SARASOTA, Fla. — Eric Torres had been one step from Major League Baseball.

Then he found himself about as far from the show as a pro can be.

He was in Oconomowoc, Wisconsin, near his birthplace of Milwaukee. He wore a blue and white uniform for a team founded in 2021, and he pitched for the Lake Country DockHounds of the American Association of Professional Baseball, an independent league team, because he just loved this so much.

“I got released with the Angels,” Torres said, “and I was like, ‘I ain’t done.’”

This is a story often repeated in baseball, when roadblocks are set up yet players refuse to heed them. When players are told they’re not good enough and persevere anyway. Baseball, at its core, is about failure. It’s the single thing players do the most.

So when the option is acquiescence or persistence, it’s not hard to understand why a player like Torres would choose the latter — even when the latter brings them far from the comparative glamours available to players competing at the Triple-A level, on the doorstep of their major league dream.

Torres, a left-handed reliever, returned to Wisconsin because he disagreed with the opinion of Los Angeles, the club that released him in March 2025. He knew, of course, that his results at the Triple-A level didn’t match his own expectations, but Torres felt he had more to give.

And through the gambles he made — first in independent ball and later in the Puerto Rican winter league — the left-hander earned himself another opportunity in the ecosystem of Major League Baseball. He is here in Sarasota on an Orioles minor league contract with a spring training invite because he bet on himself.

“Now you double down,” Torres said. “You double down with that mindset.”

There is no sugarcoating the realities here. Torres, who’s still only 26, is at best an outsider when it comes to the prospect of breaking camp as a member of the major league roster. He knows this. But if that deterred Torres from trying, he wouldn’t have gone to Oconomowoc to play for the DockHounds.

Torres, a 14th-round pick for the Angels in 2021, reached Triple-A in 2023 and 2024. Both times he struggled, with a combined 9.44 ERA at that level. By comparison, Torres produced a 2.34 ERA in more than twice as many innings at Double-A.

Looking back, Torres said he tried to be too fine around the strike zone. He would nibble, which led to 54 walks compared to 50 strikeouts in 32 Triple-A games. When he reached Lake Country, Torres figured he had nothing to lose by being aggressive.

“Just focusing on getting back into the strike zone and dominating hitters, really, instead of trying to pick here, pick on the outside, pick down and away,” Torres said. “It’s just, like, get in the zone early and often and stay ahead.”

Torres, a left-handed reliever, returned to Wisconsin because he disagreed with the opinion of Los Angeles, the club that released him in March 2025. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)

The mentality worked at that level, although Torres will readily admit the competition there isn’t as intense as it is in affiliated minor league ball. Still, he built confidence by striking out 64 batters with a 1.59 ERA in 39 2/3 innings. And when no calls came for his services from major league organizations, Torres made another gamble.

Off he went to Puerto Rico, where he played for Leones de Ponce. He attacked the zone with his fastball and did not allow an earned run in 23 1/3 innings. Somewhere along the way, the Orioles took notice of him.

“And now I’m here,” Torres said.

He said it with a smile and shrug, as if this was some great miscommunication and any day now the Orioles would realize this Torres guy didn’t belong. But in every meeting with pitching coaches, Torres is amazed at how clearly Baltimore lays out their vision for him — this isn’t a mistake.

Part of what Baltimore likes about Torres is the unteachable. He throws from a side-arm slot that makes his sinker and slider especially difficult for left-handed hitters to pick up. He doesn’t blow hitters away, but the unusual plane and release point are “outliers,” manager Craig Albernaz said, and that makes Torres “very intriguing.”

As Albernaz discussed Torres, his mind went to a former Tampa Bay Rays staff member, Jim Hoff, who used to say that development is messy. It’s almost never linear.

“You just never know when something is going to click for you to take your next step,” Albernaz said. “For a guy like Torres, he’s been through a grind — the definition of a grind, bouncing around — and for him, he seems to be hitting his stride to where he knows this is the pitcher I am. That story is just fun to watch.”

When pressed for more details on how this all came to be, Torres recalled an appearance in Puerto Rico when he entered with the bases loaded and no outs. He struck out the side. He figures that is, maybe, when Baltimore began to take notice.

“I did that two outings in a row,” Torres said, “and that’s when I said to myself, ‘OK, you really have to start believing.’”

Torres throws from a side-arm slot that makes his sinker and slider especially difficult for left-handed hitters to pick up. (Ulysses Muñoz/The Banner)

For all the risks Torres took to continue battling for his dream, it was difficult to entirely block out the naysayers.

“If there was a message to myself, it was to trust myself,” Torres said, “because I had a lot of people in my ear and a lot of people saying certain things, this, that, ‘You’ll never do this, you can only do this.’ I think that was the message for the last year: Believe. Believe.”

Belief brought him here, to major league camp with the Orioles less than a year after he found himself playing in independent ball, outside of the Major League Baseball structure entirely. Belief allowed him to strike out two batters in his first appearance this week.

And no matter what comes next — a dream come true or a chance missed — belief will keep Torres in baseball.