Danry Vásquez

Danry Josue Vasquez Blanco

• Bats Left, Throws Right
• Height 6' 3", Weight 190 lb.
• High School Colegio Privado Nuestros Simbolos

• Born January 8, 1994 in Ocumare del Tuy, Miranda Venezuela

BR Minors page

Biographical Information

Outfielder Danry Vasquez was signed by the Detroit Tigers before the 2011 season as an amateur free agent out of Venezuela for a signing bonus of $1.2 million, a significant sum for an international amateur player. The scouts were Oscar Garcia, Pedro Chavez, Miguel Garcia and Tom Moore. He spent three seasons in their organization, beginning with the GCL Tigers in 2011 and playing in Class A the next two seasons, with the Connecticut Tigers and West Michigan Whitecaps. He hit .311 in 72 games for Connecticut in 2012 after being demoted from the Midwest League where he had struggled. He led the New York-Penn League with 90 hits. On July 29, 2013, he was traded to the Houston Astros in return for relief pitcher Jose Veras, a sign that he was still well regarded as a prospect at that time.

Danry finished the 2013 season with the Quad Cities River Bandits and finished that year with a combined line of .284/.331/.400 in 129 games. In 2014, he was assigned to the Lancaster JetHawks of the California League where he hit .291 with 30 doubles in 114 games, playing in a very favorable hitting environment. In 2015, back at Lancaster, he hit .315 in 40 games to earn a promotion to the Corpus Christi Hooks of the AA Texas League. There, he hit only .245 in 73 games. He played regularly for the Leones del Caracas of the Venezuelan League after both the 2014 and 2015 seasons, getting into 48 and 57 games respectively and hitting .304 and .276 in a very competitive environment.

In 2016, Danry went back to Corpus Christi. After 60 games he was hitting .265/.322/.374 when he was caught on a security videotape assaulting his girlfriend in a stairwell at the team's ballpark, Whataburger Field. The incident was investigated by the Corpus Christi, TX police department, leading to his arrest on August 4th as he faced criminal misdemeanor charges of assault. When the videotape was made available, Commissioner Rob Manfred immediately invoked organized baseball's newly adopted policy on family violence to issue him an indefinite suspension on August 17th. That same day, the Astros announced that he had been handed his unconditional release, given the incontrovertible nature of the evidence against him. He was ordered by the court to complete a 52-hour course described as a "behavioral modification course", which he did. The charges were dismissed afterwards through a plea bargain. He and his girlfriend remained together and they became engaged in November 2017.

Vasquez did not play in the United States in 2017, following his release by the Astros, only lining up in the Venezuelan League, for the Leones del Caracas in 2016-17 and the Tiburones de La Guaira in 2017-18. In 2018, he signed a contract with the Lancaster Barnstormers of the independent Atlantic League, but he was released before the season, on March 13th, after team management said that it had been made aware of the existence of the compromising video. This of course raised the question about whether the team had made any research before signing Vasquez, given the very public nature of the incident which had cost him his job in organized baseball.

Further Reading

• Monica Lopez and Len Hayward: "Former Hooks player Danry Vasquez released from Lancaster Barnstormers after assault video surfaces", USA Today, March 14, 2018. [1]
• George Vondracek: "Astros release prospect Danry Vasquez following domestic incident", USA Today Sports, August 17, 2016. [2]