expressing themselves. Feeling and looking good has always mattered to Valdez, but most young players must stay buttoned-up until becoming bona fide major-league veterans.
Valdez is one of 15 starting pitchers to throw at least 450 innings since 2020. Of that group, only Corbin Burnes, Kevin Gausman, Zack Wheeler and Sandy Alcantara have posted lower earned-run averages. Last season, Valdez won Game 6 of the World Series and finished fifth in American League Cy Young voting. He is an ace in every sense of the word. Perhaps Justin Verlander’s departure this winter will allow the world to notice.
“I feel like he’s taken that leadership role as a starter and he’s been getting it done for us,” Peña said. “We feel like every time he steps out there, he gives us an opportunity to win the ballgame. It feels like he always goes six-plus every single time he’s out there. He wants the ball in his hand for the whole game. If it was up to him, he’d pitch every single game, a complete game. He gets it done for us.”
Advertisement
Before becoming Grasa, Valdez battled himself and his stuff across his first two major-league seasons. He bounced between the bullpen and a superstar-laden starting rotation, posted a 4.60 ERA and walked six batters per nine innings. Former pitching coach Brent Strom still maintained Valdez could be valuable. Few pitchers in the organization had better spin or stuff.
“Mike Trout told me once he’s the nastiest pitcher we have,” said catcher Martín Maldonado, the former Angel. “That was in 2019, we had (Justin) Verlander, (Gerrit) Cole, Charlie (Morton), (Zack) Greinke.”
After that 2019 season, Caridad Cabrera, the Astros’ director of Latin American operations, urged Valdez to contact Dr. Andy Nuñez, one of the team’s sports psychologists at its Dominican academy. Nuñez has compared Valdez to a “muscle car” — strong and souped-up but with a tendency to speed off course. Finding better balance became their foremost goal.
“That guy, he likes competing,” Maldonado said. “He gets pissed when he gives up a hit. He gets mad when he thinks the umpire misses a call. He’s a gamer.”
Valdez and Nuñez formed a strong rapport and still talk before each of Valdez’s starts, focusing on how Valdez must better harness his emotions and control his breathing in tense situations.
View this post on Instagram
Major League Baseball’s new pitch clock threatened some of Valdez’s drawn-out, deep breathing exercises, used to help him maintain focus on the mound. He hasn’t been called for a violation in his first 53 innings — a snapshot of Valdez’s evolution from erratic to established.
Known initially for just his wicked curveball, Valdez added a cutter last season to diversify his arsenal. Hitters are 3-for-25 against it this season while whiffing 42.9 percent of the time.
Valdez is throwing his sinker almost two miles per hour harder, too, toeing a delicate balance between increasing velocity and maintaining the pitch’s wicked movement. The pitch has a run value of negative-8, according to Baseball Savant. Only nine pitches in the entire sport are performing better by that metric.
Advertisement
“Good pitchers always have one or two pitches they can throw to anybody in the game,” Maldonado said. “He has three or four pitches, it depends on the night.”
Though Valdez got an invitation, the Astros encouraged him to skip the World Baseball Classic in March. Valdez agreed, in part due to his 201 1/3-inning workload last season and in an effort to better himself in one troublesome aspect.
According to both Fielding Bible and FanGraphs, Valdez finished the 2021 season worth negative-5 defensive runs saved. Only two pitchers in the entire sport were worse at fielding their positions. Generating so much groundball contact made it imperative for Valdez to improve. He finished last season worth zero defensive runs saved and enters his start on Monday with the same number, but many around the team have been complimentary of Valdez’s strides.
“Spring training, we worked really hard and put a lot of emphasis on that,” Valdez said. “I tried to stay very focused — that was one of the reasons I did stay at spring training with the team, was just to work on things like that.”
Selflessness is crucial to survival in the Astros’ clubhouse. It is a team-first environment that lauds individual accomplishments while placing more emphasis on a shared goal. The younger version of Valdez benefited from that culture, even if he didn’t fully appreciate it at the time.
During his first season in 2018, Valdez received his first designer suit from veteran reliever Héctor Rondón. Rondón bought the rookie a Louis Vuitton shirt and jacket and Fendi pants, part of a longstanding ritual inside baseball clubhouses of veterans outfitting younger players, and a gesture Valdez still appreciates. It made an impression.
“I saw how the guys dressed really nice and presented themselves really well and I think that’s something I wanted to do for myself — just dress really nicely, be around those guys and be able to present myself well and the team well,” Valdez said. “Obviously, also feel good.”
Advertisement
The 29-year-old southpaw received a $3.8 million raise this winter during his second trip through the arbitration process and now makes $6.8 million. No non-Cy Young winner had ever earned a larger raise from his first to second year of arbitration. More green means more grasa for La Grasa.
“I can still get all the things that I need, but then I also have the opportunity to buy things that I want,” Valdez said. “I still get the Nikes, but I still get the nicer shoes and when I want to dress up, the Louboutins, the Diors, things like that. I have the opportunity to buy nicer shoes, sneakers and things like that now.”
Added Abreu: “That’s a really good nickname for him. He loves that. He says ‘I’m the grasa.’ It’s just him being him.”
(Top photo of Valdez at the 2022 All-Star Game: Rob Tringali / MLB Photos via Getty Images)
