Player Breakdowns: April 17th
Blade Tidwell, Cade Horton, Brandon Sproat, & David Sandlin
Blade Tidwell (NYM)- AA:
Tidwell didn’t get the start in this one because Max Kranick was on a rehab assignment and drew the start. Priorities, people. First, we had Alek Manoah take the start from Landen Maroudis’ debut and now we have Max Kranick taking the start from Blade Tidwell in yesterday’s tilt. To be fair to Kranick, he pitched 2.2 IP allowing nothing and striking out 6 while Manoah is still looking for his 40 acres, but instead found 40 lbs. and an arm that doesn’t seem to be his anymore.
Blade came on in the 4th inning in what was basically a relief start. He had a fresh inning and he pitched 5 innings of excellent ball. When I looked at his line afterward, I was sort of in shock because he pitched a lot better than the line indicated. 5IP 3H 2ER 3BB 10K. The ten strikeouts sounded about right but the 3 walks were misleading. One of them was an intentional pass called on by the dugout and the other two were sparsely placed. Both runs came in on a Sac Fly in two separate innings. To tell you the truth, for the most part, he was cruising. He struck out the first four batters and he looked like he had command of all his pitches. Let’s get started with his first inning. He didn’t allow any balls in play and just mowed down the first three hitters.
4th inning:
Tidwell was up to 97 in this one while sitting just below that. He looked completely dominant in his first inning of work and I still think he’s one of the better pitching prospects in the minors. I ranked him 24th in my Projecting the Future series and here is what I wrote:
Concerns over command have haunted Tidwell and they are legitimate concerns. What he does well is mix in his fastball/slider combination which are both above-average offerings and improving. The changeup is a work in progress but has shown good flashes.
Tidwell pitched at High-A and AA last year and made 25 starts. 21 out of those 25 starts resulted in 3ER or less. He strikes batters out at an excellent rate (31.4%) and once the walks come down he will be even more effective. Tidwell is another arm in the Mets pitching factory that I keep bringing up, although he’ll be just a bit behind Scott, Vasil, and Hamel in terms of ETA. When he pieces it together, Tidwell is going to be a problem to deal with.
And last night, Tidwell was very much a problem to deal with.
Here is his second inning of work.
5th inning:
Absolutely dealing. Fastball, slider, changeup. I love to see that changeup making progress. Tidwell has a starter’s arsenal and he showed last night what a menace he can be to opposing teams. His mechanics are usually repeatable although he does like to dial it up a bit on 2 strike counts and I don’t blame him. If you have 97 in your back pocket, you might as well use it.