photo by (Graphic Art by Elizabeth Dumont)
Is it a cutter? Or a fastball? Maybe a curve? Perhaps a slider?
For 44 innings, batters from Pensacola and Birmingham and other southern towns would fail to answer that question correctly. The man in front of them would raise his right leg while keeping his arms tucked away at his waist. As he lunged off the mound with his left leg, his same-side arm would snap forward and deliver an often-unhittable ball. Some batters swung and missed at strike three, while many more made weak contact against the best pitching prospect in the Red’s system.
Time and time again, Nick Lodolo made the world’s most difficult game look easy.
Those befuddled batters would walk back to the dugout, sometimes solemnly, other times dejectedly, many times angrily after failing to knock out a hit in the oppressive summer heat. A viewer at Chattanooga’s AT&T Field would have never guessed it, but the man who fanned 68 batters hated pitching in the still and humid air just as much as they loathed sitting in it.
“Growing up in Southern California, the weather was sunny every day but it wasn’t like this,” Lodolo said. “It’s hot there, but it’s not nearly as humid, I’ll tell you that. There’s a breeze out there in California.”
Lodolo won’t have to worry about the humidity of the Tennessee Valley anymore, as he was promoted to Triple-A Louisville in early August. He leaves Chattanooga having proven himself a dominant force at the Double-A level of the minor leagues and sporting a 1.84 ERA over ten starts. It was his first exposure to pro baseball aside from an 18-inning cup of coffee split between Billings and Dayton after being chosen 7th overall by the Reds in the 2019 draft. Unlike his time at Texas Christian University, where the NCAA phenom spent the majority of his time in Fort Worth (which the California native still considers home), his stint in Chattanooga showed him the less-publicized aspect of being a prospect.
“It’s not glamorous, I can tell you that. It’s different, because you’re on the road every other week, and you’re living out a suitcase because you could go up or down at any time,” Lodolo said. “You always got to have your stuff with you, so you got to pack your whole life with you in a suitcase.”
With players cycling in and out of the clubhouse as they were sent up or down the system, rosters morphed and evolved on an almost-weekly basis. Outside of a core of players like Yoel Yanqui and Lorenzo Cedrola, Lodolo had to rely on what he wryly dubbed ‘networking’ during spring training to familiarize himself with teammates on the fly.
“We’re all together in spring training, so at least then you’ve had a chance to meet everybody,” Lodolo said. “You’re pretty familiar with everybody, because it’s kind of like a networking thing.”
He entered 2021 as one-third of a highly-touted triumvirate of prospects on Chattanooga’s roster. Flamethrowing Hunter Greene was the first to be promoted, and power-hitting shortstop Jose Barrero was the next to go. Even though Lodolo is essentially guaranteed a look at the top level of the game, his manager said you wouldn’t know it from the way he conducted himself in the clubhouse.
“It was great having him around the clubhouse and being part of the team,” Lookouts manager Ricky Gutierrez said. “The most impressive thing is that even though he had a prestigious status (as the seventh overall pick in the 2019 draft), he’s a humble boy who wants to fit in and not be excluded or treated differently.”
He may have been ‘just another guy’ in the locker room, but Lodolo was anything but when he was mowing down hitters atop the mound. Known for having a diverse bag coming out of college, Lodolo has continued to sharpen the weapons in his arsenal since going pro. Unlike many pitchers, who use breaking balls when ahead in the count, Lodolo utilizes off-speed pitches to throw strikes during any count.
“As a hitter, if you get a 2-0 count, then you’re usually going to get a fastball to get ahead,” Lodolo said. “But luckily I’ve been able to work on everything, so I can throw anything on any count. That’s why I think I’m having a lot of success. I’m not predictable.”
A scout from the yearly Baseball Prospectus agreed, writing “His breaking ball and changeup don’t serve as your typical “fool me” pitches, either, and he uses them to throw strikes and get ahead in the count.” Olympic silver medalist Mark Kolozsvary caught a few of Lodolo’s starts and was the third person to agree with this assessment.
“I think his deceptiveness and ability to throw any of his pitches for strikes is a big deal,” said Lookout catcher and national team starter before he left for Tokyo. “It gets hitters off balance.”
