SURPRISE, Ariz. — Right-hander Jesse Chavez turns 42 years old Aug. 21. That’s one of the reasons he wanted another shot, probably a final shot, at pitching in the major leagues. Because reaching 42 would call to mind a special number related to 2002, an important year in Chavez’s life.
“If I could last until 42, which matches the round I was drafted in, and I was around for that, it would be pretty special,” Chavez told Pitcher List recently from Texas Rangers spring training camp.
And once it’s over?
“I’d like to get into coaching, and offer things that I’ve learned over the years,” Chavez said.
When he’s not pitching, Chavez already has been moonlighting as a coach of sorts, offering to others what he’s learned playing in parts of 17 seasons since breaking in with the Oakland Athletics in 2008. Chavez has been pitching for so long, the 42nd round of the MLB Draft doesn’t even exist anymore. Come to think of it, neither do the Oakland Athletics.
About 29 years his senior, Chavez’s current manager, Bruce Bochy, feels like he can learn something from a guy who still is playing. Bochy enjoys engaging with Chavez, and also likes the example he sets for other players.
“I love picking his brain because of his experience and his longevity,” Bochy said. “There’s a reason why he’s still around. He hangs in the bullpen on days he’s not throwing. He watches everything. He’s the first one here every day. He takes good care of himself and knows how to prepare.”
Chavez can’t slack on preparation in part because he doesn’t throw as hard as he used to. MLB Statcast says 91% of the league throws harder. His cut fastball, which he threw 51 percent of the time in 2024, averages 90.7 mph. When he first came up, Chavez sat about 95-and-change with his four-seamer, but he stopped throwing it altogether in 2023. His sinker used to go 94-95, but now runs about 89.9 mph, and his cutter goes 88.2. Getting kind of low. Or, about what he was throwing when he signed out of Riverside City College, which is maybe an hour west, in traffic, from where the Los Angeles Angels play in Anaheim, Calif.
“My whole career, my velocity’s fluctuated,” Chavez said. About as much as the game itself has changed since he signed 23 years ago.
“It’s gotten a lot different in the three decades I’ve been part of the big leagues,” Chavez said. “It went from ‘pitching,’ to ’stuff and pitching,’ and now it’s just ’stuff.’ I think that’s why you’re seeing more injuries now.”
Bochy said pitcher injuries were a recent conversation topic between him and Chavez, who has a slight 6-foot-1, 180-pound frame but works out relentlessly using weighted balls attached to his legs, a tactic the manager thinks more pitchers should consider when recovering from an outing.
“I got some twigs underneath,” Chavez said of his legs. Chavez has had his pants tailored extra large and billowy from the time he reached the majors for several reasons: to make himself appear a bigger physically, to give his legs the freedom they need to move due to a “violent, herky-jerky” delivery (especially in his lower half), and to achieve a certain aesthetic. It also might be as if to say to batters: You can’t touch this.
Chavez threw hard back in the day, like MLB front offices prefer. But no matter what the league might prioritize, and no matter how many young dudes come along throwing 99 mph on a slow day, Chavez thrives by adjusting along with the game. It’s not any different than usual.
“I just resort to what I did when I was a kid: command over stuff,” Chavez said. “Location. Stuff always leaves, location never does, because the plate always stays 60 feet, 6 inches from the mound, and it’s always 17 inches wide. It would always take me back to when I threw with my dad in the back yard; we called it ‘target practice.’
“But I mean, things are going to change, and everything goes full circle in this game.”
Chavez has circled the block a few times, so often that he’s also lived at nearly every address on it. Nobody in major-league history has been traded more times than Chavez’s 11. The first deal came in 2006, when the Rangers traded him to the Pittsburgh Pirates for right-hander Kip Wells. The most recent (last?) came in 2022 when Atlanta moved Chavez and left-hander Tucker Davidson to Angels for closer Raisel Iglesias.
Chavez not only enjoys the ride and endures, but he also can prove he’s been paying attention. Chavez faced unexpected pressure a year ago when the White Sox social media administrator hit him with a pop quiz worthy of the Baseball Reference memory game Immaculate Grid: Could Chavez name all of his teams … in order?
He’s been with nine teams as a major leaguer, and has had multiple stints with four of those teams. If you count the minor leagues, as they do on the indispensable website Baseball Cube, Chavez has had 1,242 teammates in his career. It’s “only” 823 teammates in the majors. Chavez takes the phrase “the friends we made along the way” to the nth degree.
Changing teams so frequently might seem like a fun novelty to fans or media, and it’s a means to an end on the baseball side for all parties, but it’s been tough on Chavez the individual. It’s a real sacrifice, even professionally.
