BRADENTON, Fla. – What
started as an exciting and much anticipated debut for last year's No.
1 overall pick quickly turned to into a flurry of scouts heading for
the exits after just four batters stepped to the plate. Brady Aiken
took the mound for IMG Academy's post-graduate team in Bradenton,
Fla. on Thursday, but lasted only 14 pitches before calling for his
coach and trainer to come check things out. With about 100 scouts and
a handful of scouting directors in attendance, the speculation mill
quickly started running once he was pulled from the game.
Before
all the drama began, Aiken was sitting 89-91 with his fastball which
displayed some nice downward plane while topping out at 92. From the
onset you could see the command wasn't there, but after a long
layoff, this was not surprising.
The
first batter Aiken faced worked a full count before hammering a
mistake fastball out over the plate into the left-center field gap.
Aiken would go on to face three more batters, striking out one, while
mixing things up with his heat and hammer curve. Reports last year
had the breaking ball coming across in the mid-70s range, but in this
outing the velocity was in the 68-72 range with one spiking at 76
mph. It still had nice shape, but didn't seem to be as dynamic as it
has been known to be.
His
latch pitch was slow breaking ball that missed it's spot well inside,
and then, just like that, it was over.
The
6-foot-4 Aiken walked back to the mound and began to stretch and
shake his arms before looking up into his dugout and starting the
communication with his bench. A few almost awkward seconds pass by
before Aiken's catcher headed to the mound and was immediately joined
by the IMG coach and trainer. After a pretty lengthy discussion, and
a couple of test pitches, the decision was made to pull him and the
scout section emptied in a flash.
Leaving
the field with glove on his head and head down has already stirred up
plenty of speculation, but until there is official word on what
exactly was bothering him today, we can only hope that is nothing
serious and the talented lefty will be back missing bats as soon as
possible.