By Carlos Castillo, Co-Founder, Kachi Gloves. April 2026.
Julio Teherán retired on March 9, 2026, a few hours after Colombia beat Panama at the World Baseball Classic. He was supposed to start against Canada that tournament. A shoulder impingement in warm-ups said otherwise. So Julio stood in the dugout for his country's last pool-play win, recorded a video in Spanish, and closed out fourteen years in professional baseball.
I've known Julio since the 2021 offseason. He came to Miami to work with me at the academy, looking for a new gear on an already-accomplished career. I told him his arm angle was too high for the way his body was starting to move. I told him his changeup grip needed to come off the two-seam orientation and sit deeper in the hand. I told him to start throwing a cutter. He did. Every offseason after that, he came back.
Kachi Gloves didn't start in 2026. It started in 2021, in a Miami batting cage, when a 2× All-Star with 1,200 career strikeouts walked in asking a guy with four MLB seasons to help him extend his run in the Show by a few more years. The glove company came later. The working relationship is what built this.
Who Julio Is, For Anyone Who Wasn't Watching the NL East
Born in Cartagena, Colombia. Signed by the Atlanta Braves as an international free agent on July 3, 2007 — at sixteen years old, for $850,000. Entered the 2011 and 2012 seasons as Baseball America's #5 prospect in all of professional baseball. Made his Major League debut at age 20 in May 2011.
From 2014 through 2019, Julio made six consecutive Opening Day starts for the Atlanta Braves. That ties him with Warren Spahn. That's a fact I didn't know until a year into our working relationship, when someone showed it to me in a box score and I made Julio look at it. He shrugged.
He threw the first pitch from the mound in Truist Park history on April 14, 2017. He took two no-hit bids into the seventh inning of separate games (June 5, 2013 vs. Pittsburgh; May 3, 2018 vs. the Mets). He was named NL All-Star twice — in 2014 during a 221-inning season with a 2.89 ERA, and in 2016 when the Braves picked him as their lone representative on the back of a 2.72 ERA that his record didn't reflect because the team couldn't score. He finished his career with 81 wins, 1,260 strikeouts, and 20.3 bWAR over 255 games.
In Colombia, where fewer than 25 people have ever played Major League Baseball, the national team manager called him "el Édgar Rentería del lado de pitcheo" — the Édgar Rentería of pitching. He was the second Colombian-born player ever named an MLB All-Star. The first ever to start an Opening Day game in the Majors.
Why the Academy Mattered
I retired as a player in 2011 after 18 years pitching professionally — four MLB seasons with the White Sox and Red Sox, plus stops in Japan's NPB (Fukuoka Daiei Hawks), Taiwan's CPBL (Macoto Cobras, Brother Elephants), and winter-ball leagues in the Dominican Republic, Puerto Rico, and Venezuela. I came back to Miami and built Kachi Baseball — the academy at 18732 SW 105th Ave — because South Florida needed a program that emphasized modern training techniques for serious players.
What I didn't realize at the time was that the academy would become a test lab. When my students needed gloves, the retail market was giving them either cheap stuff that wouldn't last a season or premium gloves built with the wrong specs for youth hands. I started sourcing directly from the same Japanese manufacturers whose gloves I'd used in Asia. That worked. Parents asked where to buy. Other coaches asked. Eventually I had a glove line.
When Julio came to train, he was already using retail gloves. We talked about what he actually needed — a pitcher's glove that concealed grip, kept weight off his already-tired shoulder, and broke in the way a pro expects. I built him one. He wore it. He kept coming back.
Why Now
The honest answer is: because Julio is retired and he finally has time. For years, the plan was always going to be to formalize this partnership when he stopped pitching. The 2026 WBC wasn't the planned exit. But the timing ended up being what it is, and the work we'd been doing informally for five years now becomes the formal thing.
What Julio Said
"Representar a Colombia en el mejor béisbol del mundo para mí fue un honor."
("Representing Colombia in the best baseball in the world was an honor to me.")
The first glove he designed under his own name drops this summer. The pitcher's build. Closed web. Japanese Kip. Same factory, same leather, same specs as a fully-game-ready Teherán glove from his Atlanta years. Available to anyone who wants to build one.
Welcome, Julio. We have a lot of work to do.
Julio Teherán's full career record: Baseball-Reference. His retirement coverage: MLB.com, El Tiempo. Kachi Gloves founder bios: Carlos, Julio. Media inquiries: press@kachigloves.com.