Red Sox Prospect Hayden Mullins Must Regain His Confidence Before Getting Another Shot In Triple-A Worcester

[Nick John]

Worcester, MA — For Hayden Mullins, it's been a long road to the majors Despite dealing with multiple injuries earlier in his baseball life, the left-handed pitcher managed to get drafted and work his way through the minor leagues, and is now on the cusp of the big leagues after making his Triple-A debut July 8 for Worcester.

Getting picked by Boston was one of the best surprises of his young career.

“It was awesome. I’m sitting there in an elbow brace, three days out of surgery. So I’m sitting there hoping a team takes a chance and I’m grateful it was the Red Sox,” Mullins explained when asked about his draft experience.

Since that fateful day, Mullins has flashed the potential to rack up strikeouts thanks in part to his fastball-slider combination. The fastball, despite topping out around 95 mph, manages to jump on hitters and shows life to it that makes it appear faster. When paired with his slider, he has two pitches that he can generate whiffs with. In 257 innings in the Red Sox organization, he managed to strike out 341 batters.

After a few months filled with ups and downs, Mullins finally got the call to be promoted to Worcester. Pitching in the first game of a doubleheader, he debuted in Triple-A with three innings, allowing one earned run on four hits and four walks. The lone run came on a home run in the first inning. He also struck out three batters while generating eight whiffs on his slider.

“Just essentially lean on those two pitches [fastball and slider], initially. He’s got good stuff. I think it’s a matter of if it gets in the zone early, he’s going to be able to use those as more strikeout pitches vs, let’s get in the zone with those pitches. This past outing it was an initiative to get in the zone and let it play and sure enough it [the slider] induced a lot of whiffs,” Worcester pitching coach Dan DeLucia said about the outing.

Prior to his promotion, Mullins had his worst start of the season, tossing just one inning where he surrendered five runs. Before that, the month of June had been just as rough, allowing 13 runs in 14 innings. During that span, he surrendered 18 hits and 11 walks.

“I worked with Mullins in 2023 coming back from his Tommy John rehab, but I think right now he’s working on rebuilding his confidence. He had an excellent month of May and over the month of June things ticked down a little bit from a stuff standpoint. His zone rates decreased a little, so first time here we were making more of a push to get in the zone,” DeLucia explained. “The biggest thing is to regain that confidence. His stuff is going to play no matter where it is, he gives himself the best chance if he’s able to get in the zone early and often. That’s the initiative. It’s not always easy to throw in the strike zone but fine ways to rebuild the confidence by getting back in the zone.”

For Mullins, the nerves of a new level clearly got to him, as he landed his pitches in the strike zone just 35% of the time. Despite that, he was still able to generate batters to chase on 26% of his pitches out of the strike zone.

“I would have liked to see more strikes,” acting Worcester manager Iggy Suarez admitted. “But I would think first start in Triple-A and probably a little bit of the jitters and excited to be up here. Was a little bit around the zone but I think he settled in a little bit and was better in the zone. We expected him to give us some innings and he did that. Would we have wanted more? Of course. But I think he handled himself well, things could have unraveled very quickly and very badly after the first inning. But he was able to calm himself down and kind of let him know you could pitch up here.”

Suarez admitted that while he would have loved to get five or six innings out of Mullins during the first game of the double header, especially with their pitching already thin entering the day, it just wasn’t a realistic expectation. Not with a pitcher making his Triple-A debut with a new catcher, new league and new strike zone compared to his time in Double-A. But the final two innings impressed him. Despite the confidence in Mullins and his performance, the left-hander was optioned back to Portland on July 12 as Worcester needed more pitching for their series finale with Rochester.

“He can hang a little bit up here. Just kind of let that energy and confidence flow through. I think he handled himself pretty good."

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