On Friday afternoon John Fay talked with Cincinnati Reds RHP Raisel Iglesias. They spoke about plenty of things, but the one thing that jumped out to me was when Iglesias was asked about the pitches that he threw.
Since I came to America and started working at the professional level, I added two more pitches — the sinker and the change-up.
The change up is a pitch that we knew he had added. He used it at times in the Arizona Fall League. What we didn’t see in Arizona last fall was his usage of a two-seam fastball.
While we are working with an incredibly small sample size of pitches, given that he only threw seven innings (and all were one inning outings), and only two innings came with the Pitch F/X system running, we were able to a glimpse of what his pitches moved like.
His four-seam fastball has about 10 inches of rising action to it. His change up has about 6.5 inches of rising action to it. A two-seam fastball usually have less than five inches of rise to it (they tend to be between 0-5 inches of rise depending on the pitcher). It will be interesting to see just how much the pitch actually sinks given that even his change up wouldn’t really qualify as a sinker.