High Reds pitching prospect Nick Lodolo will make his MLB debut Wednesday, the crew introduced. Lodolo, the No. 7 total decide in 2019, will begin Wednesday’s recreation towards the Guardians and be a part of fellow high prospect Hunter Greene within the rotation. Greene impressed with seven punchouts and a barrage of triple-digit heaters in his personal MLB debut this previous weekend. Lodolo has not but been chosen to the 40-man roster, so Cincinnati might want to make a corresponding transfer earlier than he’s formally promoted to the large leagues.
It’s been anticipated because the season opened that Lodolo would take the mound this week and make his big-league debut, but it surely’s nonetheless notable that Cincinnati has now made it official and set the stage for a forthcoming 40-man transfer so as to add the prized younger lefty to the roster. Lodolo break up the 2021 season between Double-A Chattanooga and Triple-A Louisville, pitching to a mixed 2.31 ERA with an eye-popping 38.8% strikeout fee, only a 5.5% stroll fee and a 54.3% ground-ball fee.
Spectacular as these numbers had been, Lodolo additionally missed time final yr with blister troubles and, much more troublesome, with a shoulder pressure that ended his season in August. He regarded lots sharp this spring, tossing 11 1/3 innings of two.38 ERA ball with a 12-to-2 Ok/BB ratio, so it definitely appears as if he’s put the shoulder troubles behind him for now. Nonetheless, these accidents restricted Lodolo to simply 50 2/3 innings in 2021, and he after all didn’t pitch in any respect in 2020, when there was no minor-league season.
The most important workload Lodolo has ever recorded is the mixed 121 1/3 innings he pitched between his junior season at Texas Christian College and the Reds’ decrease minor-league ranges in 2019, when he was drafted. It stands to cause that Cincinnati shall be comparatively cautious on the subject of managing his innings.
Even when the Reds restrict his innings on the season as a complete or on a start-by-start foundation, there’s good cause to be excited concerning the lefty’s arrival on the scene. As one would count on for a pitcher with that lofty draft inventory and people scintillating 2021 numbers, Lodolo is broadly thought to be one in every of baseball’s most promising younger pitchers. He ranked as a top-100 prospect at Baseball America (No. 32), MLB.com (No. 42), Baseball Prospectus (No. 42), FanGraphs (No. 52) and ESPN (No. 79).
There’s a reasonably huge break up as to simply how extremely Lodolo should be regarded, although most scouting reviews on him will characterize him as a probable mid-rotation arm. Nonetheless, FanGraphs’ Eric Longenhagen and Tess Taruskin wrote that Lodolo was one of many “extra divisive” gamers mentioned with evaluators when writing their high prospect rankings, noting that whereas analytics-driven evaluations love his changeup, scouts query it and surprise why he threw it so little (9%) if it’s really one in every of his greatest choices.
FanGraphs touts Lodolo for having three plus pitches, whereas Baseball America opines that the slider is Lodolo’s solely plus providing. The Athletic’s Keith Legislation omitted Lodolo from his High 100 altogether, however ranked him fifth in the Cincinnati system whereas opining on the shortage of a 3rd plus pitch and likening Lodolo’s slider and arm slot to that of Andrew Miller.
Break up camps are nothing new on the subject of prospect analysis, and there’s definitely nonetheless consensus that Lodolo is a big-league expertise who’ll play a task with the Reds for years to return. Information-driven fashions and conventional scouting could not agree on the lefty’s ceiling, however Lodolo can have the chance to begin proving skeptics flawed starting tomorrow. He’ll carry a mid-90s heater, a high quality sweeping slider and that divisive changeup with him to Nice American Ball Park, and there’s a transparent long-term alternative within the rotation now that Cincinnati has traded Sonny Gray and dropped Wade Miley by way of waivers.
If Lodolo is within the large leagues for good, there’s nonetheless sufficient time on the calendar for him to log a full yr of service time — no matter his end in end-of-year awards voting. He’d be eligible for arbitration after the 2024 season and can be managed via the 2027 marketing campaign by way of arbitration. In fact, future optionally available assignments might affect that timeline, however Lodolo’s destiny is essentially in his personal arms now that he’s getting his first big-league have a look at a time when the rotation has such ample alternative.
