SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — You have seen him, on X and Instagram and TikTok and YouTube and every other platform capable of taking whole people and shrinking them to 10-second clips. In these snippets, Jefry Yan is always celebrating a strikeout by jumping, his knees rising to his chest, until he lands and punctuates the revelry with a fist pump, a pantomimed strike-three call, a pelvic thrust, a twirl or a dozen other spasmodic movements, depending on what has inspired him at that particular moment.

Yan, a 28-year-old left-handed reliever with the

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With a 2.61 ERA and 51 strikeouts over 31 innings between Single-A Jupiter and Double-A Pensacola, Yan earned an invitation to the prospect-rich Arizona Fall League. Struggles to throw strikes limited Yan’s effectiveness there and the next season at Double-A, but nobody doubted the quality of his fastball, and Yan remained an intriguing prospect accordingly, starting the 2023 season in Pensacola, where he first introduced the jump.

“I thought he was going to get in trouble — like, dude, you’re going to get kicked out,” Maria said. “He was like, ‘Relax. It’s all good. They didn’t say anything.'”

Yan struck out 91 hitters in 51 innings and saved 13 games, earning an invitation to play alongside Fernando Tatis Jr., Jurickson Profar, Robinson Cano and 30 others with big league experience for the Estrellas Orientales in the Dominican Winter League. Broadcasts of the games captured Yan in full high-jump mode, and even by the standards of Dominican baseball — known for its passion and outsize merriment — he stood out.

Social media ate it up. Not only was Yan redefining what a pitcher could do on the field, he did so with a fastball that now touched triple digits. His agent, Gustavo Vazquez, started contacting Japanese teams in hopes of getting Yan a higher-paying gig than the $35,800 salary Triple-A players received last year. The Seibu Lions signed Yan to a minor league contract and he made their Nippon Professional Baseball team, playing at Japan’s highest level and earning more in one season than he had his entire career.

Maria spent two months with Yan in Japan, where he posted a 5.58 ERA, and followed him back to the D.R., where he struck out 26 in 21 innings with a 1.71 ERA for Estrellas. With his experience in NPB and his success in the winter, Yan readied himself to return to Arizona, latch back on with a big league organization and fulfill his prophecy.

“I’m really proud of him,” Maria said. “A lot of people don’t realize the way him and a lot of people from his country grow up. To see that to where he’s at now is incredible. He’s almost there.”

Finally, after the six-year wait, the minor league bus rides, the time spent halfway across the world, the doubt and the pressure and the recognition that every baseball career is an exercise in fragility, Yan’s moment has come.

The Rockies were the most aggressive team in pursuing Yan this winter and signed him to a minor league contract with an invitation to spring training. He threw a scoreless inning in his first game on Feb. 22, returned three days later and sandwiched three strikeouts around a hit and walk, and followed that with a third scoreless outing. While Yan’s fastball sat at 95 mph, that was plenty effective, particularly if he feathered the strike zone with his slider.

Yan ran into his first roadblock Wednesday, entering the game in the ninth inning with a 4-1 lead. He proceeded to give up a single, a walk, a single, a wild pitch and a groundout that cut Colorado’s advantage to 4-3. When Rockies shortstop Aaron Schunk snagged a scorching 106 mph line drive from Mike Brosseau, Yan secured his first save of the spring for a Rockies team that just lost its closer from last season, Justin Lawrence, to a waiver claim by Pittsburgh.

Perhaps the only thing separating Yan from the Rockies’ Opening Day roster is his control, with 153 walks in 204⅔ minor league innings. For an organization always in need of swing-and-miss stuff to mitigate the altitude in Denver, though, Yan’s 284 strikeouts make him an alluring option.

Whether it’s on March 27 or later in the season, Yan recognizes his opportunity will come because of what he learned along the way, not his moves on the mound. He still gets up at 5 a.m., sending Vazquez videos of his predawn workouts. He ate at the Silverios’ house last week, and later in the week they met him on the field after a game, hopeful to do the same in an even bigger ballpark.

They’re all waiting for the day they’ve spent nearly a decade foretelling, when Yan gets his call to MLB. Maria and the Silverios and the Expendables will be there to toast Yan the person and not just the persona that turned him into a sensation.

“They contributed to what I am today,” Yan said. “They helped me, they supported me a lot and they told me that if I was going to have a career in professional sports I had to take it seriously. I had to put a lot of effort into it to be able to succeed one day.

“And today, thank God, we are doing it.”

ESPN’s Juan Arturo Recio contributed to this report