Hitters were off-balance for the first month of the season, as Lodolo racked up both of his wins and garnered a Double-A South player of the month award. He had his best outing of the season on the 19th of May, when he struck out 11 Mississippi Braves while only throwing 90 total pitches. A call-up to Triple-A seemed inevitable and only a few weeks away.
Then came the blisters on his left hand, a crippling setback for a southpaw like Lodolo. The 59th best prospect in baseball (according to Jonathan Mayo of MLB.com) made only one brief appearance in June after missing two weeks, and then sat out another half month before cobbling together four abbreviated starts in July. The prized prospect did not make a start longer than four innings after that great outing against the Braves in mid-May.
“I felt like I was in a really good spot on the mound, and something so small making me miss time really stung,” Lodolo said. “You want to keep your rhythm going and build that pitch count up to what it was before then.”
Perhaps Lodolo could have thrown more than the 70 or so pitches he was artificially held to after injury. But for Gutierrez, jeopardizing a potentially-transcendent career for some ultimately-trivial wins in the middle of July was not worth it.
“With his talent, we had to make sure that he was fine and 100 percent with him before he ever gets on that mound,” Gutierrez said. “If there’s something wrong or a concern, then we needed to be cautious.”
So the Lookouts remained cautious and allowed a slightly-restrained version of the hurler to perform in front of not only fans, but a more knowledgeable section of the viewing populace. Scouts littered the seats behind home plate, armed with radar guns, notebooks, iPads, and a watchful eye. Even after Lodolo gave up a few knocks to inferior competition, he impressed them by avoiding the implosion many other Lookouts starters have endured.
“He wasn’t as sharp as he was last week and his stuff wasn’t as good, but he still got outs,” said an anonymous scout after Lodolo managed to come away without an inflated earned run average. “That’s the mark of a good pitcher.”
The Cincinnati Reds promoted Lodolo to the next level on August 3rd, and the California boy left a city he never really had a chance to know. Because of COVID-19 -related restrictions, the most he usually saw of Chattanooga was on his trip across the bridge from his apartment in Northshore to the stadium in downtown.
“I’ll be honest, we don’t really get out much,” Lodolo said. “I can’t even say I have a favorite restaurant. We just kind of float around the ballpark and then we'd go back to the apartment, because by the time we get done at the ballpark, nothing is open.”
Like every other top-rated prospect in a major league farm system, the future’s possibilities seem to be unending. The Baseball Prospectus sees a solid middle-of-the-rotation starter, and others envision the kind of ace who can anchor a pitching staff for a decade. Trent Rosecrans, the Reds beat writer for The Athletic, says Lodolo’s immediate future may be as a bullpen option for a Reds team with a weak set of relievers and playoff aspirations.
“I'd say it's a possibility he gets called up to be in the bullpen,” Rosecrans says via email. “He and Hunter Greene would be possibilities. Right now, though, no relievers on the roster have options. If some continue to underperform and things get close, there could be a good chance.”
His former manager has a lofty comparison for his former player. Gutierrez enjoyed a 12 year career in the major leagues, and looked to Cooperstown when asked to find a pitcher from his era that Lodolo reminds him of.
“I could see him being like a Randy Johnson type of guy, with his demeanor and cutter he has down,” Gutierrez said. “He’s got the same long legs, lanky frame, he throws the ball from the same arm slot, and he reminds me of a young Randy.”
While Lodolo does not and may never have the 100 MPH four-seamer Johnson did, the rest of his arsenal could one day equal the five-time Cy Young award winner’s bevy of unhittable breaking balls. But even though Lodolo made pitching look simple in Chattanooga, he knows he has much to learn before he can live up to his former manager’s lofty expectations.
“The game of baseball is a kid’s game that is very complicated,” Lodolo said. “There’s a lot of things that people don’t realize that go into it, and it’s not just throwing the ball into the strike zone. There’s a lot more that goes into it.”
“It’s not an easy sport.”
You can contact the author at Joseph.A.Dycus@gmail.com or on Twitter at @joseph_dycus.
Graphic by Elizabeth Dumont, and original picture by Glen Austin.