Phillippe Aumont Dazzles Against Team USA

No matter if you’re Tommy Lasorda or not a fan of the World Baseball Classic, you have to admit it’s nice having competitive baseball around. I was lucky enough to catch the United States of America team play against Team Canada earlier Saturday and much to my pleasure, 20-year-old Phillippe Aumont got involved in the action.

Aumont is a former first round pick by the Seattle Mariners who saw his first exposure to pro ball in 2008. In 55.2 innings for the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers, Aumont posted a 3.58 FIP while striking out more than eight per nine and walking around three per nine. As far as first impressions go, Aumont pretty much nailed it.

He only threw 21 pitches (13 fastballs, 8 slurves) but his average fastball sat near 96 miles per hour with solid movement. I could sit here and write out how impressive Aumont’s stuff looked or how consistent he mixed speeds, but how about I just show you using Pitchfx data?

The strike zone and velocity graphs are pretty self explanatory, so I’ll focus on the movement. You should notice the two clusters of pitches, one in the upper left quadrant and the other in the bottom right quadrant. It’s pretty clear which set of pitches are Aumont’s fastballs and which are his slurves. An exercise I would encourage is looking at the velocity chart and imagining how the USA batters like Kevin Youkilis felt seeing:

First pitch: 95 miles per hour fastball that breaks in.
Second pitch: Power slurve breaking away.
Third pitch: Another slurve.

I’m not a prospects expert, but Aumont looked pretty damn impressive today.