TORONTO — Toronto Blue Jays special assignment scout Dean Decillis was in the middle of a meeting with team execs at Rogers Centre on Saturday morning when he got a notification on his phone. He opened it and immediately smiled upon learning that Blue Jays infielder Santiago Espinal had become an all-star.
Decillis is among the most trusted scouts in the organization and is in town to help with the club’s preparations for next week’s MLB Draft. It’s sublime timing, too, since he’s the man who first identified Espinal in 2018 as a potential trade target in the Boston Red Sox system.
“I was hoping he got a chance to go to the all-star game,” Decillis said. “I’m so excited for him. Not just because of the type of player he is, but also for the type of person he is.”
Espinal replacing Houston Astros second baseman Jose Altuve at the all-star game, which will be held at Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles, was the big story in Blue Jays land on Saturday, sharing the limelight with Teoscar Hernandez’s walk-off single to left field in the bottom of the 10th inning to give Toronto a 6-5 win over the Kansas City Royals in front of 40,135 fans. In the top of the 10th, Royals first baseman Vinnie Pasquantino crushed a towering two-run homer off Blue Jays closer Jordan Romano to break a 3-3 tie. Romano, whose commemorative hat was a giveaway to fans on Saturday, earned the victory despite allowing the runs. Espinal went 1-for-4 at the dish.
When Blue Jays manager John Schneider and his coaching staff found out that Espinal had officially become an all-star, they set out to surprise him. A team meeting was called for 11:45 a.m. and players weren’t given a reason. After building the suspense, Schneider made the announcement and watched the clubhouse erupt in cheers.
“I think it was the best surprise I ever got,” Espinal said. He immediately called his father, Santiago, to share the news and called his girlfriend right after. Both cried on the other end of the phone.
“We have a family group chat and I sent a voice text,” he added. “Pretty much everybody started crying too.”
Espinal will join Blue Jays all-stars Alejandro Kirk, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and Alek Manoah in Los Angeles. Outfielder George Springer was also named to the AL roster, but opted out of the game to rest a sore right elbow that has bothered him since late June.
Espinal said he’s excited to meet fellow Dominicans Jose Ramirez and Juan Soto during all-star festivities and plans to pick their brains about hitting. He also has dinner plans with future Hall-of-Famer Albert Pujols, who shares the same representation as the 27-year-old infielder.
However, Espinal anticipates that the most satisfying part of the entire experience will be the chance to spend time with his father. “I want to see my dad’s face,” he said. “I want my dad to experience it. I know it’s just an all-star game, but I want my dad to experience it more than me. My dad was going to have surgery next week. Now, he’s not. But I just want him to experience that moment.”
Espinal entered Saturday with a slash line of .271/.322/.394 along with six home runs, 21 doubles and 37 RBIs across 89 games. His 1.7 fWAR ranked eighth in the American League among second baseman and while he’s predominantly manned that position, he’s also logged innings at third base and shortstop.
“You look at what he does defensively and he’s probably one of the best in the game,” Schneider said, adding that he considers Espinal a steady offensive presence in the Blue Jays lineup. “It started in the off-season with him trying to get better, hitting the ball harder and he has done that and then some. Just a really cool story.”
If anyone knows the full extent of Espinal’s underdog story, it’s Decillis. The 55-year-old scout has a penchant for unearthing hidden talent and was the man responsible for finding a previously unknown Alejandro Kirk during a scouting trip to Mexico in 2016.
Decillis was watching a minor-league contest in Goose Creek, North Carolina, in June of 2018, when he got a call from the Blue Jays front office. He was asked to leave that game and make the five-hour drive West to Salem, Virginia, because there was a potential trade brewing with the Boston Red Sox. Decillis was given the names of three players with Red Sox single-A affiliate to keep his eye on. It turned out that over the course of several days, none of those players impressed him. However, Espinal did.
“You could see his baseball instincts,” recalls Decillis. “He had very competitive at-bats and was obviously a very good fielder. It was hard to figure out exactly how good he was going to be defensively, because I saw him at third, at second and even saw him play a game in the outfield. But the defensive ability was really good. And I thought there was a chance he was going to hit a little more than what he had done up until that point.”
Espinal was a 10th-round pick of the Red Sox and didn’t have much pedigree or hyped attached to him, yet Decillis was impressed by his athleticism and ability to seamlessly switch between different positions. “He’s such a good all-around player and he’s one of those guys where you see his instincts really take over,” he said.
The scout relayed his intelligence to the Blue Jays — who were in the process of finalizing a trade that would send slugger Steve Pearce to Boston — then left Salem and headed out on to road to observe players from a different minor-league organization. His mind stayed on Espinal, though, so Decillis made sure to monitor how the infielder was faring in boxscores.
On June 28, he noticed Espinal had been removed early from a game. Fearing he was injured, Decillis put in a call to the Blue Jays scouting department to warn them in case they were trying to acquire him.
“We just made the deal,” he was told. “We got him.”
Ever since then, Decillis has had a soft spot for Espinal. Just like he does with Kirk, he’ll look up stats and watch highlights on social media to find out how the players he helped become Blue Jays are doing. And even though he’s busy with draft preparations, Decillis plans to make some time this Tuesday to watch Espinal and Kirk line up during the pre-game all-star introductions.
“It’s really exciting,” said Decillis. “Because both guys were kind of undervalued. Industry rankings didn’t play a part in what they were and there wasn’t a lot of data and technology involved with them. It was really just traditional scouting and it shows the value of that and how it brings tremendous value to the organization.”
As if this story needed any more kismet, there’s one more note: Decillis played baseball at Miami Dade College, the same school Espinal attended. Despite that, though, Decillis has actually never met the infielder, nor has he met Kirk. And he’s totally fine with that.
Watching them from afar, and smiling whenever they accomplish something in the majors, is good enough for Decillis.
“I usually just come up here and kind of stay in the background,” he said.
