The Louisville Bats are entering their third week of games, but they got started before everyone else. Chattanooga, Dayton, and Dayton all just finished up their opening series over the weekend and after an off-day on Monday they’ll all start up their second series of the season tonight.
The first week for everyone gave us plenty of highlights and things to talk about, and today we’re going to highlight some of those things.
Adam Serwinowski
Last season one of the guys who was generating some buzz out in Arizona was Adam Serwinowski. Over the weekend he made his full-season debut with the Daytona Tortugas and he was dealing as he allowed just one hit over his four shutout innings. He dominated with his fastball and curveball during the outing. Serwinowski leaned heavily on the fastball, throwing it 83% of the time. He had nine whiffs on the pitch out of the 25 that got swings – that’s a 36% whiff rate. The fastball averaged 94.1 MPH and had an average spin rate of 2464. For context, the average spin rate on a 4-seamer in the big leagues was 2252, so he’s got an above-average spin rate on the pitch.
Zach Maxwell
Zach Maxwell took over as the #25 prospect on my prospect list when the team traded TJ Hopkins to San Francisco over the winter. He made his Double-A debut on Sunday with the Lookouts and he showed why if there’s a reliever to keep an eye on in the farm system, that he’s the one. In his past he’s struggled with control at times, but that didn’t happen on Sunday as he struck out all three batters he faced on 16 pitches. 11 of those pitches were fastballs, and they were indeed, fast. He averaged 99.8 MPH on the pitch, with none of them dipping below 98.9 MPH and he topped out at 101. His slider worked between 88-90.
Cam Collier
Last season we got Hawkeye data for all of the road games that the Daytona Tortugas played in. In those games we wound up with 129 batted balls worth of data for Cam Collier. His max exit velocity among those was 110.6 MPH. Three games into the season in Dayton and he’s already topped that, coming in with a 111.8 MPH exit velocity on a single.
Alfredo Duno
The Reds surprised me a little bit when they pushed catcher Alfredo Duno to Daytona and skipped him right on over the Arizona Complex League. He played in two of the Tortugas three games over the weekend, picking up two hits and two walks. He also started behind the plate in one of those games – his first career game behind the plate after serving only as a designated hitter last season.
At 18-years-old (born on January 7th, 2006), he’s the youngest player in the Florida State League right now. That could change as the season goes along, but it shows how aggressive the Reds are being with his assignment to begin 2024.