Luis Mey was dominant in the Arizona Fall League following the 2024 regular season. The 23-year-old right-handed pitcher didn’t allow a run in 8.2 innings of 1-hit, 2- walks baseball. Mey struck out eight of the 30 hitters that he faced out in Arizona. Shortly after the league ended, Cincinnati added him to the 40-man to protect him from upcoming Rule 5 draft.
He would take off two weeks between the time when the Fall League ended and the time in which he began pitching in the Dominican Winter League. On November 26th he joined Estrellas and threw 0.2 innings of scoreless baseball – but he got some help in that one. He retired the first two hitters that night, but then proceeded to walk three straight batters before he was replaced on the mound.
Things went a bit better on Saturday night. Mey entered the game for the 7th inning, but not without a little bit of early intrigue. The first batter of the inning drew a walk on six pitches. Mey rebounded by getting a double play on a grounder to erase the baserunner.The third batter of the inning took back-to-back sliders for strikes to begin his at-bat. Mey then shut things down by firing a 102 MPH fastball by him for a swinging strike to end the inning.
On the night, Mey threw 13 pitches and three of them were sliders. Of the 10 fastballs that he threw, eight of them were over 100.0 MPH and seven of them were at least 101.0 MPH.
Control is going to the key for Mey when it comes to his future. He’s improved it from earlier in his career, but he has to continue down that same path because he still is too inconsistent with it and his walk rate remains too high for him to be a reliable big league reliever. Like Zach Maxwell – the two hardest throwers in the organization – just how good they can be will come down to finding more consistency with the strikezone that will allow their stuff to play.