Very few things tend to actually mean much of anything in spring training when it comes to performance and what people can actually see. The number of at-bats a guy has or the number of innings a pitcher throws is so small and the circumstances involved are wildly different for everyone (are you facing Shohei Ohtani or some kid from Single-A? are you working on your fastball location that day and everyone knows you are throwing them 80% of the time? You get the point). None of the performance stuff should ever overshadow what someone has done in their career where the sample size is large and a hot or cold three weeks makes someone look like something they aren’t.
But one thing that does matter is an actual change in skillset. Or health. Sometimes those two things can be related, too. Pitchers sometimes show up throwing significantly harder than before. And sometimes they show up throwing, well, not nearly as hard. In both cases it’s worth paying attention to because that is something that probably matters and makes a difference moving forward.
We saw something like that on Tuesday when Brandon Williamson took the mound. The left-handed pitcher spent much of 2023 in the big leagues with the Cincinnati Reds. But in 2024 a shoulder injury kept him shelved for most of the season before he returned in September, but he would tear his UCL before the season ended and then undergo Tommy John surgery and didn’t pitch again until yesterday.
Williamson allowed two runs on a 2-run home run to Jac Caglionone that may not have landed yet – Hawkeye said it went 460 feet. But the lefty struck out four of the nine hitters he faced in his 2.0 innings while throwing 26 strikes and just eight balls in his return to the mound.
Aside from pounding the strikezone, the thing that really stood out was the fastball velocity for Brandon Williamson. In 2023 he averaged 92.5 MPH on the pitch. During his limited action in 2024 he averaged 93.1 MPH. On Tuesday in Goodyear he averaged 94.4 MPH with the pitch. His change up was coming in 2.7 MPH faster than it had in the other two seasons as well.
For a pitcher coming off of two different, but serious arm injuries, it’s very good to see that not only has his velocity not dropped off, but that he’s throwing harder than he used to.
We’re in the small sample size of things right now, but the velocity on the fastball wasn’t the only thing that was interesting to see from his time on the mound on Tuesday. Both his cutter and his slider showed a different kind of movement than they had in his other two seasons. He threw 11 cutters, but they were averaging more “sink” and a little more movement on the horizontal plane than in the previous two years. The same can be said about the six sliders that he threw in the game. As he continues to pitch this spring it will be interesting to see if all of that holds true or if this was just a one-off situation.
Williamson is competing for the 5th spot in the rotation, but if he doesn’t win that job he may also be competing for a spot in the bullpen. Given how long he’s been on the shelf he isn’t likely going to be given a full workload even if he does make the Reds rotation. Having a spot in the bullpen as a multi-inning guy certainly could be an intriguing role for the left-handed pitcher where he could still get plenty of work but also not get to a point where he would perhaps need to be shut down because of an excess workload later in the season.
