PORT ST. LUCIE, Fla., Feb. 18 — Ambiorix Burgos’s transition to the Mets began with a change in hairstyle. Gone is the clean-cut look he fashioned last season in Kansas City, ditched in favor of straggly curls that resemble fireworks exploding from his head.
“It’s a new look for a new team,” Burgos said, with his teammate Juan Padilla serving as interpreter.
It is less outrageous than the reverse Mohawk — bare up the middle, bushy along the sides — he wore for a day in 2005. Even if he tightens up the ’do to conform to Manager Willie Randolph’s dress code, he will still maintain a conspicuous presence in the clubhouse, and that is not a bad thing.
Not much is conventional about Burgos: not his coiffure, not his first name (which is pronounced Am-bee-orix) and certainly not his crackling fastball. When the Royals came calling at the winter meetings for a starting pitcher, General Manager Omar Minaya singled out Burgos as the player he wanted in return and gladly surrendered Brian Bannister. Finding a 22-year-old with experience closing at the major league level happens as often as, well, finding someone named Ambiorix.
“If you put him in the draft, with his natural talent, he’d be a No. 1 pick,” said Rick Peterson, the Mets’ pitching coach. “He has a huge, huge amount of untapped potential, and it’s our responsibility to turn that into performance.”
Aside from Billy Wagner, the Mets do not have many pitchers who can regularly get hitters to swing and miss. Guillermo Mota can with his fastball, and when his changeup is on, so can Aaron Heilman. But Burgos is capable of blowing the ball past batters with staggering frequency, and at 6 feet 3 inches and 235 pounds, he possesses the husky build and overwhelming array of pitches reminiscent of another wildly talented but unpredictable Dominican closer, Armando Benítez. The trick now is to harness that ability.
“You find a lot of relievers who don’t figure it out until they’re 25,” Minaya said. “Burgos saved 18 games last season. That’s all that I needed to see.”
The Royals were so aware of Burgos’s live arm that they rushed him through their system. After spending 2004 in Class A, Burgos was converted to a reliever the following spring training. His ability was better suited for one or two innings than six or seven. He lasted 12 games at Class AA, skipped Class AAA and made his major league debut in April 2005, a few days after his 21st birthday.
“It felt like I spent seven days in Double-A,” Burgos said. “It was kind of surprising.”
That season, he went 3-5 with a 3.98 earned run average in 59 relief appearances and said he adjusted easily to the pressure of pitching in the major leagues. After all, he had pitched in front of more people for Toros del Este, his Dominican winter ball team, than at Kansas City’s Kauffman Stadium.
No team destined for October could afford to turn over the ninth inning to a 21-year-old, but last year an awful Kansas City team had nothing to lose once Mike MacDougal was injured in spring training. As the youngest closer in baseball, Burgos converted 18 of 30 save opportunities, enduring his share of hideous meltdowns and ignominious moments, like the game-winning three-run homer he gave up to Derek Jeter in the Yankees home opener. But he also pitched well at times, converting six consecutive save chances in June and having a 1.42 E.R.A. in July. And, again, have you seen that arm?
According to Minaya, team scouts have clocked Burgos’s fastball at 103 miles an hour, and last season he threw five pitches at 100 or faster, which was fifth among American League pitchers. And yet, the fastball may not even be his best pitch. It certainly is not his favorite one.
That distinction belongs to a diving splitter that, when right, could be as good as John Smoltz’s. The difference is, Smoltz can pretty much throw it wherever he wants at any point in the count. Burgos? Not yet. He loves it so much, though, that he tends to favor throwing it more than his fastball, and that led to trouble last season.
Only two days into camp, Burgos and the Mets know what to expect from each other. Burgos wants to improve his control and tinker with his slider. The Mets want him to gain consistency with his secondary pitches, develop his splitter into a strikeout pitch and work on pitching with the same motion each time.
“Everything else will come after that,” Peterson said. “You’re not trying to win stuffed animals, you’re trying to make quality pitches.”
All in due time, Peterson said. In the meantime, Burgos is finding his way around a new league and a new team. He is friendly with the nonroster pitcher Jorge Vázquez, who is from the same town, Nagua, in the Dominican Republic, and knows Jose Reyes, too. They know Burgos, however, by a different name — a different name for a different sort of pitcher.
“Everyone calls me Ambi,” Burgos said. “My 2-month-old son is Ambiorix. I’m Ambiorix the first.”
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