The Cincinnati Reds played an exhibition game against a group of the minor leaguers in a “Futures Game” on Friday night in Louisville. The team technically was the Louisville Bats, wearing their jerseys and all of that. Most of the team, however, will not begin the year in Louisville. The team was made up of some of their top prospects who will play the Reds again today in Dayton (though the starting lineup may be a bit different). The game ended in a 1-1 tie, with the Futures Team scoring their lone run on an Aristides Aquino solo home run off of Rookie Davis.
There’s the video of the home run, but I missed the landing. It was a crowded photo area and I haven’t quite locked in the usage of the new video camera. But, we should note that he took a big leaguer deep to the opposite field corner that’s 340 feet down the line. He’s got some real power in that bat. Aquino had two of the four hits for the Futures Team in the game, with the other being a single. Nick Senzel and Gavin LaValley both had singles. You can see the entire box score for the game here if you’d like.
Notes from the Game
Technically we will start out with some notes from the pre-game. Nick Senzel put three balls from batting practice into the upper deck bleachers in right field. He’s a right handed hitter. And as noted above, it’s 340 to the line in right field. That’s some real intriguing power.
I spoke with Dick Williams about everyone’s favorite ineligible-to-sign-still prospect Luis Robert. I’ll have something on that around noon, but I think you’ll like it.
I can’t vouch for the validity of the radar gun at Louisville Slugger Field. In the past, it’s generally been a few MPH slow because of where it was located. But, I didn’t double check anything on Friday. What I do know is that Tanner Rainey had the hardest pitch on the board that I saw, at 96 MPH. With that said, I didn’t check the board at all when Robert Stephenson or Raisel Iglesias were pitching. Michael Lorenzen was consistently at 94-95, just for reference sake.
Adam Duvall hits the baseball hard. He doubled early on in the game. He seems to hitting the cover off of the ball over the last week, week-and-a-half.
After a tough start to the game, Tyler Mahle zoned in after the first inning. He allowed four straight singles to start the game, but wound up going 5.0 innings, allowing just one run on seven hits and a walk.