The Cincinnati Reds have selected right-handed pitcher Joe Boyle out of Notre Dame. The 6′ 7″ righty was rated as the 101st best prospect in the draft by Baseball America, 165th by MLB Pipeline, and 186th by Fangraphs.
Joe Boyle Scouting Report
Height: 6′ 7″ | Weight: 240
B/T: R/R | DOB: August 14, 1999
Arm strength. Joe Boyle has some of the best velocity in the entire draft. He’s capable of sitting in the upper 90’s and has hit 102 in the past. And the right-hander can reach those velocities without much effort. He also throws an above-average to plus slider.
So why was a guy with a plus-plus fastball and a potential plus slider available in the 5th round? Well, that’s because he’s struggled to throw strikes in a big way. From 2018-2020 with Notre Dame he threw 36.0 innings and he walked 48 batters to go along with 57 strikeouts. The stuff is huge, but he misses the strikezone at rates that simply will never work.
At his size, the hope is that he can come into things a bit further down the road – something that isn’t rare for pitchers this tall. But still, he’d have to cut his walk rate in college in half in order to still be in a range that would be considered terrible. There’s a lot of upside here, but the risk is also enormous given just how poor his strike-throwing ability has been.
College Stats
Video
Joe Boyle after being drafted by the Reds
“Honestly, it was a really great feeling. Kind of an accumulation of a lot of my hard work and time and effort I put into it. It feels really good to hear my named called on TV,” said Boyle on what it was like being drafted.
“I talked to the (Reds) area scout in the fall. I talked with some others in their scouting department,” said Boyle. I honestly wasn’t too sure which teams were more interested compared to others, so I honestly didn’t know that the Reds were more interested.”
When he was asked about whether he’s been able to maintain throwing with baseball shut down, here’s what he had to say.
“I throw with my brother three times a week. I’ve been throwing, recently just started doing bullpens again at the indoor facility that just opened up by my house. Then I’ve been working out too, I’ve got a full gym in my garage. I’ve been staying in the shape I’ve been in the last three years, perhaps a little bit better. I’ve treated it like an extended offseason, so I have more time to focus on my fitness and nutrition and everything like that.”
Very disappointing draft.
I disagree I’m actually really happy with it. They basically went for max upside. In a draft where you don’t know as much that makes sense. All of their picks have pretty great upside especially Hendrick. It’s possible none of them work out but I’m optimistic about Roa, and Boyle could very easily become a pretty decent reliever
Let’s hope Broddy can get a hold of this kid, and turn him around.
Seems like he might be trying over overt though everything.
Why was there so many high ranked high school guys not picked? It seemed like there was so many. Was it possible that it was because the teams knew that they wouldn’t sign? Was it because the teams didn’t have enough money to sign some of the guys?
For High school kids, I wonder if it signability.
No doubt now that the Reds have moved almost all the way to full on analytical scouting. Big exit velocity, spin rates, and power. Just haven’t gone all in on age.
They have also decided to abandon the hitter profile of big power with no hit tool, for pitchers with wicked stuff and no idea of how to get it in the strike zone. Hopefully the new pitching regime already have seen changes they can make, rather than wishing something happens to work.
Going to be interesting to see which clubs are better at recruiting, eh? What are the Reds’ top selling points??
Storied franchise (Oldest in baseball! Big Red Machine!) ready to challenge again. Come join for the rings.
Batters – come hit with Joey Votto!
Pitchers – come work with Bauer and Boddy!
It won’t have universal appeal but for those that way inclined it will be a big draw.
I think the Reds new full organization development approach is a big selling point and for pitchers, having Boddy and the analytic approach could be huge in our favor.
His gathering phase of his windup reminds me of BobSteve. Zero HRs allowed means something.
Give me the live arm at this spot in the draft. If the Reds truly believe in their new development system, this and the Bonnin pick will certainly put it to the test. If both turn out to simply be ML relievers these picks will be huge wins. It’s modern baseball—-you need out-getters, period.
Shooting for upside after round 3 makes all the sense in the world.
I will say, this scouting and development staff is showing confidence and direction with their plans.
Without looking at players available when the picks were made, Im left wondering from their comments if they picked projects for the sake of it.
For a small market team that can not afford to take chance and miss, , seems like they have put themselves in a draft position to do exactly that. Or it could all click. But it is a big risk draft.
When the average middle of the 1st round pick winds up being a solid bench player or reliever, I think we all generally tend to think about “risk” way too much beyond the 1st round. Odds are heavily in favor of anyone never getting more than a cup of coffee.
With attitude why even draft anyone? The point is to find gems and get more than a cup.
Because you hope you get better. But the expectation shouldn’t be that you will, because historically, you don’t.
Gray is always negative. Hr never has a nice thing to say abput the Reds.
You don’t read enough of what I write then. But it’s also not my job to pretend something is good if it’s not. I’ve defended this weird 5-round version of the draft against multiple people over the last few days who have been dogging the org for how they went about it. Guess you missed that. I was pretty happy with how the big league club went for things in the offseason getting Moustakas and Castellanos. Guess you missed that, too.
If i was a MLB player.
I wouldn’t want to stand in the batters box against this guy.
Except for the first pick, it looks like the Reds gave up on the rest of the draft to save money. It can’t be because they are good at developing pitchers.
In my opinion this draft shows how little the teams and mlb.com and baseball America knew about the players. Doug may want to comment on this. I counted 34 players that were signed in the draft that were not on mlb.com’s top 200 list and several were not on baseball America’s top 500. I believe that the lack of knowledge was due to them not having this spring to evaluate the high school or college players.