against the Braves on Aug. 13, 2018<\/a>. In that same game, he also threw pitches of 103.8 mph, 103 mph and 102.6 mph.<\/p>\n\u201cEighteen years later, here I am, with the team that made me like baseball,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cI have been enjoying it since the first day they called me and say, \u2018Hey, we\u2019re gonna sign you.\u2019 I\u2019ve been dreaming of this moment. And nothing is gonna be like the day, if I have the opportunity to pitch at Fenway Park.\u201d<\/p>\n
The Bocachica, Colombia native said he \u201cdidn\u2019t know anything about baseball\u201d before that night in 2007.<\/p>\n
\u201cI fell in love with this team,\u201d he said. \u201cThis team inspired me to play baseball.\u201d<\/p>\n
He wasn\u2019t able to run right out and buy a glove the next day.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t have the money,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Bocachica is a small village on Tierra Bomba Island, about a 30-minute ferry ride to Cartagena, a major city in Colombia.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe don\u2019t even have a ballpark,\u201d he said, adding that \u201cthere\u2019s still no baseball leagues\u201d in Bocachica.<\/p>\n
He gathered his friends and they played in the street, using bats and balls they made themselves.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe used to go to like the jungle,\u201d Guerrero said.<\/p>\n
They cut branches and made those into baseball bats. They stuffed objects into socks to make makeshift baseballs.<\/p>\n
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\u2019t have basketball courts, either.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe biggest sport in Colombia is soccer. And that\u2019s the only sport that everybody can play,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
To become a serious baseball player, he needed to travel to Cartagena to practice every day.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe only way to get there is through boat,\u201d he said. \u201cThere\u2019s no airport, no freeways, nothing.\u201d<\/p>\n
He took the ferry there, waking up around 5 a.m. to catch it. <\/p>\n
\u201cEvery morning,\u201d he said. \u201cJust to go out there and practice.\u201d<\/p>\n
The challenge was getting back home. The last ferry left Cartagena about an hour before baseball practice ended.<\/p>\n
He would walk to another port to catch another smaller boat that didn\u2019t have direct transportation to Bocachica. He would get off at another village and walk for two hours to get home.<\/p>\n
After arriving home, he would eat and then go to bed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWake up the next day and do that again,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he eventually moved to Cartagena after a coach there, who ran his own small academy, saw him play.<\/p>\n
At that time, he was a first baseman.<\/p>\n
\u201cBecause I didn\u2019t even know about pitching or anything like that,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cAnd then when I moved to Cartagena, the city, one coach out there, he\u2019s like, \u2018You can be a pitcher.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero said he\u2019s always had the \u201cimage in his mind\u201d of pitching at Fenway with the Green Monster behind him. <\/p>\n
\u201cI don\u2019t know when it\u2019s gonna happen. I don\u2019t know if it can happen,\u201d he said. \u201cBut at least I\u2019m here right now and I\u2019m enjoying everything that I\u2019m doing.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen the Padres signed me, I was throwing like 84 mph,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
His velocity began to increase when he began training at the Padres\u2019 academy in the Dominican Republic. He needed to add weight.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was like 178 pounds,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cJust being here, sitting here, makes me feel proud of everything that I have done in my career,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cEven the up and downs. I\u2019ve been in the big leagues. I\u2019ve been in the minor leagues. I have been released. But here I am right now, and I\u2019m enjoying everything.\u201d<\/p>\n
He learned a split-finger fastball in 2022 from Roki Sasaki, who was then his teammate on the Chiba Lotte Marines.<\/p>\n
Sasaki, who as a rookie in 2025 helped the Los Angeles Dodgers to their second straight World Series title, shared the grip with Guerrero.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe both play on the same team, so I asked him,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cBecause he obviously throws hard as well. … The first day that I saw that split, I\u2019m like, \u2018I just want to throw that split, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
Guerrero\u2019s 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.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m working on just getting down more like a gyro slider,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
He said he needs to land his slider for strikes consistently to have success.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe last few years I have been working it. It has been better,\u201d he said. \u201cIt is really important because it\u2019s gonna make my fastball look better.\u201d<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
He has a great resource here in camp: Aroldis Chapman.<\/p>\n
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.<\/p>\n
\u201cEvery day I have a question for him because he has been in the league for plus 10 years,\u201d Guerrero said. \u201cWe 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.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"FORT MYERS, Fla. \u2014 Red Sox non-roster invitee pitcher Tayron Guerrero discovered baseball at his grandparents\u2019 house on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":586458,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2375],"tags":[152,5,141,48,2542,4,89,2543],"class_list":{"0":"post-586457","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-boston-red-sox","8":"tag-american-league","9":"tag-baseball","10":"tag-boston","11":"tag-boston-red-sox","12":"tag-bostonredsox","13":"tag-mlb","14":"tag-red-sox","15":"tag-redsox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116114148837958960","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586457","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=586457"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/586457\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/586458"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=586457"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=586457"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=586457"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}