FORT MYERS, Fla. — Red Sox non-roster invitee pitcher Tayron Guerrero discovered baseball at his grandparents’ house on Oct. 28, 2007.
He was 16 years old.
“I was passing the TV room,” Guerrero said Saturday at JetBlue Park.
His grandfather happened to be watching a sporting event and Guerrero stopped to check it out.
“I was curious. I’m like, ‘What’s that sport?’” he said.
That sport was baseball. The sporting event was Game 4 of the 2007 World Series between the Red Sox and Rockies.
Guerrero said he caught the last inning or two. Boston beat Colorado 4-3 in Game 4 to complete a sweep. Closer Jonathan Papelbon struck out pinch hitter Seth Smith to end it.
“That night I watched the Red Sox win the championship. The next day I’m like, ‘I want to play baseball,’” Guerrero recalled.
The 35-year-old Guerrero, who throws a fastball in the triple digits, signed a minor league deal with Boston on Jan. 9. He pitched in Japan in 2025.
He has appeared in 113 MLB games over parts of three seasons with the Padres (2017) and Marlins (2018, ‘19). He reached 104 mph with his fastball against the Braves on Aug. 13, 2018. In that same game, he also threw pitches of 103.8 mph, 103 mph and 102.6 mph.
“Eighteen years later, here I am, with the team that made me like baseball,” Guerrero said. “I have been enjoying it since the first day they called me and say, ‘Hey, we’re gonna sign you.’ I’ve been dreaming of this moment. And nothing is gonna be like the day, if I have the opportunity to pitch at Fenway Park.”
The Bocachica, Colombia native said he “didn’t know anything about baseball” before that night in 2007.
“I fell in love with this team,” he said. “This team inspired me to play baseball.”
He wasn’t able to run right out and buy a glove the next day.
“I didn’t have the money,” he said.
Bocachica is a small village on Tierra Bomba Island, about a 30-minute ferry ride to Cartagena, a major city in Colombia.
“We don’t even have a ballpark,” he said, adding that “there’s still no baseball leagues” in Bocachica.
He gathered his friends and they played in the street, using bats and balls they made themselves.
“We used to go to like the jungle,” Guerrero said.
They cut branches and made those into baseball bats. They stuffed objects into socks to make makeshift baseballs.
Guerrero is the tallest player at Red Sox camp. Standing at 6 foot 8, 225 pounds, he looks like he could be a forward in the NBA. But his village didn’t have basketball courts, either.
“The biggest sport in Colombia is soccer. And that’s the only sport that everybody can play,” he said.
To become a serious baseball player, he needed to travel to Cartagena to practice every day.
“The only way to get there is through boat,” he said. “There’s no airport, no freeways, nothing.”
He took the ferry there, waking up around 5 a.m. to catch it.
“Every morning,” he said. “Just to go out there and practice.”
The challenge was getting back home. The last ferry left Cartagena about an hour before baseball practice ended.
He would walk to another port to catch another smaller boat that didn’t have direct transportation to Bocachica. He would get off at another village and walk for two hours to get home.
After arriving home, he would eat and then go to bed.
“Wake up the next day and do that again,” he said.
He said he eventually moved to Cartagena after a coach there, who ran his own small academy, saw him play.
At that time, he was a first baseman.
“Because I didn’t even know about pitching or anything like that,” Guerrero said. “And then when I moved to Cartagena, the city, one coach out there, he’s like, ‘You can be a pitcher.’”
Guerrero said he’s always had the “image in his mind” of pitching at Fenway with the Green Monster behind him.
“I don’t know when it’s gonna happen. I don’t know if it can happen,” he said. “But at least I’m here right now and I’m enjoying everything that I’m doing.”
Guerrero signed an amateur international free agent contract with the San Diego Padres as an 18-year-old in December 2009, approximately 26 months after he began playing baseball.
“When the Padres signed me, I was throwing like 84 mph,” he said.
His velocity began to increase when he began training at the Padres’ academy in the Dominican Republic. He needed to add weight.
“I was like 178 pounds,” he said.
His career has taken him many places. The Red Sox are his sixth organization. He has previously been with the Padres, Marlins, White Sox, Reds and Angels. He has pitched in Japan. He has played winter ball in both Mexico and the Dominican Republic.
“Just being here, sitting here, makes me feel proud of everything that I have done in my career,” Guerrero said. “Even the up and downs. I’ve been in the big leagues. I’ve been in the minor leagues. I have been released. But here I am right now, and I’m enjoying everything.”
He learned a split-finger fastball in 2022 from Roki Sasaki, who was then his teammate on the Chiba Lotte Marines.
Sasaki, who as a rookie in 2025 helped the Los Angeles Dodgers to their second straight World Series title, shared the grip with Guerrero.
“We both play on the same team, so I asked him,” Guerrero said. “Because he obviously throws hard as well. … The first day that I saw that split, I’m like, ‘I just want to throw that split, too.”
Guerrero’s triple-digit four-seam fastball also has late movement. His slider is considered his best secondary pitch and he also throws a two-seam fastball.
“I’m working on just getting down more like a gyro slider,” he said.
He said he needs to land his slider for strikes consistently to have success.
“The last few years I have been working it. It has been better,” he said. “It is really important because it’s gonna make my fastball look better.”
Control has been an issue throughout his professional career. He has averaged 5.7 walks per nine innings across 307 minor league appearances and 113 major league outings.
He has a great resource here in camp: Aroldis Chapman.
Chapman has a career 12.2% walk percentage, but as a 37-year-old for the Red Sox in 2025, he had the best command of his career, walking just 6.6% of the batters he faced.
“Every day I have a question for him because he has been in the league for plus 10 years,” Guerrero said. “We have almost like same velocity. Obviously he can throw more harder than me. But I just ask him how he can be better in the strike zone, how he uses the breaking balls and pitches.”