Round 6: Blake Aita, RHP
@ggeiss_mlb
Blake Aita some who has “stuff.”
Another big metric pitcher.
FB 89-91 t94 with his spin rates and armside run.
Low 80’s sweeper with 3000+ RPMs and massive horizontal break.
Mid 80’s cutter as well.
The command is something he’ll need to work on moving forward.
On Neely:
@redsoxstats
In the post season last month, he threw 24 innings with 15 hits allowed, 5 walks, and 38 strikeouts.
92-94 T97, with yet again, lower release height and lots of ride and movement.
@EdHand89
Notes on the Red Sox third round pick, RHP Brandon Neely.
-U of F Gator
-Fastball is his best pitch currently. Tops at 96-97 but mostly lives around 93 mph. Misses bats due to ride.
-Best secondary pitch is his slider, also throws a changeup + curveball.
-Worked mostly out of the pen in college but there are scouts who believe he has the pitch repertoire to be a backend starter.
2020 - under CBT
2021 - under CBT
2022 - oops went over thanks to Bloom's JBJ trade
2023 - under CBT
2024 - probably under CBT
Two decades of dominance... no longer.
Sale is currently throwing at 5.1 his career low. https://baseballsavant.mlb.com/player-scroll?player_id=519242#release_points The two players are the same height.
At the time, there were lots of reports about his power outage and questions on how much he could provide. I believe Law stated that he had a decent line drive swing and that he'd be fine overall, but was just in need of a new position. The greatest concern was his bad defense at SS.
He was like the 4th ranked Braves prospect. A decent prospect for the deal. I'm not saying he was "ok" overall, just ok in terms of the deal. At the time of the deal, he would have been ranked somewhere in the Sox top 10. Maybe higher than Fitts?