The 2014 winter league season was the first one where right hander Alejandro Chacin pitched with the highest level teams in the Venezuelan Winter League. He actually pitched for two teams in the regular season, but made just three total appearances that made up just 2.2 innings.
In 2015 the 22-year-old reliever has been a regular part of the Tigres de Aragua bullpen. In the two weeks since the season began, Chacin has appeared in six games. He’s thrown 4.1 innings, allowing just one run so far with one walk and he’s struck out five batters. The one walk was intentional.
Despite his young age and relative inexperience at this level, he’s been used in the 7th or 8th innings in all but one of his appearances. The right hander had a 2.08 ERA in the early goings.
In other fall and winter league news, Nick Travieso will be making his Arizona Fall League debut on Tuesday. He was originally scheduled to pitch on Friday night, but weather got in the way and postponed the game. Over the weekend there were no games as the league held it’s hitting challenge (more on that below). That pushed his debut back a few days and he will take the mound in Glendale on Tuesday afternoon. The official Arizona Fall League website listed him as the starter for Monday night at home in Peoria, but he is indeed starting on Tuesday. Glendale doesn’t have the Pitch F/X system – so the push back to Tuesday doesn’t work out for us to get our first look at hard data on his pitches, but the odds are good that we will eventually see it as Peoria’s home park does have the system installed.
As noted above, the hitting challenge took place over the weekend. The Reds had one participant in the contest. Alex Blandino put up a score of 900 points, but that wasn’t enough to take home the crown, which went to Dodgers prospect Jacob Scavuzzo. Here’s some video from the event with a few clips of Blandino in action.