Like usual its fastball and change up with a little extra thrown in, but really relying on those two pitches almost 90% of the time. Thats not really out of the ordinary with what he has done in the past.

Here is what the velocity looked like with the different pitches.

The fastball speed looks fine as he averaged 94 MPH and topped out at 96 MPH several times. His change up and slider were just about the same in terms of speed, while his curveball was a little bit slower than those two. Nothing really out of whack here though.

So lets take a look at the pitches vs the strikezone for Volquez.

Simple to see by looking at the chart… Volquez just couldn’t find the strikezone Wednesday. One thing to note, he only had 8 swings and misses on the day where he threw over 105 pitches. Volquez has always been a ‘wild but effective’ kind of guy. He needs to be less wild though, because its not always conducive to being effective.

I got some of my Pitch F/X stuff back and working and I decided to take a look at the prospect pitchers who spent time with the Reds last year. Roenicke was the first guy on tap. Here is what he threw in his 5 games.

As you can see by the chart, Roenicke threw 6 offspeed pitches last season in the majors. Of course, he also only threw 62 total pitches according to the Pitch F/X data. Still, that means he was working with 91% fastballs. Thats an incredibly high rate of fastballs, even for a guy who threw his fastball 95 MPH or faster 31 times out of 56 fastballs.

The fastball got good results, but it just shows how good he may be if he can mix in a decent offspeed pitch every now and again. If not, well lets hope he can continue to throw his fastball over 95 MPH more than 50% of the time he throws the ball.