Tuesday, May 24, 2011

Debut Review: Rubby de la Rosa

Rubby de la Rosa burst onto the Dodgers' prospect list last year when his fastball velocity started regularly hitting 95+.

He spent 2010 in A and AA where he posted the following numbers

A: 8.34 K/9, 2.58 BB/9, 3.12 FIP, 59.1 innings
AA: 6.88 K/9, 3.71 BB/9, 3.22 FIP, 51 innings

Despite his explosive fastball he wasn't able to strikeout a huge number of batters.

In 2011 he started off again in AA

AA: 11.70 K/9, 4.28 BB/9, 2.50 FIP, 40 innings 

Today he was called up to help out a Dodger bullpen that has Jon Broxton, Hong-Chi Kuo, Vicente Padilla and Blake Hawksworth on the DL.

Don Mattingly summoned de la Rosa for the first time to face Hunter Pence, Carlos Lee and Brett Wallace.  How'd he fare?

1 perfect inning with 2 strikeouts.  How'd he get there?  Let's take a look.

He started off Hunter Pence with a 95 MPH fastball at the knees that was called a ball.  He followed that up with a similar pitch that Pence fouled off.  The third pitch was a change up that missed low.  Behind in the count 2-1 de la Rosa cranked up a 96 MPH fastball down the middle that Pence hit foul.  The next pitch was a slider that missed very high.  Facing a full count de la Rosa blew a 96 MPH fastball past Pence.  First strikeout of de la Rosa's career comes against a pretty good hitter.

Next up was Carlos Lee.  De la Rosa started Lee with a curveball that missed high.  He came back with a fastball down and in that caught a lot of plate.  Lee swung and grounded out.

The third batter was Brett Wallace.  The first pitch was de la Rosa's fastest of the night.  A 97.3 MPH fastball for a called strike.  Wallace swung through a change up off the plate and fouled off another fastball away.  De la Rosa came high and inside with a fastball that was called ball one.  The 97 MPH fastball was followed by an 81 MHP curve down and in the Wallace swung through for strike 3.

All in all on the night
De la Rosa threw 13 pitches, 8 for strikes.
8 fastballs averaging 95.6 MPH
2 change ups averaging 87.4 MPH
2 curve balls averaging 78.3 MPH
and a slider at 83.4 MPH

He got swinging strikes on 3 of 13 pitches (23%)

The only ball put in play against him was a ground ball.

3 batters faced isn't a lot, but 2 strikeouts and a groundout is about as good as you can get.

Good luck to Rubby

*Stats from FanGraphs and Brooks Baseball

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