Reds to stretch out Raisel Iglesias, move Tony Cingrani to ‘pen

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via Better Off Red[/caption]

News broke at about lunch time from Goodyear, AZ., that Tony Cingrani would be moving to the bullpen and the Reds would be stretching out the arm of Raisel Iglesias for a potential starting role.

This move could have been made for several reasons, but in my mind it is because Tony Cingrani has a limited number of pitches he can throw (2) and Iglesias has four he can throw for a strike. It was just a matter of time before Cingrani ended up in the bullpen as a Red, anyway. He throws his fastball nearly eighty percent of the time and his secondary pitches aren’t as sharp. That’s not saying Cingrani couldn’t be a starter in the future, but right now, the place for Cingrani is in the back end of the bullpen.

As for Iglesias, he has a great assortment of pitches, but his control is a red flag. He has shown control problems in Cuba, but he must have showed enough command in the Arizona Fall League and so far this spring for the Reds to stretch him out.

The most recent tweet from John Fay makes a lot more sense for Iglesias. He hasn’t thrown a ton of innings and according to baseball-reference he hasn’t thrown more than 82 innings, and that was in 2012. If that is indeed the case, having him pitch in Homer Bailey’s spot to begin the season would be the right move and then send him to the minors to continue to build arm strength.

We will have to wait and see how all of this falls out, but Iglesias making at most four starts to begin the season in Cincinnati and then heading to the minors makes the most sense at this point.