Framber Valdez (born November 19, 1993) is a Dominican professional baseball pitcher for the Houston Astros of Major League Baseball (MLB). Valdez signed with the Astros as an international free agent in 2015, and made his MLB debut in 2018.
Nicknamed "La Grasa" by his peers for his fashion style, Valdez enjoyed a banner year in 2022. That year, he became the Astros' Opening Day starter, an MLB All-Star, and an All-MLB First Team selection—each for the first time—while compiling an MLB record of 25 consecutive in-season quality starts. The Astros won that year's World Series, the first championship for Valdez, who pitched six innings in the decisive Game 6 after having won Game 2.
Early life
Framber Valdez was born in Palenque, San Cristóbal Province, Dominican Republic. He started pitching at age 16.
Career
Minor leagues
Valdez signed with the Houston Astros as an international free agent on March 19, 2015, for a $10,000 bonus. At age 21, he was five years older than most amateur free agent signings from his country. Two Astros scouts spotted him after a long day of viewing programs led by independent trainers. Watching him throw only six pitches—in the beams of car headlights as darkness fell—they offered him a tryout at their Dominican academy near Guayacanes. Valdez had had verbal agreements with seven teams prior to signing with the Astros, but each offer was withdrawn after the results of his physical revealed that he might require ulnar collateral ligament reconstruction, also known as "Tommy John surgery." Indeed, as a teenager, team after team declined to sign him due to medical reasons that he "did not understand at all."
Valdez made his professional debut in 2015 with the DSL Astros, going 4–1 with a 3.68 ERA over innings. He split the 2016 season between the Greeneville Astros, Tri City ValleyCats, Quad Cities River Bandits, and Lancaster JetHawks, combining to go 4–5 with a 3.19 ERA over innings. He split the 2017 season between the Buies Creek Astros and the Corpus Christi Hooks, going a combined 7–8 with a 4.16 ERA over innings. Following the 2017 season, he played for the Mesa Solar Sox of the Arizona Fall League.
He split the 2018 minor league season between Corpus Christi and the Fresno Grizzlies, going a combined 6–5 with a 4.11 ERA over 103 innings.
Houston Astros
2018–2020
The Astros promoted Valdez to the major leagues for the first time on August 21, 2018. He made his debut that day, pitching innings and earning the win. With Houston in 2018, he went 4–1 with a 2.19 ERA over 37 innings. Valdez split the 2019 season between the Round Rock Express and Houston. With Round Rock, he went 5–2 with a 3.25 ERA over innings. With Houston, he went 4–7 with a 5.86 ERA over innings.
It was after the season that he was urged by Caridad Cabrera, the team director of Latin American operations to see team sports psychologist Dr. Andy Nuñez at their Dominican academy. The two soon found a strong bond with each other, with Nuñez advising him on how he should harness his emotions better with controlled breathing in tense situations. He was cited as a key presence in Valdez's improvement as a pitcher, and the two still contacted each other prior to every Valdez start.
In 2020, Valdez was 5–3 with a 3.57 ERA in 11 games (10 starts), in which he threw innings and struck out 76 batters (8th in the AL), and had the second-best home runs per nine innings allowed (HR/9 IP) ratio in the AL (0.637). He led the club in innings pitched, tied for the team lead in games won, and was named Astros Pitcher of the Year by the Houston chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America (BBWAA).
On September 29, 2020, in Game 1 of the American League Wild Card Series, Valdez became the first relief pitcher to throw five scoreless innings in the playoffs since Madison Bumgarner did so in Game 7 in the 2014 World Series. Valdez went 3–1 in the postseason, which saw the Astros reach the American League Championship Series (ALCS) after winning the first two rounds of the COVID-affected 2020 season. He was the winning pitcher in Game 6 of the LCS that made the Astros the second team in MLB history to force a Game 7 after trailing 3–0.
2021
On March 3, 2021, Valdez suffered a fractured left ring finger after he was hit in the hand by a Francisco Lindor ground ball in a spring training game. Expected to miss months or possibly the whole season, he returned on May 28. He led the major leagues in ground ball rate in 2021.
In 2021, Valdez was 11–6 with one complete game and a 3.14 ERA over 22 starts and innings.