SAN FRANCISCO — When Camilo Doval took the mound for his postseason debut on Friday at Oracle Park, a sold-out ballpark filled with 41,935 fans twirled bright orange towels in anticipation of a Giants victory.
Doval blazed through the ninth inning of Game 1 of the NLDS, recording three consecutive outs while topping out at 101.0 miles per hour on the radar gun en route to securing a 4-0 win against the Dodgers.
The bright lights of October didn’t faze Doval, but performing for a crowd is nothing new for the hard-throwing right-hander. He said pregame that his family back in the Dominican Republic planned to watch him pitch.
Their viewership will be enough to provide a TV ratings bump.
Before Friday’s game, Doval said he has a combined 23 siblings and half-siblings. The oldest is in their early 40s while the youngest is close in age to Camilo’s one-year old son Lian.
Doval, 24, said he’s the third of his mother Rosa’s four children, but on his father Sergio’s side of the family, he said, “I wouldn’t be able to tell you because we’re so many.”
Rosa, an elementary school teacher, was the first person Doval called when he learned he was being promoted to the majors for the first time in April. At the time, he recalled “laughing with joy” as he informed her of realizing his major league dream.
Doval’s parents have separated, but he said he speaks regularly with his father, a farmer, and communicates frequently with his half-siblings by texting in a group chat on Whatsapp.
When asked which side of the family Doval received the generous athletic ability to whip 100-mile per hour fastballs through the strike zone from, he laughed, threw his arms in the air and said, “I don’t know.”
Neither parent had much of a passion for baseball, only one of his half-siblings plays the sports and it’s at a level equivalent to Little League, so back home in Yamasa, Dominican Republic, Doval is a bit different.
So is his lifestyle, which doesn’t include thinking about the high-pressure, high-stakes moments he’s thriving in as a rookie.
“It’s totally different. Two different worlds,” Doval said through Spanish language interpreter Erwin Higueros. “Here in the United States, everything is work. Work, work, work. Back home, I get to relax. I go to the fields, I hang with my friends, I like to fish and it’s a different lifestyle.”
Doval said he learned about baseball while watching it on television and idolized several Dominican Republic natives who played in the major leagues. His favorites as a child were the late Yordano Ventura and Ventura’s former Royals teammate, Johnny Cueto.
Cueto, a 14th-year major league veteran, became a mentor to Doval during spring training and has played an important role in keeping him even-keeled during a challenging season. After posting a 7.59 ERA in his first 13 appearances this year, Doval was optioned to Triple-A Sacramento where he spent the majority of the summer.
“Earlier in this year when he struggled to throw some strikes and fell behind in counts and got beat up a little bit and did that to some degree in some consecutive outings,” manager Gabe Kapler said Friday. “Had to get sent down to Triple-A in the middle of the season, work on some things, come back, and then when he came back he was better for having had those experiences in the middle of the year.”
With their bullpen reaching the point of exhaustion late in the year, the Giants recalled Doval on September 5 and he returned with 1 1/3 quality innings in a 6-4 win over the Dodgers. The outing began a stretch of 16 consecutive scoreless outings that continued on Friday when he recorded the final three outs of the Giants’ first playoff win in five years.
In the span of a month, Doval has gone from pitching in Triple-A to the most trusted option to close games for a team that set a franchise record with 107 wins. Doval’s journey is rare, but so is everything about him.