Last week, I promised you all a much meatier Anthony Reyes Watch. I promised you that we would have two starts from Anthony to talk about. Well, it turns out that I'm a liar.
See, unfortunately, Reyes just happens to be starting tonight for Cleveland. Of course, since I lack the ability to see into the future, I can't really tell you how that one turns out, so I'll have to stick with the start he already made, last Friday.
Luckily for us, the one he did make was a doozy. Last Friday, against the Mariners, Reyes made his best start yet as a Cleveland Indian. He engaged in a full-on pitchers' duel against -- of all people -- Jarrod Washburn.
Anthony twirled seven innings, giving up only a single run on a solo home run in the third inning to Tug Hulett. (No, I don't know who that is either.)
Reyes' full line:
Innings - 7 Runs - 1 Hits - 7 Walks - 1 Strikeouts - 3
Now that's a pitching line. I actually had a chance to watch this game, something I rarely have the opportunity to do. Reyes was fully on his game, wickedly efficient and throwing as well as I've ever seen. His fastball was popping in consistently between 91 and 95 mph, with nasty riding movement on the ball. His change-up was absolutely filthy, falling straight down off the table and making the Seattle hitters look foolish.
What was most impressive, to me at least, was the fact that Anthony was neither nibbling around the edges, trying to avoid contact, nor tossing what looked like flat sinker after flat sinker up there, hoping that some of them would turn into ground balls. He was attacking the strike zone aggressively, trusting his fielders, and counting on the movement and velocity on his fastball to create weak contact. He only struck out three batters, but in this particular case, that was actually a good thing. He was able to simply overwhelm hitters with his pitches and force them to put the ball weakly into play.
It was only the second game that Anthony has pitched since joining the Indians that I've had a chance to watch, and he looked infinitely better this time than he did the time before. Between the velocity, movement, and the results, I don't know that Reyes could have been much more impressive.
Unfortunately for Anthony, Cleveland was unable to give him much in the way of run support, proving that, at least sometimes, the more things change the more they stay the same. The Indians ended up losing the game 4-3 in the tenth inning, following a very weird play involving Adrian Beltre and a bouncing ball to the shortstop.
Sadly, Reyes didn't get a win despite his brilliance. Still, he now has an ERA of 2.01 since joining the Indians. I've harped on his strikeouts-walks ratio in pretty much every one of these updates, and it's still a concern. If he keeps throwing the way he did last Friday, though, it shouldn't be a concern much longer.
