Reds prospects show out at Futures Game

Two Cincinnati Reds prospects suited up for Team USA in yesterday’s Future’s Game in the Nation’s Capitol and, well, both of them played pretty well, as Team USA topped Team World 10-6.

The game itself featured a total of six honked wangers, and both Hunter Greene and Taylor Trammell featured prominently in that.

We start with Greene, who wow’d throughout his outing by lighting up the radar gun. Greene averaged 101.3 MPH on his fastball in the game, throwing now slower than 100 MPH on the pitch, and topping out at 103 MPH. The kid, he throws hard. I mean, look at this.

On the downside of that, even if you throw 102 MPH and miss your spot, hitters can turn on one and get it out. Greene found that out the hard way when Chicago White Sox prospect Luis Basabe jumped all over a fat offering. It exited the building a bit faster than it came to the plate; Statcast clocked the 2-run dinger at 105.

Greene showed a bit of his secondary stuff as well, mixing in some sliders along with the heat. His final line: 1.1 IP, 2 H, 1 ER, 1 BB, 1 K. I mean, cool. Dude’s 18 years old and he was, far and away, the hardest thrower in the game. Can’t teach that.

More impressively was Taylor Trammell, who ended up walking away with the MVP trophy with his two hit, one HR and one 3B showing. In the 6th, Trammell stepped to the plate for the first time in the game, and promptly demolished a Kieran Lovegrove fastball over 430 FT to right center field.

At a total distance of 438 ft, the Reds prospects had both the farthest hit ball and hardest thrown ball in the game. I’ll take every bit of that.

In the bottom of the 8th, Trammell whacked another one to deep center. He was pretty convinced that he’d gotten his second dong of the day, but instead it bounced off the top of the wall and then around the outfield for a moment while he ended up a third base for a stand up triple. Had he been running the whole way, it’s probably an inside-the-park job. But, oh well. It’s an exhibition game. Have some fun, kid.

About that loafing, though:

Regardless, Trammell took home the hardware at the end of the night and, in doing so, opened up a lot of eyes around the league. We’re die hard Reds fans around here, so none of what we saw from either Greene nor Trammell is particularly surprising to us. But, these two prospects had the world of baseball buzzing last night.

That’s a pretty damn good feeling.