It turns out that the home of the Arizona Diamondbacks is a stadium that has the Trackman system in it. That means that we’ve got information from spring training game yesterday to look at, particularly from the pitchers. Here’s the list of guys we will be looking at today who pitched for the Cincinnati Reds on Monday: RHP Tyler Mahle, RHP, Evan Mitchell, LHP, Wandy Peralta and LHP Cody Reed.
Those were the minor league arms that pitched in the game. Scott Feldman and Blake Wood also saw action in the game, but we aren’t as concerned about the information on those guys. One of these guys did something that really jumped off of the page. Tyler Mahle didn’t had the best outing of the day. He is, however, the guy that stood out the most to me on the day.
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Tyler Mahle | RHP
According to the data he averaged 94.8 MPH with his fastball. That’s significantly harder than I, or anyone I spoke to about him, had him throwing last season. The data had him topping out at 97.2 MPH, which also would be the hardest I’ve seen anyone mention him throwing. In 2015 I did have a report of him throwing 96 at times – and to be perfectly fair, the Trackman system does measure velocity slightly closer to release than a radar gun does – so a 96 on a radar gun could be a 97 via a Trackman system. Two other pitches were also in that range, with a 96.8 and a 96.9 MPH pitch in the bunch.
It appears that Mahle was also throwing something that resembles a cutter in the 87-89 MPH range. There was also one change up at 84 MPH.
Trackman isn’t perfect. It’s not always accurate or calibrated correctly. It’s generally pretty reliable, but not perfect. So I reached out to a guy who works with the Trackman and Pitch F/X data for a living. I asked if the system in Scottsdale is known to be “off”. I was told that it can be a bit “noisy” at times. When a guy who’s never thrown this hard before comes out, even if it’s just in one inning, and is throwing this hard on February 27th, it’s certainly questionable. So I reached out to the Reds to see if I could confirm whether or not they also saw this from Tyler Mahle in the past, or if they got the same reading(s) today. It was confirmed for me that the information was also what the organization got from the game.
If you’re going to have a guy like Tyler Mahle who can pound the strikezone and can throw 97 MPH…. that’s something to really start getting excited about.
Evan Mitchell | RHP
We have past data to go on with Evan Mitchell as he pitched in the Arizona Fall League last year where several parks have one of the two pitch tracking systems in place. While there he averaged 96 MPH with his fastball. On Monday afternoon he averaged 93.4 – which, given where things are in spring training, shouldn’t be surprising that it’s down a bit from there. It’s February after all. In the game he topped out at 95.2 MPH. The right hander mixed in a slider between 85-87 MPH.
Wandy Peralta | LHP
Peralta pitched in the big leagues last season with the Reds, so there’s data from the past on him. In limited action last year in a late season call up he averaged 96.3 MPH. He topped out at 98.4 MPH. On Monday afternoon he averaged 96 MPH and topped out at 97.7 MPH. He also mixed in two sliders and what looks like a change up, all between 87-89 MPH.
Cody Reed | LHP
Reed pitched in the big leagues for quite a while in 2016 with the Reds, so there’s plenty of data available on him. What’s interesting is that if we look month-by-month for Reed last year, it was March in which he had his highest fastball velocity (March 21st, 94.8 MPH for the average). He averaged 94.2 MPH on Monday with the pitch, topping out at 96.5 MPH. It looks like he only used two change ups and a few sliders, all between 87-89 MPH.
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