Back and home in Cincinnati, it’s time to get back to work. I’ll have some stuff from Greeneville over the next week or so. There are some real interesting players on that team, and as we found out yesterday, it’s just going to get more interesting. C. Trent Rosecrans of The Athletic reported that both Jonathan India and Mike Siani will be heading to join the Greeneville Reds yesterday. So, if you’re in the Tennessee area, you should probably take a trip to see them play. I’ll be making my way back later this month.
The Pensacola Blue Wahoos had a crazy ending to their game last night – one that you probably haven’t seen since you last watched 10-year-olds play.
Craziest ending of my life https://t.co/Y1qrTN3T4k
— Shed Long (@SLONG895) July 4, 2018
Pensacola had runners on the corners in the bottom of the 9th inning and were down by one run. A wild pitch led to both runs coming in to score for a 2-run, walk-off wild pitch.
Since there was no game review last night as I was traveling back home to Cincinnati, let’s talk a little bit about Josiah Gray’s outing. The Reds competitive balance 2nd round pick tossed 5.0 hitless innings last night in Johnson City. He walked just one batter and he struck out five batters on just 61 pitches with 42 strikes. I got plenty of video from the outing, and will have a report from the game up at some point in the near future. It was an impressive outing and had one of the scouts behind the plate repeatedly saying good things.
Jared Solomon is on a roll for Billings
Billings also had a strong starting pitching performance last night. Jared Solomon moved to 3-0 for the Mustangs with 6-innings of 1-run baseball. He walked two batters and had nine strikeouts on the night. That pushes his season line in four starts to this: 22.0 innings, 10 hits allowed, six walks, 23 strikeouts, and a 1.23 ERA. That will get it done, folks.
The Reds picked up Jared Solomon in the 11th round of the 2017 draft out of Lackawanna College as a sophomore. He was solid, but unspectacular last season in the Arizona Rookie League where he split time between the rotation and bullpen. In 2017 he posted a 4.26 ERA in 38.0 innings with 16 walks and 43 strikeouts. His strikeout rate is up slightly, and his walk rate is down slightly – but the biggest difference so far has been his groundball rate. In Arizona his groundball rate was almost non-existent as he posted a 28.6% rate. This season, and it’s an small sample size (in both years), his groundball rate is sitting at 64%. That’s an elite groundball rate, and the sample is obviously small, but just increasing his rate from last season would be a good step and so far, so good.