Jameson Taillon pitched three innings against the New York Yankees’ A-ball team on Saturday at Pirate City. He put up a dominant performance, needing only 31 pitches to get through the outing. I did a feature on Taillon prior to this start, and in the feature he mentioned that Pittsburgh Pirates pitching coordinator Jim Benedict has been working with him on removing a jump in his delivery, which will allow him to keep the ball down. This was the first start for Taillon since they started working on that, and it seems to have had an immediate impact, as Taillon was working down in the zone through this whole start.
In the first inning, Taillon was sitting around 94-95 MPH, and hit 96 twice. He threw one curveball and one changeup, and had a perfect inning. In the second he was sitting at 95 MPH. He was wild on a changeup, throwing it over the batter’s head at one point, although it was only one pitch. He allowed a broken bat single on a 93 MPH fastball, although that was erased on a tailor made 6-3 double play. Through two innings he only had 24 total pitches. In the third, Taillon worked in the 93-94 MPH range, topping out at 95. He threw seven pitches, all fastballs.
Below is video of each pitch that Taillon threw on Saturday.
