Cincinnati Reds starting pitcher Homer Bailey made his first rehab appearance on Thursday night. The righty is recovering from Tommy John surgery, last pitching on April 23rd of last season.
The Reds sent Bailey to Triple-A Louisville to make his first appearance in nearly a year. He would take the mound against the Indianapolis Indians, and while he would ultimately be charged with two earned runs in 3.2 innings pitched to go with two walks and six strikeouts, the big leaguer looked very strong on the mound.
According to Nick Kern (one of the Bats radio broadcasters), who went down to the field level to check in on the official Louisville Bats radar gun (the one used by the players charting the game – not the stadium radar gun which wasn’t working), Homer Bailey was sitting in the 93-96 MPH range on the day and topped out at 97 MPH.
Watching the game there were a few things that jumped out at me. First was that Bailey, outside of one at-bat in the 1st inning in which he walked a batter on five pitches, had good command of his fastball. He hardly missed his spots with the pitch, and even when he threw it for balls, the catcher wasn’t moving his glove at all. The fastball was there on the night.
The other thing was that his offspeed stuff was down all game long. Bailey showed his curveball a few times, but mostly went with the slider and splitter. None of the pitches were ever up in the zone, everything was down. For “feel” pitches, that was a good thing to see. When he missed the zone with the offspeed stuff, it was generally just a bit low. Not everything was as crisp as it has been in the past, but that’s to be expected at this point in time. Still, he showed plenty of nice offspeed pitches throughout his 3.2 innings.
C. Trent Rosecrans was at the game, covering it for the Enquirer. He notes in his write up that Bailey is expected to make at least three more starts in the minor leagues with the next one likely to be in Pensacola.