Raisel Iglesias started his career in the big leagues, but that only last one start before the Cincinnati Reds sent him back to the minors. Last night was his first appearance for Triple-A Louisville. The right hander allowed a run in 5.0 innings on a walk and three hits. He also struck out three batters while throwing 73 pitches, getting eight ground outs with three flyball outs.
In his start with the Reds to begin the season Iglesias averaged just over 92 MPH with his fastball, topping out at 95 MPH. In his final inning though, his velocity did start to dip. It wasn’t much, but he did drop off slightly from pitches 60-75.
Last night saw Iglesias throwing in the 90-92 MPH range in the first inning, not even hitting 93 MPH. He picked that up in the second, throwing 90-93 and touching 94 once. Moving forward he remained in that 90-93 range but touched 94 with a bit more regularity and touched 95 twice. He threw 73 pitches and he held his velocity throughout, not seeing any dips in velocity like he did in his big league opener.
The fastball velocity was there, but let’s talk about his secondary stuff. Throughout the game, from the first inning on, Iglesias and catcher Ramon Cabrera mixed all of his pitches in well. He would go to the offspeed pitches early or late in the counts, seemingly very confident in all of his pitches.
One thing that Iglesias struggled with, is also sort of where he was successful. His control was not really there on Friday night. Of his 73 pitches thrown, only 42 were for strikes. That’s a little bit lower of a ratio than you’d like to see. He fell behind hitters at times, but where he strived was when he needed to throw a strike he was able to do so just about every time and do so with all of his pitches.
It will be interesting to watch how the Cincinnati Reds handle Iglesias moving forward. He’s not really been in a competitive situation for two years now. The right hander has been on a very limited pitch count in both of his starts with neither topping 80 pitches to this point. The team is going to limit his innings, though they haven’t said just how many at this point (at least publicly), but it also seems that they are going to be keeping an eye on his pitch count as well.