When the Cincinnati Reds selected Tony Santillan in the 2nd round of the 2015 draft the reports were mostly the same. Big arm strength, but control problems. In the first two seasons of his professional career, the control problems were there. He walked 11 batters in 19.2 innings in 2015. The next season he walked 40 batters in 69.1 innings. Last season, though, things took a big step forward. In 128.0 innings he walked 56 batters. That came along with 128 strikeouts, just 104 hits allowed, and a 3.38 ERA for the Dayton Dragons.
It was that performance that led to the Reds promoting Tony Santillan to the next level. He opened up the season as the Daytona Tortugas opening night starter. He was charged with an unearned run over 4.0 innings with two walks and five strikeouts. Working on a limited pitch count led to an early-ish end to the outing.
The next time out the least was a bit longer for Tony Santillan, and he came through with 6.0 shutout innings. He held Charlotte to just one hit, and he had two walks to go with eight strikeouts. It was more of the same the next time out. Taking on Tampa he threw 6.0 shutout innings, this time without a walk. And he added five more strikeouts.
Yesterday afternoon he ran his streak to begin the year without an earned run up to 21.0 innings. A leadoff home run in the top of the 6th inning would end the streak there. But, that was the only run that he would allow over 6.2 innings that only included one walk, and added another six strikeouts.
Four starts on the season for Tony Santillan. One earned run, five walks, 14 hits allowed, and 24 strikeouts in 22.2 innings pitched for the Tortugas. For those of us who aren’t a human calculator, I used an actual calculator to figure out that his ERA is 0.40 this season.
That the stats are this great, is outstanding on it’s own. That they are coming from Tony Santillan, who is right there with Hunter Greene as the best stuff in the entire farm system, is a different kind of outstanding. Armed with a fastball that can sit in the 94-98 MPH range and touch triple digits, a plus change up and a potentially plus slider, there’s a lot of reason for the Reds, and their fans to get excited about what’s happening right now. And it’s not going unnoticed, either. Santillan made this weeks Baseball America Hot Sheet for his performance to begin the season (and more specifically, last week).