to 31 batters—Maddux-like precision
for someone who hit 99 mph.
“It’s hard to imagine having more
command than he did,” Los Angeles
manager Dave Roberts said. “He was
as dominant as you can be.”
Today among starting pitchers
no one throws the ball harder with
as much spin as can Buehler (char t,
page 37). But Buehler is a rare power-
pitching polyglot who features six
pitches, including three versions of
fastballs. There is no one like him.
And he knows it.
“He has a burning desire to be
great,” says Dodgers president
Andrew Friedman, “in large part
to back up the amount of trash he
talks.”
Buehler, for instance, when
asked if he is the strongest player,
pound-for-pound, on the Dodgers,
replied, “Yeah, I would say so. I
think there are probably guys who
are naturally stronger than me, but
during the season I don’t think
many people lift the way I do. So throwing a hundred at
inning 180-ish, that’s where the confidence comes in.”
“I was here two days and he called me a piece of [trash],”
veteran first baseman David Freese said. “I was like, ‘Whoa.’
But he can pull it off because he’s so likable and because he
can back it up. Everybody loves him here. He’s just a good
dude with an amazing arm. He’s going to win a Cy Young
or four.”
P
OWER AND command are the yin and yang of
pitching. Pitchers constantly rebalance this duality
to find the right harmony in a game of give and take
with their stuff. But Buehler is the rare pitcher who
need not compromise. He maxes out both.
He has what scouts call “pitchability,” the genius to know
how to shape and use six pitches, all of which he can tweak
at a moment’s notice. This craftsmanship earned him com-
parisons with Zack Greinke when he was drafted in 2015.
But Greinke has never averaged 96.9 mph on his fastball,
as Buehler is doing this season. The pitch slices through the
air with such ferocious speed and spin that batters hit .196
against it the past two years. Only Houston’s Gerrit Cole has
a heater that’s been harder to hit. “Hands down the best stuff
I’ve ever seen,” says veteran catcher Josh Thole, who caught
Buehler while with the Dodgers in spring training—a time
when catchers traditionally work on framing pitches. “With
him? Forget it. You’re working on just stopping the baseball.”
The Dodgers never saw this coming. Where they thought
they might be getting another Greinke, they have a combina-
tion of Greinke and Aroldis Chapman.
Baseball America didn’t see this coming, writing of Buehler
just after he was drafted: “He throws his fastball in the low-
to-mid 90s, though it doesn’t have a ton of life.”
Twenty-three teams, the ones that passed on him, didn’t
see this coming.
His own father didn’t see this coming, certainly not back
when Walker entered Vanderbilt at 145 pounds and would
call home ready to quit because of the grind. “I don’t know
how he does it,” says Tony Buehler, a commercial banker in
Denver. “Not a day goes by when I’m not... I walk into my
office and I’ve got his jersey from his first major league win
on the wall. I’ll stand there and look at it and... .”
Tony’s voice begins to break. Then he starts to sob.
“And I’ll start crying. Like I am now. It’s unbelievable.”
Both Walker and Tony know the exact moment when defy-
ing his size and expectations became possible: June 4, 2012.
“I’ll never forget that night,” Tony says. “It was probably the
lowest moment he ever felt. Baseball-wise, it certainly was.”
Says Walker, “I don’t think I’d be here without it.”
B
UEHLER WAS a high school sophomore when
Tony began to think his son might have exceptional
pitching ability. Walker had fallen into pitching be-
cause, he says, “I was too small. I had no power” as
a hitter. During spring break of his sophomore season, Tony
watched his son pitch in Cary, N.C. Walker threw hard, around
85 mph. That led to an invitation from a travel team. “Then
it just started to build,” says Tony. “His junior year we started
seeing scouts.”
The biggest knock on Buehler was that he was so scrawny.
Also, there was the matter of his commitment to Vanderbilt.
But as Buehler worked his way up draft boards, he grew
more excited about the idea of signing to play pro ball. At
34
SPORT S ILLUS TR ATED
• AUGUS T 12, 2019
PETER AIKEN
/GETTY IM
AGES
R E V O L V I N G
DORE
Buehler was 12–2
as Vandy won the
2014 CWS, but he
had just five W’s
in a trying junior
season.
WALKER BUEHLER
