A number of Colombian natives are shinning in Major League Baseball and professional baseball pitcher José Quintana is one of them. Starting out in 2006 with the Venezuelan Summer League (VSL) pitching for the New York Mets affiliate VSL Mets, Quintana spent the first five years of his career in the minor league baseball before joining the majors towards the end of 2011 thanks to a contract with the Chicago White Sox.
An All-Star in 2016, José Quintana continues to improve his game by the year. Here is everything you need to know about him.
José Quintana Biography
José Guillermo Quintana was born on January 24, 1989, in Arjona, Colombia. He began his professional baseball career in 2006 when as an international free agent, he signed with the New York Mets. The Mets would send him to get his start with the VSL Mets of the Venezuelan Summer League. The following season, Quintana was penalized for violating the league’s drug policy and as a result, he did not play in any game in 2007.
The following year, 2008, he was signed by the New York Yankees and sent to the Dominican Summer League to play with their minor league affiliate, the DSL Yankees 2. Quintana would then go on to play for other affiliates of the Yankees including; the Gulf Coast Yankees, the Charleston RiverDogs, and the Tampa Yankees.
After the end of the 2011 season, Quintana became a minor league free agent after which he was signed by the Chicago White Sox who had been keeping tabs on him throughout the 2011 season. Upon signing him on the 10th of November 2011, the Sox sent Quintana to play with their minor league affiliate Birmingham Barons.
Six months later, on May 7, 2012, he was promoted to the major league. However, he was sent back to the minor league but would return before the end of the month to feature in a majors game against the Cleveland Indians where he was greatly impressed.
By March 2014, José Quintana had impressed the Sox enough to earn a 5-year contract extension. At the end of the 2014 season, he became a “Super 2” arbitration-eligible player, and as a result, he activated a clause that surged the total worth of his contract to $26.5 million guaranteed.
In 2016, the year he was named an All-Star, Quintana was nominated for the American League Cy Young Award but came in 10th place. In the 2017 World Baseball Classic, he played for the Colombian national team as a pitcher. José Quintana was traded to the Chicago Cubs in July 2017 in exchange for four other players.
As of June 2018, José Quintana’s MLB stats are;
Win-loss record: 63–61
Earned run average: 3.56
Strikeouts: 1,058
His Wife and Family
José Quintana is a proud husband and father judging by how he frequently gushes about his wife and daughter on social media. Quintana on the 23rd of December 2017 tied the knot with his longtime girlfriend Michel Quintana (nee Montana).
The baseball star’s Instagram page is awash with photos of his wedding day as well as photos of vacation trips with his family. As we can tell from the videos, Quintana and his wife Michel had a very colorful wedding complete with fireworks.
It is not clear when their relationship actually began but the couple, before they got married, welcome a child together – a daughter named Ariadna Quintana who was born on January 20th, 2016. If Ariadna waited four more days, she could have shared the same birthday with her father who was born on January 24th.
The little adorable girl had a role to play in her parent’s wedding. Mrs. Quintana, unlike her superstar husband, is uber private. Her Instagram account where she boasts over 5.5K followers is private. However, from our investigations, we discovered that Michel is a psychologist in training. Her Instagram bio reads; “Psicologa en formacion” which is Spanish for Psychology information. She was born on April 13th.
José Quintana in an interview with Spanish media outlet El Universal gushed about his family saying that Michel and Ariadna are his “fighting engine” and a “great motivation for him.”
When the MLB season is on, Quintana’s family resides in an apartment in Chicago’s Michigan Avenue. They also own a home in their native Colombia.
