It turns out that there are more two-way players in baseball than we all initially thought.
Last night, the Chicago Cubs were getting smacked around by the red-hot St. Louis Cardinals, so badly that manager David Ross chose to bring in a position player to pitch.
Franmil Reyes was the position player in question.
He was brought in to face Albert Pujols and actually got to within one pitch of striking him out before hitting the future Hall-of-Famer.
A few batters later, he managed to strike out Paul DeJong looking, and the final pitch of that at-bat clocked in at 90 mph.
Franmil Reyes for Cy Young pic.twitter.com/AOubjGzIr0
— Baseball Bros (@BaseballBros) August 24, 2022
Sign Him Up!
Somebody should sign this guy up to pitch.
Who knew that a position player could touch 90 mph?
It turns out Reyes can throw pretty hard, at least for a position player.
It’s not every day that you’ll see a position player throw that fast.
But it seems that Reyes is no ordinary position player.
In the midst of a bad loss for the Cubs against their arch rivals, Reyes provided a little bit of levity, but also impressed with his ability to throw as hard as he did.
We could have a new two-way star pretty soon.
This year, we have seen a lot of position players take the mound with games out of reach.
Dee Strange-Gordon did it for the Washington Nationals.
The Cardinals themselves had put Pujols and Yadier Molina into games to pitch when the score was lopsided.
They’re no strangers to something like this.
But Pujols and Molina never touched 90 mph.
This is something special.
He got all three outs in the top of the ninth and helped save the Cubs bullpen a little in the process.
NEXT: Franmil Reyes Is Back To His Old Ways With The Cubs