20-Year-Old Yankees Pitching Prospect Alexander Figueredo Shot To Death In Venezuela
Any time you’re talking about the loss of a young life, it’s a sad and tragic story, but this one in particular has a few sketchy details that are kind of just thrown out there like they’re no big deal, but they raise WAY more questions than answers.
Alexander Figueredo, a 20-year-old lefty pitcher in the Yankees’ minor league system who missed the entire 2016 season while on the suspended/restricted list, was shot and killed on Nov. 27 in his native Venezuela.
A published report in Venezuela said Figueredo missed the 2016 season due to injury, but the Yankees confirmed he was on the suspended/restricted list.
According to sources close to the Venezuela baseball scene, Figueredo was shot at a party in Guacara and died of multiple gunshot wounds.
Figueredo wasn’t considered a top prospect, and it was unlikely the Yankees were going to bring him back for the 2017 season — due to reasons stemming from his suspension. The cause for the suspension was not known; however, for a young player to be suspended for a year, the circumstances had to be serious.
Lot to digest here, so let’s just go in order. First thing that catches my attention here is that Alexander Figueredo was murdered on November 27, yet we — we, as in the public — didn’t find out until over two weeks later? That’s odd. I don’t think it’s because he’s not a significant prospect, or the fact that it happened in Venezuela, either. Just three days prior, Twins prospect Yorman Landa was killed in a car accident, also in Venezuela, and it was reported the same day. Why is there such a big difference in the time that it took to report both incidents?
The next detail that we get from this story is that Figueredo was suspended for the entire season last year by the Yankees, yet nobody knows what for. Uh, what? Like the report says, if your organization is willing to forgo a full year of your development in order to punish you for what you’ve done, then you most definitely fucked up big time. What the hell did he do? And if it was that serious, how did that story never see the light of day?
I see a headline like this, and I think back to Wilson Ramos getting kidnapped at gunpoint in Venezuela in 2011, which was very clearly premeditated, but then you read into the details in regards to this murder, and we learn that Figueredo was shot multiple times. That sounds like a crime of passion to me. Unless it’s a mass murder, which this was not, you don’t shoot somebody multiple times in a public setting unless there’s some sort of impulse rage going on. The fact that he was shot multiple times at a party would suggest that this crime was not premeditated whatsoever. What events transpired that led up to the murder?
Like I said, way more questions than answers.