Feliz Makes His Debut

Well, I've been calling for a Feliz call-up, and we've been following him all year. Last night he made his appearance for Texas, pitching 2 scoreless, hitless innings and striking out the first four batters he faced, which was a Texas Rangers franchise record.

Now you're hearing some noise about Feliz and how kickass he is. Remember where you heard of him first, right here on The Bat Shatters in my cute little writeup.

Meet Neftali Feliz. You don't know him yet, but you will.

Damn right. Interestingly, my conclusion to the Feliz writeup was this:

The scouting report on Feliz is that he throws a low 80s, 10-4 slurve, and a rudimentary changeup to compliment his plus-plus fastball. 2009 will be a good time for him to develop that crucial third pitch.

Well, we don't know if he has learned his change yet, but let's talk about what he did last night. We finally have some good Pitch Fx data on his outing. Feliz threw 30 pitches - 23 fastballs, 1 slider, 1 curveball, and 4 two-seamers.

Feliz averaged 98.6 mph on his fastball and topped out at 100.5. His two seamer averaged 90.6 and topped out at 91.1 but had some crazy horizontal movement away from the LHB. His curve/slider came in at around 81. As the graph below shows, he pumped out his best heater of the night on his last pitch. Damn.



I think we're looking at a 2007-Joba for the Rangers. He's flashing serious stuff, just like he did in the 2009 Futures Game.



Welcome to The Show, Neftali.