Opening day is exactly one week from today. Is anyone going? Unless I walk into some tickets somehow, I won’t be going this year.
Its a little old at this point, but after Friday’s game where both Mike Leake and Travis Wood pitched, Dusty had some things to say that suggests the job will likely go to Wood if it comes down to just those two.
“The only thing is that Leake hasn’t gone in a five-man rotation yet, he’s only thrown Friday night,” Baker said. “We don’t know how he’s going to respond to that, Wood has five years of pro ball. Wood’s more experienced. We don’t know quite enough about Chapman yet to make a true determination.”
Of course maybe I am reading into that too much too. But it sounds like the Reds want to send Leake to the minors and I don’t really blame them for it. Though I do think he has pitched better than Wood, Wood has shown he can handle a solid workload in the majors with over 170 innings thrown last season including the playoffs.
Of course it may all be for not as Aroldis Chapman pitched Sunday for an inning against the Brewers AAA team and looked good doing so. C Trent has the full report, with video over at CNati.com.
If you missed my article on Saturday, I took a look at Mike Leake and Travis Wood via Pitch F/X since the park in Peoria has it installed. I am still impressed by the movement that Mike Leake gets on his fastball. Donnie Joseph pitched in the game Saturday which also was in Peoria, but I haven’t had a chance to break down the data yet on him. I did notice though that his velocity was a little lower than where it was at when I saw him last year in Dayton.
Two of Redleg Nation’s Spotlight Players had articles up over the weekend. The first one is on Matt Klinker over at the Louisville Bats official website. Logan Parker has one at one of his hometown paper’s website. Parker talks about what he is doing in order to become more valuable, including playing the outfield.
Corey Brinn has up some video from the AAA game on Saturday in which both Bobby Jenks and Jake Peavy pitched against our minor leaguers. Of course we also pitched Johnny Cueto against their AAA team so I guess it kind of evened it up some.
Speaking of minor league action, C Trent also had a blog post up on what he saw/heard while spending a day watching the minor leaguers. There are bits and pieces on Chris Heisey, Yorman Rodriguez, Jordan Smith, Yonder Alonso, Todd Frazier, Chris Valaika, Brad Boxberger and Juan Duran.