Valencia gets some love, and opportunity, from A’s

A’s reliever Dan Otero played against him in high school — and with him on a South Florida travel team after their senior year — and recalls Valencia’s exploits well.

Here was this tall, skinny kid pumping balls over the fence.

Valencia, though, didn’t always get love from the scouts, going undrafted out of high school.

Even when the Twins took him in the 19th round in 2006, their area scout wasn’t overly impressed with the then-University of Miami third baseman.

That, though, wasn’t necessarily a bad thing — many a ballplayer has fueled his drive to the big leagues with an “I’ll-show-you” attitude.

[...] Valencia has also had to battle the perception that he’s a platoon player.



Since coming up with the Twins in 2010, Valencia has bounced around, going to Boston in 2012, Baltimore in 2013 and Kansas City and Toronto in 2014.

Some suggest this might be because he doesn’t have much of a filter, though Valencia says he’s toned it down in recent years.

Mindy Valencia said her son was plenty competitive on his own, but she does recall throwing bottle caps for him to hit at an early age to help him work on his swing.

“I thought he needed to be prepared,” she said.

Valencia enjoys traveling and went all over Europe last offseason, in part to watch soccer — he’s a Barcelona fan.

The A’s have Valencia under club control for two more years and he believes they are just a few moves from being a playoff team again.

[...] I wish it had happened earlier in my career, but at the same time I’m happy I’ve had some limited success to prove the doubters wrong.

Susan Slusser is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer.