If it wasn’t clear that the Cincinnati Reds won the Johnny Cueto trade, it is now. Brandon Finnegan made his first big league start (all of his previous outings in the big leagues were as a reliever) on Friday night and allowed just one run in five innings to go along with three hits and two walks. The left hander also struck out four batters and picked up the win, for those of you that are into that being awarded to a single player.
In his only other outings as a Red the lefty came out of the bullpen against the St. Louis Cardinals. The first time out he tossed two perfect innings with two strikeouts. In the second appearance of the series he walked a batter and struck out the other two in 0.2 innings.
With both of those games coming out of the bullpen, Finnegan used his sinker and his slider, but didn’t show a third offering. Let’s take a quick look at the pitch breakdown from each relief appearance.
| Date | Pitch | avgVelo | maxVelo | usage |
| 9/11/2015 | Sinker | 93.7 | 95.0 | 65% |
| 9/13/2015 | Sinker | 92.4 | 94.3 | 60% |
| 9/11/2015 | Slider | 83.1 | 84.9 | 35% |
| 9/13/2015 | Slider | 81.8 | 82.6 | 40% |
He was certainly throwing a little bit harder on the 11th than on the 13th, and that was a longer outing as well. With just a day between and coming off of a two inning stint, that makes plenty of sense.
Looking at the chart above, as a reliever we saw Finnegan with roughly a 60/40 split on his fastball and his slider usage. Friday night was a different look.
The Reds limited Brandon Finnegan to 75 pitches in the game, not much less than he had been limited to when he was starting in August with the Louisville Bats. His pitch selection as a starter was quite a bit different than that as a reliever. It had been five days since his last outing, so his arm was fresh and the velocity was up. Let’s take a look at his pitches from the game.
| Date | Pitch | avgVelo | maxVelo | usage |
| 9/18/2015 | Sinker | 92.9 | 94.6 | 79% |
| 9/18/2015 | Slider | 84.3 | 85.2 | 12% |
| 9/18/2015 | Change Up | 85.3 | 86.1 | 9% |
The big thing that jumps out here is just how often he used his fastball, especially compared to how often he was using it as a reliever. Generally speaking, an average Major League starter throws his fastball 65% of the time and then mixes in other offerings the remaining 35% of the time. That will vary from start to start of course, but on average, that’s what we see.
With how often he used his slider as a reliever, I would have expected to see it more often in the start. He actually threw as many sliders in his first outing as a Red, in two innings, as he did last night over the course of five innings. In one game, it’s tough to really put much into it because perhaps it’s just the scouting report, or one pitch was simply working well.
One other thing that stood out was how he held his velocity. With there being many out there who believe his future still remains in the bullpen, Finnegan was sitting 92-94 in all five innings with his fastball. He wasn’t wearing down as the game went on and losing velocity. That’s a good sign. It was only for 75 pitches, which is not going to be the typical workload for a starter in the long run, but it was promising to see it hold up.
The first start went well, and there were some good signs to take away from the outing. Watching his pitch usage the next time out will be where I’m focusing as you would like to see more offspeed stuff as very few starters can get by with throwing a fastball 80% of the time on a consistent basis.