Touki Toussaint, Atlanta Braves - Touki Toussaint was activated from the IL to start Tuesday's game and tossed a gem against the Padres. He allowed just one run over 6.2 innings and struck out five batters. An interesting development in this outing for Touki was him relying significantly more on his sinker than ever before, throwing it 30% of the time while he threw the pitch just 5% of the time last season. Even with the additional usage, he didn't generate a single swing and miss on the pitch. As a result, his curveball usage took a huge step back to just 22%, and his split change also took a step back in usage to just 13%. Toussaint's best pitch on the scouting report is definitely his curveball so I'm interested to see next time out if this is a deliberate change for him in the mix or if it was more of a matchup move. The only negative in the outing is that he did allow a ton of hard contact, but he was able to remain relatively unscathed.
Josiah Gray, Los Angeles Dodgers - Josiah Gray made his major league debut Tuesday and tossed four innings while following the opener for LA. Gray allowed four runs against the Giants but recorded an outstanding seven strikeouts against just a single walk. He was really just plagued by the longball with three homers in the outing. He posted an elite 39% CSW and he generated over a 50% whiff rate on both his slider and curveball. The whiffs weren't quite as high on his fastball but it still posted a 34% CSW with it. I really hope he gets another opportunity to throw in the bigs because there's a lot to like here based on this outing.
Alex Reyes, St Louis Cardinals - Alex Reyes finally blew a save for the first time this season, ending his streak to start his career at 24-for-24. Luis Garcia attempted to lock down the Cubs in the ninth but allowed three runs without getting an out and the Reyes allowed another three while recording just one out. Reyes has been playing with fire all year with his walks, and they finally caught up to his with a pair of them in this appearance. Even with the walks, I still love Reyes and believe he's one of the elite relievers in baseball but this week he's definitely doing some damage on the ERA category.
Nolan Arenado, St Louis Cardinals - Homerun number 18 on the year for Nolan Arenado came on Tuesday. He continues to prove that his success wasn't solely because of Coors Field and I think it will slowly become more obvious that good hitters are good hitters once they leave Coors for good. That being said, the production is definitely down a bit but certainly hasn't cratered. His .335 wOBA is 40 points below his career average but his xwOBA is much closer to his normal rates, just down 20 points. The best news here is that all his batted ball data shows that his shoulder issue that plagued him last season is definitely behind him.
Alex Wood, San Francisco Giants - Alex Wood punched out seven Dodgers batters over five innings while allowing three runs. The three runs over five innings aren't the best but he recorded a 39% CSW which is elite and interestingly enough his sinker wasn't his primary pitch in the start. His slider jumped to a 46% rate and his sinker took a small step back to 40%, and the results on the slider were staggering with a 56% whiff rate and a 49% CSW. This is the first game of his where we've seen this kind of usage so it's something to watch going forward.
