Rasmussen has a shot at sticking
PHOENIX - The 22 innings Drew Rasmussen has logged as a professional don’t jump off the page.
The 99 mph he hits on the radar gun does.
That makes the right-hander a player to watch this spring as well as this season for the Milwaukee Brewers, who aren’t ruling out Rasmussen’s majorleague debut should things fall right and he remains healthy.
“Absolutely not,” manager Craig Counsell said. “He pitched the bulk of the year in Double-A last year, so absolutely the big leagues are well within reach for him.”
Rasmussen’s path to this point has been interesting and well-chronicled.
To summarize: He underwent Tommy John surgery while pitching at Oregon State in 2016, rehabbed and then pitched a truncated 2017 season that ended in the College World Series.
Rasmussen was drafted 31st overall by Tampa Bay that summer, only to learn he’d blown out his elbow again. The Rays then passed on signing him.
After going under the knife again Rasmussen was drafted by the Brewers in the sixth round in 2018, signed for a modest $135,000 and spent the rest of that season rehabbing.
The reins were finally loosened on Rasmussen in 2019. He pitched his first professional game at Miller Park in April for Class A Wisconsin and four more at advanced Class A Carolina before finishing the season at Class AA Biloxi.
Of his 27 overall appearances, 23 came as a starter so that the Brewers could better control his workload, which generally was around five innings and 75 pitches. Rasmussen finished 1-3 with a 3.15 earned run average and a WHIP of 1.18.
He also struck out 96 in 741⁄3 innings. Much more important than the numbers, through, was the fact Rasmussen had no further issues with his rebuilt elbow. He’s in camp this spring as a nonroster invitee and didn’t wait long to turn heads, throwing several 99-mph fastballs in his debut against the Oakland A’s on Monday in Mesa.
It was late last spring on one of the Brewers’ back fields in Maryvale that he hit 100 mph.
“Some nerves. Anxious and excited,” said Rasmussen, who pitched a clean inning with a strikeout. “To have the ability now to move on and just worry about pitching and focus on baseball…it’s just nice to have the first one under my belt.”
Nearly a month’s worth of spring games remain and Rasmussen will have several more opportunities before innings begin drying up. He’ll head to the minor-league side at that point with the goal of logging more experience.
“For any player, the deal is health. But he also has to pitch,” Counsell said. “Maybe that is the same thing as health, but he has not pitched a lot. I do think he needs to pitch. He needs to put innings under his belt.”
Peralta looks sharp
Freddy Peralta is positioning himself for a breakthrough season with the Milwaukee Brewers.
The 23-year-old right-hander, who has shown flashes of brilliance in his previous 55 appearances (22 starts) in the major leagues but also periods of inconsistent command, was sharp in his first outing of the spring Tuesday, tossing two scoreless innings against Seattle with a pair of strikeouts.
It wasn’t just that Peralta looked strong the first time out, however. He is throwing a new pitch this spring – a slider – that he thinks will make a big difference in getting the upper hand on hitters trying to sit on his fastball.
“I felt great, first time,” Peralta said. “It was awesome to be out there.
“I used the breaking ball (slider) today. It was very good. It is doing exactly what I want. The first strikeout (was on a slider). I hung it a little bit but it still worked.”
The Brewers approached Peralta after the 2019 season with the idea of adding a slider to his repertoire, which consisted mostly of fastballs (78%) with occasional curveballs mixed in. Special assistant Carlos Villanueva, a former Brewers pitcher, was dispatched to the Dominican Republic to work with Peralta.
“That’s where we’re doing a better job with this,” manager Craig Counsell said. “It’s not just showing up in Arizona and saying, ‘I want to throw a new pitch.’ We put some time into it in the offseason with some of these guys, throwing it all winter, understanding it.”