Ismael Guillon pitched on Friday afternoon against the Seattle Mariners and the Pitch F/X cameras were running when he took the mound. The left hander is on the Reds 40-man roster and is looking to rebound from a rough 2013 season where he saw his walk rate jump to 7.0 batters per 9ip. This spring has been more of the same, though against far better competition, as he has walked 4 batters in 4.2 innings pitched thus far.
Here is a look at all of the pitches he threw during the game:
By looking at the chart above we can see that Guillon is throwing a cut fastball with some rising action to it. His curveball, well two of them were curveballs and one morphed into more of a slider (the one closest to the zero-zero marker). His change up seems to have two different clusters, though there aren’t big differences between the two. The first cluster is more traditional in that it shows slightly more sink and tailing away than the normal fastball, but he also has another cluster that shows more sink and cutting action to it than his fastball.
With his fastball his velocity was up from where I saw him last season a tick or three on average. This was only one outing and he threw half as many pitches as he did in full outings last season, but velocity being up is a good thing. There is a rather big drop off to the offspeed stuff in velocity with 14 and 15 MPH differences from the fastball on average. Scouts refer to the change up as a plus or even a plus-plus pitch, which isn’t always easy to tell from this kind of data because a lot more goes into how well a pitch plays than simply velocity and movement. With a difference of 15 MPH it is a large adjustment for hitters to make if the pitch is sold well as a fastball, which Guillon does do quite well.
Looking at the stuff he shows above, there is plenty to like. Stuff has never really been an issue for Guillon though, it has been his control that he has battled with at times in the past, including the most recent season. The early returns from spring don’t look good on the control front, but if he weren’t on the 40-man roster he still wouldn’t have pitched in a game yet as the minor leaguers haven’t begun games yet on their side. This is a big jump in competition for Guillon who hasn’t pitched above Low-A Dayton, so it isn’t surprising that he has struggled a bit.