The long-awaited debut of uber-prospect Julio Urias finally came on Friday night. The baseball world turned its gaze to New York as the Los Angeles Dodgers and their 19-year-old wunderkind took on the Mets.
However, when the dust settled and the lights turned off, fans and commentators shifted their focus from the hype to results. As promised, Urias showed unique poise for a player his age. He shook off a difficult outing with the confidence of a seasoned veteran.
While he wasn’t at his best mechanically, the stuff flashed plus across the board. Urias’ fastball sat 93-94 mph and touched 95 mph a number of times. He threw two distinctly different breaking balls — a shorter, more conventional slider, as well as a bigger, sweeping breaker more reminiscent of a curve.
He also showed his changeup, but used the pitch sparingly. Unfortunately, as is the case when a young pitcher makes his debuts, Urias struggled mightily with his command and control. He never really had a consistent rhythm in his delivery and missed up, down, left, and right.
He failed to find his release point, throwing pitches in the dirt, as well as sailing one fastball to the netting behind home plate. It wasn’t all his fault, though.
Like Zach Lee before him, Urias suffered from some bad luck. The first hit he gave up was a 93 mph fastball in on Asdrubal Cabrera. But, credit Cabrera for pulling his hands in and pulling the ball into left field for a double.
The pitch to Neil Walker wasn’t as good, but it was still a breaking ball down and in that Walker had to go down and get. Then there was the changeup to Juan Lagares, who literally one-handed the ball just past the outstretched glove of Corey Seager to plate two runs.
Urias was chased in the third inning, exiting with two outs and responsible for all three runners on base; allowing them to reach after retiring the first two batters.
Chris Hatcher ended the inning with a strikeout, and Urias finished with three runs allowed on five hits over 2.2 innings, with four walks and three strikeouts. While some may feel the need to draw conclusions from the outing, it will be Urias’ response to it that proves whether he has what it takes to pitch in the Majors.
For a young pitcher who’s only failed a minimal amount of times in his career, proving he can overcome failure is what will separate him from those who have come before him and failed to recover from adversity. Urias certainly will have plenty more chances to prove he’s worthy of pitching in the big leagues.
