Reports coming out of Venezuela state that Jesús Montero, a catcher who first reached the major leagues with the New York Yankees before spending several seasons with the Seattle Mariners, has died following a traffic accident. He was 35.
The news were first reported by outlets from Valencia, a city in the north of the country, where Montero had been living. Montero’s passing came as a result of serious injuries caused by a road traffic accident two weeks prior, including multiple bone fractures and severe internal organ trauma.
Top Yankees Prospect
Montero – a catcher and first baseman – signed with the Yankees as an international amateur free agent in 2006 and arrived in the organization as a power hitter and prized prospect. The contract included a $1.6 million signing bonus, and he quickly moved through the Yankeesâ minor league system with offensive numbers that kept him near the top of prospect lists in the late 2000s (listed as the Yankees’ best prospect by Baseball America as of the start of the 2010 season – and the fourth-best in the whole of baseball).
The Yankees promoted Montero to the major leagues for the first time in September 2011, and he played in 18 games that month. Across that span, he recorded a .328 batting average with four home runs in limited plate appearances, appearing mostly as a designated hitter and occasionally as a catcher. He slashed .328/.406/.590 with four doubles to go with the four homers, and showed the power potential on which his reputation was based.
Those 18 games, however, would represent Montero’s only big league action in New York before the team moved him in a winter trade. Capitalizing on his top prospect status, the Yankees traded Montero following the season to the Mariners in a multi-player deal that brought Michael Pineda to New York – at the time of his departure, Yankees’ General Manager Brian Cashman said that Montero “may well be the best player Iâve ever traded“.
Montero’s Later Career
From the Yankees point of view, the risk paid off, as Montero never achieved the heights once foretold in his future. Struggling with his weight, Monteroâs years with the Mariners stretched across parts of four seasons.
In his one full season in the majors, Montero hit 15 home runs in 2012 , but his time in Seattle included a move to first base that diminished his value, disciplinary issues and weight problems that affected his continuity in the lineup. All the promise gave way to a litany of missed games in his later because of injury and suspension and the Mariners designated him for assignment in 2016, never to play in the majors again. A short bounce-back attempt with the Toronto Blue Jays ended abruptly when he received a suspension for violating MLB’s drug program.
After his Major League tenure ended in the mid-2010s, Montero continued to play professionally in various leagues, including winter ball in his home nation of Venezuela and stints in minor-league and independent circuits. His best period of play nevertheless came in his brief major league debut with the Yankees, and in the promise he had before that as a prospect. For a while, he was one of the hottest properties in the game.
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