2021 Player Preview: Vince Velasquez

Photo by Cliff Welch/Icon Sportswire via Getty Images Like the athletic urban squirrel, this baseballer stores velo in his cheeks.Vince Velasquez is the blizzard that never hits. Forecasters warn of bats strewn in the baselines, downed power-hitters, drifts of strikeouts up to your forehead. You put your life on hold to watch the first innings. The first batters fall to strikeouts and shattered handles. But the initial flurries don’t stick. The winds of change are all just bluster. And you are left cold with disappointed children.

I am certainly not here to tell you that this is Velasquez’s year. But I’m also not going to join the chorus of his detractors. I understand why a significant…