“It is,” Chavez said. “The biggest thing for me is building rapport with the catchers. Getting into what the different organizations want. Not in a selfish way, but if a team just allows me to go out there and do my business on the backside of it — in the clubhouse and weight room, things like that — I’ll go out there and put up the numbers I’m capable of.”
Chavez keeps producing, even as the second-oldest player in the league to Justin Verlander, posting a 3.13 ERA with 55 strikeouts and 19 walks in 63⅓ innings with Atlanta in 2024. Over nearly 400 innings since age 34, his ERA when adjusted for the league is 33% better than average. Over the entirety of his career, Chavez has posted a better on-base percentage against than league average, a higher K% and a lower BB% than league average, and is allowing an average exit velocity just one-half mph higher than league average. Chavez proves, every season, that he belongs.
Even accounting for the sacrifices, being a ballplayer has been something to treasure in myriad ways to Chavez. He’s made a lot of money in a game most people stop playing when they’re kids. He’s played for teams in his home state, including two near his hometown in Southern California. He’s struck out multiple Hall of Famers and a few more future Cooperstonians. He’s pitched in six postseason series, and he won a World Series, in 2021, with Atlanta. Perhaps even better, he’s pitched 1,146⅔ innings in the majors with only one semi-major injury: when a surgeon cleaned up a bone spur and loose bodies in his elbow in 2019.
But even Chavez can’t do this forever. Can he?
“You get to a certain point in the spring,” Chavez said, “and you think: ‘This is probably it.’ But then your body bounces back, and you feel like you did five years prior. That’s where I’m at now.”
Chavez has a 9.53 ERA with four walks and six strikeouts in 5⅔ innings in Grapefruit League play. Four of the six earned runs he has allowed came in one outing Feb. 28. In his other five appearances combined, Chavez has allowed two runs, five hits and four walks over five innings. A week ago Friday against the Colorado Rockies, when they loaded the bases with nobody out in the ninth, Chavez struck out the side with the tying run on deck.
The Rangers have a pair of older relievers in the bullpen, with Chavez and right-hander Chris Martin, who is nearing 39 but still throws 94-95 mph, in the top 60 percent or so in the league. Martin is more likely to land a high-leverage role, but both pitchers tell stories of perseverance. But when somebody (sorry, it was I) described Martin and Chavez as “survivors,” Rangers general manager Chris Young took exception and reacted sharply, saying such a term gave a misleading impression of what the pitchers were worth. The Rangers did not bring them in because they made for a good story, or were some kind of novelty.
Young complimented both in detail, saying of Chavez: “You don’t play that long without having a very good skill set. Jesse Chavez, his record speaks for itself. He attacks the strike zone. He’s not afraid, he knows his stuff and how it plays. He’s very smart, is able to read swings.”
“I don’t view them as ’survivors,’ but as really good major-league players.”
No matter how much Young clearly respects and appreciates Chavez, it’s possible the Rangers could cut him in the coming days before Opening Day. He was considering the end of his career a year ago when the Chicago White Sox cut him toward the end of spring training. But then Atlanta called. Someone always needs a pitcher.
“I told myself, when I signed my first contract to get into pro ball, if I can’t roll out of bed and throw a baseball, it’s time to go home,” Chavez said. “Because I’ve been given a gift to be able to do that, and being able to take care of my body.
“So as long as my girls let me do it … I’ll be able to do it.”
The girls at home are his wife, Crystal, and daughters Criste, Stevee, and Dannie, who are ages 21, 15, and 9, respectively. Being away from them for eight months a year or longer is another sacrifice Chavez has made, one any ballplayer would have to make if they also have a family. Chavez said his oldest was born during his first spring training.
“I mean, kudos to my wife. She’s Dad No. 1, and I’m Dad No. 2,” Chavez said. “Everything she’s had to do on the outside to keep it together, and then the path we’ve had, having to move around so much, I can’t say anything other than ‘thank you’ to them all.”
In the time he has left as a player, Chavez wants to emphasize, be it to teammates, pitchers on other teams, young players of tomorrow: Do what your body tells you.
“Knowing what I’m able to do on a day-in and day-out basis, if my arm gives me 93 that day, I’ll use it. If it gives me 89, that’s what I got,” Chavez said. “I don’t look for more, I try to emphasize to guys, especially guys now, if they’re not (throwing) 99, it’s OK to be 97 that day, or even 95. You’ll be all right, but just focus on location over stuff that day.
If he can do anything to help a teammate avoid mistakes and not “take the two steps back I did,” that’s what Chavez will do. He’ll be a coach someday, but it might mean more coming from someone still able to put the advice to good use.
“Anybody would do well,” Bochy said, “by talking to Chavy and listening to what he has to say.”