Camilo Doval, SF Giants’ hard-throwing, low-key All-Star, finally gets his due

SEATTLE — One morning early this spring, Blake Sabol walked into the Giants’ facilities in Scottsdale, Arizona, and peeked at the monitor on the wall to the entrance of the clubhouse. Among his list of duties, as a novice backstop no less, was to catch Camilo Doval.

Doval was working on his two-seamer that day. Sabol, who had caught 64 innings above Double-A at the time, won’t soon forget it.

“I remember it freaking took off,” Sabol said. “Like, turbo zoom. God, he throws gas and it looks like that, no wonder he’s the frickin’ closer.”

Approaching 100 mph, the pitch darted down and away to Sabol’s glove side. His four-seamer, which has touched 104 mph, cuts the opposite direction. He pairs it all with a wipeout slider that comes in 10 mph slower and has generated an obscene 50 percent whiff rate this year. Altogether it has made him one of the National League’s premier closers, posting 26 saves with a 2.63 ERA and a 33.5 percent strikeout rate entering the All-Star break, which he will spend in Seattle after earning the first All-Star selection of his career.

“There’s definitely a little more oomph behind it,” Sabol said. “There’s a lot of guys in the league that throw as hard as he does but a lot of them have trouble controlling it. He controls it and he’s got three pitches that are all plus-plus pitches. … I feel like all of us have this feeling like we have the lead and Camilo’s coming in, we’re winning this game.”

Doval’s teammates have similar, astonished memories.

When Doval arrived stateside in 2015 after signing as a teenager out of the Dominican Republic, “no one wanted to play catch with him,” said Giants ace Logan Webb. Doval, who was discovered by Gabriel Elias and signed for a modest $100,000 bonus, spent two months at the Giants’ extended spring training, where Webb was waiting to begin his season at short-season Salem-Keizer.

It wasn’t mean-spirited; it was an act of self-preservation.

“He threw very, very hard from a very low slot,” Webb said. “He had to learn how to throw a little bit slower to guys when they were 40 feet away.”

Webb has one of the longest-running relationships with Doval of anyone in the Giants’ organization and called him “one of my favorite guys.” After a rare low point, when Doval took the loss to the Dodgers in Game 5 of the 2021 NLDS, Webb gave him a big hug in the dugout and told the media afterward, “he’s gonna be a big part of this team for a long time, I think that’s the first thing he needs to know.”

“I just always want to comfort him whenever he needs it,” Webb said in an interview this week. “Super excited for him, he’s one of the most deserving guys to go (to the All-Star Game). I thought he should’ve gone last year. … We’ve just always had a good relationship. He listens to me, I listen to him. I think I’m maybe a little bit of a comfort for him because I’m one of the only guys he’s known for a long time up here.”

Back in 2015, Webb got to witness a side of Doval that doesn’t come out as often in the Giants’ clubhouse.

A nature-lover who owns three horses and often arrives at the ballpark wearing a cowboy hat, Doval’s low-key personality, a product of his rural upbringing in Yamasá, has earned him the nickname “Camilo Tranquilo.” When he briefly addressed the team after being named an All-Star, president of baseball operations Farhan Zaidi said it was “probably the most I’ve ever heard Camilo speak.”

Until the recent call-up of Mauricio Llovera, Doval was the only player of Latin descent on their pitching staff (and the only Dominican in their entire clubhouse). In the bullpen, assistant pitching coach J.P. Martinez is bilingual, but none of the other relievers speak Spanish fluently.

That has led to some creative communication on the mound, particularly as Doval adjusted to the pitch clock early this season. After racking up three violations in the first two weeks, he has been docked only twice since, with the help of a few well-timed mound visits from Giants catchers.

“I had one early in the year where I’m trying to press a button (and) he’s shaking, he’s shaking,” Sabol recalled. “I’m looking and wanting to call time and go out there, like, what do you want to throw? …

“You go up there like, ‘Hey, reloj, reloj, the clock, mas rapido, mas rapido — too suave,'” Sabol continued, letting out a big laugh before doing his best Doval impression, drawing out his syllables, leaning back and slowly waving his arms, “He’s like, ‘Okayyyy, Okayyyy.'”

The language barrier can partially be traced back to Webb, who was tasked — however realistically — with teaching English to Doval and another recently signed hard-throwing Dominican, Melvin Adón. Ostensibly, they could impart some Spanish on Webb, too.

“I would try to tell him something and I didn’t know what the Spanish word for it was, so it’s kind of hard,” Webb said. “I didn’t do a great job.”

And how did the Dominican duo do?

“I know the bad words,” Webb said with a chuckle. “The important ones.”

Webb was roommates with Adón and frequently hung out with him and Doval and other Latin prospects, communicating in broken Spanglish.

“They were a close-knit group, all of the Dominican guys,” Webb said. “Always out there when they were cooking dinner in the (player housing), even though they weren’t supposed to. Chicken, sometimes fish. Steak. Always cooking together, swimming in the pool at the hotel. It was great to start that relationship early.”

The distance from home has been eased somewhat this season. Doval’s wife, Gerolys De La Cruz, and their 2-year-old son, Liam Camilo, have spent the year in San Francisco and accompanied him in Seattle. In fact, they will be celebrating their first anniversary as much as Doval’s first All-Star selection.

Passed over for last year’s game at Dodger Stadium, Doval instead flew back to the Dominican Republic to marry De La Cruz. He made no acknowledgment of the ceremony on social media, declined an interview request on the topic through a team official and even kept it mostly private from his teammates.

“I knew he was married,” Webb said. “I didn’t know he got married during the All-Star break.”

Of Doval’s personality off the field, bullpen-mate and locker neighbor John Brebbia said, “I think that what you see on the mound is what you get. Calm, cool, collected. Nothing really shakes him. Nothing really rattles him. As far as I can tell it’s the same in real life.”

Brebbia has but one expectation of Doval in Seattle.

“They walk the red carpet, right?” he said. “I think he should ride in on horseback. If it’s anything less than that, I’ll be a little bit upset. If it’s less than that, somebody told him that he couldn’t do it.”