Two summers ago when the Reds signed Sheng-En Lin out of Taiwan when he graduated high school they said that they had planned to let him both pitch and hit at the press conference. But that later became that he was going to be a position player first. Some teams preferred him as a pitcher – at the time he had been up to 99 MPH with his fastball. Cincinnati, though, didn’t have him pitch in 2023 after signing and in 2024 he also just played in the field until after the season was over, when he then moved to the mound for the bridge league and instructional league.
Last night saw the 19-year-old right-handed take the mound in a game that counted in the standings for the first time. Facing off against the Arizona Complex League Giants, Sheng-En Lin allowed one run on one hit – a home run – in 2.0 innings pitched, walking no one, and striking out three batters.
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During the game he 27 pitches and threw 18 strikes with nine balls. I was able to source the Trackman Data and some video from the game. Here’s his pitch breakdown from his start:
| Thrown | Strikes | Balls | avgVelo | topVelo | avgSpin | |
| Fastball | 11 | 9 | 2 | 91.8 | 93.4 | 2298 |
| Curve | 10 | 4 | 6 | 76.1 | 78.2 | 2399 |
| Change | 5 | 4 | 1 | 82.9 | 85.8 | 1475 |
From a velocity standpoint nothing really stands out. While the reports of touching 99 two years ago as a 17-year-old got plenty of headlines, he wasn’t there often and was more in the low-to-mid 90’s. Thursday night was more low 90’s.
He was able to pound the strikezone with the fastball and the change up. Hitters were able to lay off of the curveball some. Breaking balls in general are more of a “chase pitch” that’s meant to be out of the zone frequently, so it’s not too surprising that on the night there were more out of the zone than in the zone.
In total the hitters swung 16 times. Five of those swings resulted in swings and misses. They missed three fastballs, one change up, and one curveball. The home run that was hit came on a 92 MPH fastball.
Video from Sheng-En Lin’s pitching debut
From the video above here’s the data for each of the five swings-and-misses:
- Change Up – 81.4 MPH
- Fastball – 92.6 MPH
- Curveball – 78.2 MPH
- Fastball – 93.0 MPH
- Fastball – 93.4 MPH
Given how much time he took off from pitching, at least in the “prepare as a pitcher” sense of things, it wouldn’t be shocking if he began to gain/re-gain some of his velocity the more he pitches. With the Reds playing at least some of their home games in Goodyear Ballpark and even a few of the road games in Arizona being played in the big league ballparks, we might get another chance to see some Trackman/Hawkeye data and see how this aspect of things go.
Velocity isn’t everything, of course, but it does help. What also helps is being able to mix and match, and locate the pitches where you want to. While the sample size is one start and all of 27 pitches, Sheng-En Lin was pretty good in that aspect on Thursday.