Aug 23, 2016; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Alex Reyes (61) pitches to a New York Mets batter during the sixth inning at Busch Stadium. The Mets won 7-4. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports
Aug 23, 2016; St. Louis, MO, USA; St. Louis Cardinals starting pitcher Alex Reyyes (61) pitches to a New York Mets batter during the sixth inning at Busch Stadium. The Mets won 7-4. Mandatory Credit: Jeff Curry-USA TODAY Sports /
The St. Louis Cardinals had a chance to see big-armed prospect Alex Reyes last season. Is he ready to take a rotation spot in 2017?
Player Profile
Reyes and the St. Louis Cardinals really started what has become a recent trend in the Latin market of U.S.-born players establishing residency with family and/or friends in the Latin market in order to circumvent the draft.
Reyes originally is from New Jersey and moved to the Dominican at age 17. He was signed just after his 18th birthday by the Cardinals for just short of a million dollars in bonus, the second largest bonus for a Dominican pitcher that season.
The Cardinals started Reyes with their advanced rookie league team in the Appalachian League. He made 12 starts, throwing 58 1/3 innings, with a 3.39 ERA, 1.41 WHIP, and a 28/68 BB/K ratio. Baseball Prospectus took note of the youngster’s performance, ranking him the #98 overall prospect.
In 2014, he spent his first full season in full season ball, pitching in the Midwest League all season for Peoria, making 21 starts and throwing 109 innings, with a 3.63 ERA, 1.31 WHIP, and a 61/137 BB/K ratio.
After the 2014 season, he was ranked as the #51 overall prospect by Baseball America and the #55 overall prospect by Baseball Prospectus.
The Cardinals moved Reyes up to high-A, and his performance forced their hand to move him up to AA as well, and he even finished the 2015 season with a stint in the Arizona Fall League.
In the regular season, Reyes had a combined line of 22 starts, 101 innings, a 2.49 ERA, 1.17 WHIP, and a 49/151 BB/K ratio. In the Arizona Fall League, he made 4 starts, throwing 15 innings, with a 3.60 ERA, 1.60 WHIP, and a 10/14 BB/K ratio.
After that big season, he was rated as the #7 overall prospect by Baseball America and #10 overall prospect by Baseball Prospectus.
Reyes faced a “drug of abuse” suspension to open the 2016 season for a positive test for marijuana, and his minor league season started late due to this. He ended up making 14 starts for the Cardinals’ AAA affiliate in the Pacific Coast League, throwing 65 1/3 innings with a 4.96 ERA and 1.45 WHIP and a 32/94 BB/K ratio.
Reyes was called up for the end of the season to the Cardinals as a swing man in their bullpen and worked his way into the rotation, making 12 appearances, including 5 starts, throwing 46 innings with a 1.57 ERA, 1.22 WHIP, and a 23/52 BB/K ratio.
Size – Reyes is listed at 6’3″ and 175 pounds. While the 6’3 is likely on, his 175-lb. listing is certainly from his original signing as he’s more like 200-215 now visually. His weight is not bad weight by any means, however.
Delivery – As a starter, Reyes works from a stretch position, with the only difference between that and his delivery out of the bullpen being when he brings his left foot slightly back first before starting his wind from delivery.
He kicks to just above his belly button with his left knee, and then from that point, he slowly uncoils toward the plate, holding his shoulder back and his hip back until his lead foot hit, when he launches the entirety of his body toward the plate in an incredibly quick and explosive delivery.
He straightens his leg completely just before putting his foot down, giving a bit of deception of timing to the hitter, but also leading to some inconsistency in his landing spot as from that straightening, he sometimes pushes forward just a hair and sometimes another full foot length forward.
Reyes stays tall throughout his delivery, leading to solid plane on his pitches, but it also leads to his delivery being a bit stiff when he gets off in his position.
Control (50) – That stiffness and landing spot inconsistency leads to struggles in Reyes’ control. Interestingly, he rarely misses the zone with his offspeed stuff, more missing the zone with his pair of fastballs, and often missing up and out in the zone, which makes the pitch very drive-able.
Pitches
Fastball (70) – Reyes works with both a four-seam and two-seam fastball. He can ramp up both pitches over triple digits, touching 102 with the four-seam fastball and touching 101 with the two-seamer.
The two-seamer gets excellent movement in on right handers with solid sink. His four-seamer gets similar arm-side movement without the same level of sink, but still some natural dip as well.
The fastball by far is his dominant pitch, but with the high velocity, it is notable that the two-seamer is near impossible to get line drives on (11.4% of his two-seamers in his major league time) while his four-seamer can be susceptible to being driven if a hitter can catch up to it.
He has 80-grade velocity on the pitch, but Reyes does get knocked for the fact that he tends to hang high in the zone with his pitch, and it does lead to the most control issues of any of his pitches.
Change Up (55) – Many have given lesser grades to Reyes’ change due to its lack of significant movement, but he has excellent arm deception on the pitch, gets roughly 8 MPH differential on the pitch, and the movement difference is such that hitters look foolish swinging for movement that never comes.
Curve Ball (55) – Reyes works with a hard curve that has slider velocity and a curve’s 12-6 movement. It is incredible to me how well Reyes can work the pitch in the zone, though the break is not a huge, looping curve, so he doesn’t get a ton of swings on it, it’s more of a weak contact inducing pitch.
The pitch does have good loop ahead of the plate, which gets a lot of timing issues for hitters off, and that also leads to some of the weakness in contact as well.
MLB Player Comp
Interestingly, the guy who reminds me most of Reyes is a guy who had a lot of press this last season and just a couple years ago was on prospect lists with Reyes, Aaron Sanchez of the Toronto Blue Jays.
Sanchez has a similar pitch mix, even if he operates just a hair lower in velocity on all four pitches. He was used in the bullpen plenty in 2015 to “save” his arm, much like Reyes in his 2016 call up.
I could see Reyes having a similar break through in 2017 as Sanchez enjoyed in 2016 as well.
Reyes is virtually assured of his rotation spot in 2017, and his excellent pitch mix should give him success. With the ability to work toward the back of the Cardinals rotation, Reyes will be able to grow in the big league rotation
