By any name, pitcher Edinson Volquez is a crucial cog for Royals

When 17-year-old Dominican Edinson Volquez was signed by the Texas Rangers in 2001, it was under his invented guise of 16-year-old Julio Reyes.

Such shenanigans weren’t rare at the time and have since become better-regulated. Typically engineered by street agents known as buscones, the idea was simple: to create a younger identity to enhance his appeal.

“I was trying to get more money, to be honest,” Volquez said Sunday after giving up three hits and one earned run in two innings in his spring-training debut for the Royals as they beat the Angels 6-4 at Diablo Stadium.

But what was a reported $20,000 signing bonus wasn’t enough to make Volquez feel, well, like himself.

For one thing, when they’d call his stage name at the training complex in the Dominican, it would take him a few seconds to react.

“‘Oh, that’s me,’” he’d have to think. “I can laugh at it now. But I was scared, too. …

“I knew in the bottom of my heart it was like I’m cheating. I (was) kind of upset. I (felt) bad.”

By the time he was on the verge of advancing to the Rangers system in the U.S. in 2003, a combination of fear and conscience led him to fess up to the Rangers.

“‘I need to use my real name,’” he remembered saying, to the dismay of the apparently unaware Rangers.

All of which offers an irresistible parallel to Volquez’s volatile career.

If it’s no longer about a literal identity crisis, it’s largely been one of multiple personalities that the Royals are banking on having stabilized in the wake of his inspiring rebound for Pittsburgh last year after a miserable 2013.

After all, he is assuming the spot, if not the role, exactly, of former staff ace and team leader James Shields, now with San Diego.

Consider only the most simplistic statistics from last season alone, and maybe an expectation of a semi-comparable contribution isn’t unreasonable.

Certainly, the Royals seem to anticipate that, having signed Volquez to a two-year deal that will pay him $7.5 million this season and $9.5 million in 2016.

Shields was 14-8 with a 3.21 ERA for the Royals and Volquez was 13-7 with a 3.04 ERA for Pittsburgh in leading their teams to their league’s wild-card games (in which each struggled).

Two hundred innings pitched is a gold standard for a starter, a tier iron-man Shields has attained the last eight seasons and that Volquez has yet to reach.

But the fact that Volquez hurled 192 2/3 last year leads manager Ned Yost to believe that the gap either will remain negligible or be bridged.

“No reason to think that he can’t,” Yost said.

Trouble is, Volquez’s entire career is testimony to unpredictability — starting with the improbability he’d ever stay in the major leagues because of a poor start and conflicts with the Rangers.

He was 1-10 with a 9.20 ERA in 2005-2006, and his demeanor was deemed so erratic and sloppy that the Rangers outlined a list of rules he had to follow to pitch for the parent club in 2007.

Among them, according to a 2011 ESPN.com story:

▪ Run on and off the field within 12 seconds.

▪ Write down a plan for the nine hitters.

▪ Use a No. 2 razor when shaving his head.

▪ Always have his shirt tucked in, and his pants tidy.

This wasn’t well-received by Volquez.

But it ultimately was well-taken.

“I gave a lot of hard times to them, too. I was kind of all over the place (then); kind of crazy a little bit,” he said, adding that he cried a year later when the Rangers traded him to Cincinnati. “That was my first love.”

That was only the start of the extremes of his career, though.

He’s been an All-Star (2008) and undergone Tommy John surgery (2009).

He’s been smacked with a 50-game suspension after testing positive for PEDs (2010, a development that he said then was inadvertent through a prescribed medication).

And he unfurled seasons when he was both an opening-day starter and demoted to the minor leagues.

The low, though, seemingly was in 2013, when he was released outright by the Padres after going 9-10 with a 6.01 ERA in 27 starts. The Dodgers signed him afterward but let him go after the season.

“It’s (been) crazy,” Volquez acknowledged.

So what’s different now?

Volquez believes he has his groove now because of a sweeping overhaul in Pittsburgh that included a makeover not only of basic mechanics but his preparation routine.

With the guidance of pitching coach Ray Searage and immersion in extensive video work compiled from 2005-2013, Volquez came to believe that he never had resumed the right mechanics after his surgery in 2010.

Searage put it more bluntly to Pittsburgh radio KDKA last year: “We’re trying to get his delivery consistent. It’s a reconstruction, really, right now — not only physically, in the delivery, but also mentally.”

It was a lot of other things, too, Volquez would tell you, but his main point now is this:

“I think it worked,” he said, “and made me better.”

It’s too soon to know whether that’s here to stay, of course, but at least Volquez seems to know who he really is now … in more ways than one.

This story was originally published March 8, 2015 at 9:46 PM with the headline "By any name, pitcher Edinson Volquez is a crucial cog for Royals."