Jesús Montero, a former promising Yankees prospect whom Brian Cashman dealt away, saying he “may very well be the best player I’ve traded,” but who never quite reached those heights, has died at 35 after a motorcycle accident earlier this month.
On Oct. 4, Montero’s motorcycle hit a pickup truck in Valencia, in his native Venezuela, and he suffered severe injuries for which he was put into an induced coma at Valencia City Hospital. The Yankees announced his death Sunday.
Signed as an international free agent in 2006 for $1.6 million, Montero was a hyped prospect immediately, Cashman calling the then-16-year-old the best Venezuelan hitting prospect since Miguel Cabrera.
Montero sailed his way through the minors, his bat as advertised but facing questions regarding his defense behind the plate and fluctuating weight, before debuting in 2011 as the Yankees’ No. 1 prospect and among the best regarded in the sport.
Then 21, Montero arrived as a September call-up and crushed major league pitching for 18 games in which he smacked four homers, hit .328 and posted a .996 OPS.
He cracked the postseason roster and went 2-for-2 in the sole postseason game he played, an ALDS loss to the Tigers.
And then he was gone: The following January, the rotation-needy Yankees sent Montero, whose potential the club and its fans had dreamt of for years, to Seattle in a package for Michael Pineda, a swap Cashman knew could go wrong.
“He’s that good,” the GM said of Montero during a conference call at the time. “He’s a middle-of-the-lineup-type bat. … It’s not easy to make these decisions, but I know I’m excited about what I’m getting.”
Montero never took off with the Mariners, getting a long, 135-game look in his first season in which he knocked 15 homers with a .685 OPS while splitting time at catcher and DH.
He tore his meniscus the following season, then accepted a 50-game suspension upon being implicated in the Biogenesis scandal. He then showed up for the 2014 season overweight.
He spent most of that season and the next one in the minors, which included a notorious incident in which a Mariners scout allegedly sent an ice cream sandwich to Montero in the dugout as a jab at his weight. Montero responded by approaching the scout with shouts and the dessert, which he threw.
ontero’s final MLB game came in late 2015, finishing a four-year career with the Mariners with 24 home runs, a .247 average and .668 OPS in 208 games. He was designated for assignment in March 2016, had minor league stints with the Blue Jays and Orioles and was out of affiliated baseball by June 2017.
Montero hung around the game in Mexico and in his home country, playing in Venezuela’s winter league as recently as 2020-21.
