St. Louis Cardinals: Alex Reyes to Make First MLB Start on Saturday Night vs. Oakland Athletics
Alex Reyes will make his highly-anticipated starting debut on Saturday night against the A’s.
As the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s Derrick Goold first reported on Friday night, the St. Louis Cardinals will start rookie righthander Alex Reyes on Saturday night against the Oakland Athletics. Reyes, who will be making his first MLB start, will be replacing Mike Leake, who has been scratched as he deals with shingles.
Reyes has been extremely impressive as a reliever in the early going, holding opponents scoreless while giving up five hits and four walks and striking out 13 over his first 9 1/3 big-league innings. His stuff has been electric; at 97.9 MPH, Reyes has the 13th-fastest average pitch velocity in the majors this season according to Statcast.
With that said, it’s important that Cardinals fans temper their expectations for the 21-year-old as he occupies a starting role for the first time at the major-league level.
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In 14 starts at Triple-A this season, Reyes posted a disappointing 4.96 ERA, along with a pedestrian 1.45 WHIP and .252 opponent batting average. His command was lacking, as he walked a batter nearly every other inning (32 walks in 65 1/3 frames), and he lasted six innings or more on just three occasions.
When Reyes is forced to expand his offering beyond his four-seam fastball, which he’s thrown 89 times in his first 150 big-league pitches according to FanGraphs, the results could be different. As he more heavily mixes his rarely-used changeup and cutter into the repertoire, the deceptiveness of those pitches may be watered down a bit.
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Either way, though, it should be an exciting event to see Reyes, who’s been the Cardinals’ top-ranked prospect all season, do the thing that he’s expected to do many years into the future.