Baseball Prospectus.com also reviewed Mike Leake’s debut. This comes from behind their subscription curtain, so I’ll need to summarize…
On a day of debuts on minor-league fieldsâ€â€with a nation’s eyes on Altoona…the perfect way for Leake to make his own, relatively low-key pro debut. This wasn’t a surprising development, but compared to Aroldis Chapman or Stephen Strasburg, IMike) Leake was just a first-round draft choice signed to just a $2.27 million bonus…Besides which, he’s a relatively finished product…
If anything, we can hope that the fact that he’s not exactly dominant and all-world wonderful will be his best defense, in that he’ll have the virtue of not being Mark Prior, of having to get pulled out of games earlier, of not tempting Dusty Baker… The debut wasn’t pretty, as Leake was wild…walking seven in 6 2/3 innings. Workload worriers will also note that Baker had the perfect opportunity to hook Leake in the bottom of the sixth…. Leake might have matched his average of pitches per inning next time on the bump, and gotten through seven having thrown less than 100 pitches, probably pleasing everybody, right? But then the risks came home to roost in the seventh, as he labored through 26 pitches before getting hooked before the inning ended…
With Leake up, and Travis Wood and perhaps Chapman as well not far off, and Edinson Volquez due back for the stretch run, that’s a lot of reinforcements with talent on top of a rotation that already looks good. A cynic might suggest that it’s enough talented pitching that perhaps not even Dusty Baker can burn through it all….It’s clear he’s not treating his younger hurlers with kid gloves early. Homer Bailey’s inefficiency in his first turn is reflective of the wildness that’s automatically associated with him; that wasn’t the last five-inning, hundred-plus pitch effort we’ll see from him, no matter who’s skippering the Reds. Johnny Cueto threw 109 pitches in his first turn, and 110 last night. While not all 100-pitch outings are created equal…with Dusty charging his charges with these kinds of workloads this early, it gets one to wondering what he’ll be asking of them come June or July.
Our pitching staff is extremely promising. Some big questions now for this team: which guys will be around for the long haul, and which will be trade bait to help our offense, or maybe even get us a young shortstop that can balance defense and offense? Or, which guys can be switched to the bullpen to help us from the right side? And, notice; our pitching talent was discussed even without mentioning Aaron Harang or Bronson Arroyo.