Mets Blade Tidwell Hurls Immaculate Inning—Reassigned Back to Minor League Camp

He has been the talk of the baseball town. Providing one of the best pitching highlights of spring training. However, currently it is around that time that teams must also assess their rosters and make some tough decisions and adjustments. For that reason, although the New York Mets Blade Tidwell hurls an Immaculate Inning he still finds himself reassigned back to Minor League Camp.

Striking guys out with the minimum pitches is not easy. In fact, it is extremely rare. In Major League Baseball history it has occurred less than 120 times. Even though over the decades countless games have been played, with nine innings, nine chances for it to happen per game.

Nevertheless, while Tidwell’s impressive performance helped to put him in the MLB spotlight. And on the Mets attention radar. The ball club still included him in their initial cuts on Tuesday.

The New York Mets cut their first 13 players from camp, they included:

RHP Ty Adcock

RHP Adbert Alzolay

RHP Dom Hamel

RHP Oliver Ortega

RHP Brandon Sproat

RHP Blade Tidwell

INF Ryan Clifford

OF Drew Gilbert

OF Rafael Ortega

C Kevin Parada

OF Alex Ramirez

INF Luke Ritter

INF Jett Williams

As one can see, Tidwell is on the chopping block. But why? He struck out guys on all swinging strikes. Well, Blade has a lot of promise but he still needs to work on his control and not putting guys on base. Additionally, Tidwell posted a 6.75 ERA in four innings of work this spring. So the 23-year-old needs to keep developing. According to MLB.com,

The 6-foot-4 Tidwell has impressive stuff, but his Minor League results have been mixed, due in large part to a high walk rate resulting from inconsistent control. Splitting last season between Double-A Binghamton and Triple-A Syracuse, Tidwell struck out 22.6% of the batters he faced but also walked 12% of them.

Looking to address that, Tidwell said he cut his arsenal down to five pitches: a four-seam fastball, a two-seamer, a “gyro” (bullet-spin) slider, a sweeper and a changeup.

‘It’s better to have five mastered pitches than it would be to have, like, nine average pitches, if that makes sense,’ he said.

He used all five pitches on Saturday and finished each of his three strikeouts in the second inning with a different pitch. It was a perfect example — immaculate, even — of what he can do when he’s ahead in the count.”

Mets Blade Tidwell Hurls Immaculate Inning—Reassigned Back to Minor League Camp

Well, stream-lining his pitching toolbox seemed to have paid off against the Tampa Bay Rays at least. Despite there not being appropriate data available on the game; he still pitched an immaculate inning. And proved that he can face big leaguers.

Also, this demonstrates that Blade is hardworking and moldable. If Tidwell can continue to fix and iron out issues he could prove to be a real asset for the Mets. Only time will tell if that will be the case.

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