He wasn’t sent to the ‘doghouse,’ but Yohander Mendez is back in baseball’s penthouse
Yohander Mendez has made it all the way back.
The left-hander, who was banished to the depths of the Texas Rangers’ minor league system after a violation of team rules two nights before a scheduled start in Kansas City in June, is back in the big leagues.
Mendez was sent back down to the minors — not back to Round Rock, but all the way down to High-A Down East after and off-the-field incident on June 18. The last time Mendez pitched below Double-A was May 2016.
Mendez returns to the mound for the Rangers in Sunday’s series finale against the Twins. He’s starting in place of Bartolo Colon, who despite coming off the disabled list on Saturday, is still unavailable because of a lingering stomach virus. The Rangers beat the Twins 7-4 on Saturday night.
Mendez, considered a top candidate for the Rangers’ rotation in 2019, needed a reminder, manager Jeff Banister said, of what it means to be a major league player.
“It’s a privilege for me to sit in this seat,” Banister said. “There’s an honor and a privilege to sit in this seat. There’s an honor and a privilege to put on the uniform. There’s an honor and a privilege of playing this game. We earn it, but it’s still an honor and a privilege. And sometimes, you have to be re-awakened to the fact that this is what’s necessary. We made a decision as an organization that it would be the right move for a young guy to just sharpen himself. You can call it a reminder, or a re-learning. All of us need to go back to the start.”
Mendez took his medicine and, by all accounts, handled himself well. He made five starts for Down East before moving up to Frisco. He made six Double-A starts before going back to Round Rock on Aug. 23.
“That’s what you’re supposed to do. That’s what you should do,” Banister said. “We talk about it every day, this is a grown-up business. This is a big boy league. I think he took the challenges with the right attitude, went back down, and he’s going to get an opportunity to come back up tomorrow and start for us.
“The thing that I like about our coaching staff and this organization is that things like that happen. (But if) you go do your work, you’re given that opportunity to clean that slate, go do what you need to do. He was challenged, took the assignment, went all the way back down to A-Ball. Reports I got were that he worked his rear end off, physically and mentally, and took all the challenges and met all of them, even when they were a little bit tough. And he has rewarded himself with an opportunity to come back up here and start games for us.”
Banister said the expectation is that Mendez will remain in the rotation the rest of the season. Banister insists that neither he nor the organization has a “doghouse” for wayward players.
“I’m sure there are people who think that maybe when I don’t smile enough for everybody, they think that’s the case; that’s the furthest from the case,” he said. “I’ve been in those before. I know what they feel like. They’re not really — they can be extremely challenging.”
Banister said it was an organizational decision to nudge Mendez’s progress (on and off the field) along with the demotion.
“I’ll never do that, it’s hard enough to play this game; it’s hard enough to compete on a daily basis,” he said. “There’s going to be enough people to build doghouses for all of us, I don’t need to do that. You’re given a second chance, you’re given a third chance, or you’re given the opportunity to go out and perform a job. I think we all need to take a step back and know that none of us are perfect, and we don’t always get it right. I’ll be the first to admit, this is a tough game and a tough business.”