Think back to when you were a 17-year-old. What were you doing at that point in your life? For me, I was a junior in high school playing basketball, working at Dairy Queen and caught up in the ever important high school life. I had my family around me and my job required me to only travel three miles. Imagine being a 17-year-old and 2,505 miles away from your family working. That’s exactly the case with Luis Heredia.
Heredia made his debut for the State College Spikes last night in State College and like Gerrit Cole the night before, he didn’t fail to impress. Heredia was on a strict four inning/65 pitch limit, one that he will follow pretty closely all season.
Heredia walked the first two batters of each inning, but got out of both situations clean. For the game, Heredia pitched four innings, allowed just the one hit, walked two and struck out four in his four innings of work.
“I was nervous,” Heredia said. “But my mentality was strong on the mound. I was feeling strong today.”
Going into the game, catcher Jacob Stallings, the Pirates seventh round draft pick of this season, told me that the game plan was to establish the Heredia’s best pitch early.
“His best pitch is obviously the fastball,” Stallings said. “We want to establish that early in the count all season long. He didn’t shake me all night, so I think we were pretty much on the same page. I wanted to attack early with his fastball because if we can get ahead with strike one, there are a number of things we can do. Sometimes you think the guys are going to be sitting first pitch fastball, so with a few of their hitters, we thought we could get ahead of them with some off speed pitches.”
Stallings, who has caught many major leaguers in his time at North Carolina, said the stuff is good, not just for his age.
“For anybody he has pretty good off speed pitches,” Stallings said. “He really keeps his change up down. They have a lot of left-handed hitters so we couldn’t use a lot of curveballs, but he threw two curveballs in a row to one hitter and got ahead 0-2. He jammed him with a fastball to get a ground out. He had very good control.”
Heredia said it felt good to get this step out of the way.
“I’m happy with my first game and I’m ready for the next one,” Heredia said.
Coming from Mexico, this was Heredia’s first game ever pitching under the lights.
“It was a little bit different,” Heredia said. “Different stadium, people and a different country. I’m feeling good and ready to work everyday and be ready.”
For only being 17, Heredia has shown great maturity to his manager Dave Turgeon.
“At 17 years old, I was playing American Legion ball, not very well at the time either,” Turgeon joked. “Playing in the New York Penn League at 17, I couldn’t even imagine that. I couldn’t be more impressed. I’m proud of him and he’s a good kid who works his butt off.”
When Turgeon was asked about Heredia adjusting at such a young age off the field as well, he tried to put it into perspective.
“If you think about it, you go from mom cooking breakfast and dinner for you and doing your laundry for you to you’re on your own, go get them,” Turgeon said. “I just couldn’t imagine it. He’s got a good support system here.”
When Heredia was asked about the difficulty of moving away from his family, he gave his most mature answer of the night.
“It’s my job here and I’m over here working,” Heredia said. “They were probably watching on the internet. I’ll probably call them later and they are very proud of me.”
At only 17 years of age, Heredia has much more growth to do as a player before he will hit the big leagues. But as a person, his maturity is at an all-time high.
Photo Credits: Steve Manuel
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