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    The rare velocity by Cincinnati Reds prospect Luis Mey

    Doug Gray 15

    I’ve written about Luis Mey plenty over the last few years. Last week I had a note on Mey as spring training came to an end about how much faster his sinker was than other sinkers in minor league baseball. That got my brain going a little bit, but over the weekend I actually went to work with an idea and wrote something up on Patreon. Speaking of that, there’s no better time than now to think about signing up there to support the site and get some articles in advance as well as game recaps with additional information every day during the season.

    In the minor leagues there isn’t exactly as much pitch tracking data as there is in the big leagues. In the minors you get that data in the Florida State League and in Triple-A from a public facing standpoint. That gives us a limited view of what minor leaguers have been able to do.

    Baseball America was able to get pitch tracking data for all of the 2024 minor league season (teams are tracking this at every park in the minors, but it’s not going public in most cases). I’ve written about this before, but they published the list of every pitcher who hit 100 MPH in the minor leagues last season. Luis Mey hit 103.0 with his sinker. That was the fastest sinker in 2024 in the minors and the next best from someone else was 101.2 MPH. That’s an enormous gap.

    On Saturday, Mey made his Triple-A debut. That means we got data on all of his pitches. He threw nine fastballs and all of them were over 100. Three of them were over 102, with him topping out at 102.5 MPH.

    That got me to thinking about the Baseball America article once again. And that led me to the question of how 102 MPH sinker’s have looked in the big leagues. We’ve had pitch tracking in the big leagues since 2008 when MLB started using Pitch F/X, then around 2015 they moved to Trackman, before then moving to Hawkeye over the last few years.

    Going back to 2008 there have been 594 2-seam fastballs that clocked in at 102 MPH or faster. The top mark came from Aroldis Chapman at 105.1 MPH. Among the 594 fastballs that were at least 102 MPH, Chapman threw 140 of them. But he wasn’t the guy with the most. Jordan Hicks has thrown 353 of them. Between the two of them, they’ve thrown 83% of the 102+ MPH sinkers since we started tracking it in the big leagues.

    So where does Luis Mey fit in here? Well, he had three 2-seamers at 102+ on Saturday. Only eight pitchers have thrown more than that in their big league careers.

    It’s likely that there have been some minor leaguers that would fit onto this list if we had all of the data from past seasons at all levels. But we’re also seeing that even at the highest level that reaching 102 MPH with a 2-seamer is incredibly rare, with just two pitchers doing it even more than a few times.

    Luis Mey isn’t just bringing elite velocity. He’s bringing velocity that basically only two other guys have regularly shown in the last two decades.

    Doug Gray
    Doug Gray is the owner and operator of this website and has been running it since 2006 in one variation or another.

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    15 Responses

    3. I cannot quantify it in any sense of the word, but Mey inspires more confidence in me than Maxwell.

      I think this started in the AZ Fall League, watching him saw hitters off and induce one weak ground ball after another with his plutonium sinker.

      As i think out loud, this is probably why — Maxwell seems like he all about the strikeout while Mey isn’t so much. So i am beginning to think the big step in Mey’s development came when he realized he could just get outs instead of trying to blow hitters away with high four seamers.

      2. Yeah, kinda sorta. SSS warnings and all, but their MiLB stats are similar, though what jumps out with Maxwell is 4hrs in 120 ip – Mey at 11 in 164.

        Given the velocity it’s interesting that hitters simply haven’t run into more of them.

        Really will just come down to if and when either of them get the BB% anywhere close to reasonable. Mid-season may be the earliest to trust if that is happening.

        1. Contrary to the popular belief, the hitter provides almost all of the power on home runs, not the pitcher’s velocity.

        2. I completely agree that watching and waiting for a pattern of better command and control to show up is required, in spite of the drum beats to promote them yesterday.

          If looking at trends (development) re HRs, Mey had no HR’s in 2024 across Hi-A and AA. Should that trend continue across a third level, there might be some data in there (Maxwell was also outstanding, with just one HR across AA and AAA last year).

          Head to head, Maxwell has thrown 125 pro innings in three-plus seasons of 0.03 HR/9 IP.

          Mey has throw 164 innings in five-plus pro seasons of 0.06 HR/9 IP.

          .

      3. btw – Doug’s article from a few days ago regarding Maxwell adding a cutter to his repertoire may be sign that he may be maturing into an effective “pitcher” too.

    4. More thinking out loud here.

      One thing i am watching for this year is, in addition to how many walks Mey and Maxwell issue, is how much they are missing the strike zone by.

      I don’t know how much i buy the ‘effectively wild’ theory, for one. But in Maxwell’s first game, where he got good results (and was a little lucky IMO), he had some misses that were way out of the zone. Whereas, in the game yesterday, he benefitted from two ABS challenges where his pitches were both filthy and hit the edges of the zone. Unhittable. His stuff moves so much, i imagine strikes can get missed a fair amount.

    5. I think you can make a good case to bring both of them up fairly soon. Given that both are still green, I suppose that they may as well wait another 3 weeks or so for the extra year of control, as much as I don’t like that in general.

      But they need to bring them up soon, anyway, because pitchers who throw that hard tend to injure their arms. The Reds don’t need to waste any pre-injury time in AAA, especially with the lack of any other true power arms in the bullpen.

      1. I don’t think there’s a good case to be made at all to bring either of them up soon. They both have serious control problems.

    6. Mey and Maxwell are both really exciting as they are young(ish), big guys that can throw really hard. They have a lot of uncoachable intangibles.

      However, if they are ever going to harness their full potential, they need to work on those coachable intangibles. With Maxwell adding a cutter and Mey with his plutonium-level sinker, it’s not hard to squint and see a scenario where both are ready to help the big club this year. But they’ll have to prove it on the field over a series of months.

      Still, just the prospect of one or even both of them in Cincinnati’s bullpen is really something to dream on.

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