HOUSTON -- Chase Petty saw some improvements in his second Major League start Sunday, but the 22-year-old rookie right-hander knows he still has work to do moving forward.
Petty (Cincinnati’s No. 6 prospect) surrendered four runs while pitching into the fourth inning of the Reds’ 6-0 loss to the Astros at Daikin Park.
Petty’s command was an issue against Houston as he surrendered six hits and six walks to go with four strikeouts. Of his 90 pitches, only half were strikes.
“He’s trying to soften it up to start the hitters up because everything is pretty hard, and he wasn’t really commanding anything,” Cincinnati manager Terry Francona said. “The line ended up being three innings, six hits, six walks. Probably fortunate he competed so well that it wasn’t worse than that. That’s a ton of traffic. A lot of deep counts. When you’re around 90 [pitches] in the fourth inning, that’s a pretty good indicator.”
Petty pointed to the walks repeatedly postgame.
“Can’t give up the free bags,” Petty said. “I can’t walk six guys. I’m going to work on it in my bullpen this week and build off that.”
Petty, who was recalled on Friday when Hunter Greene was placed on the 15-day injured list, said he wasn’t trying to be too fine with his pitches.
“Some days you just don’t have it,” he said. “Some days you’re trying to execute, and you’re doing everything to execute, but you’re missing those executed pitches. I felt like I had it for a good bit of it, but I felt like there was a lot of it that was getting away. I didn’t feel like I was trying to do too much or trying to be too perfect. Some days you just don’t execute the way you want to.”
Despite the result, Petty did see improvement from his first start with the Reds where he was tagged for nine runs on seven hits and two walks in 2 1/3 innings in the second game of a doubleheader on April 30 against the Cardinals.
“I executed two-strike pitches better,” Petty said. “I got some strikeouts. I put guys away when I was ahead early. But, I just struggled with not walking guys. There were guys where I got ahead and then fell behind and couldn’t execute the two-strike pitch and lost them completely.”
Petty mixed up his pitches well, using 26 sliders, 24 four-seam fastballs, 16 sinkers and 12 sweepers and changeups each.
“He’s so young, and we recognize that,” Francona said. “Sometimes you try to command too many pitches and maybe get back to basics. If he can command a couple, then maybe he can grow into the rest of them because he is very young.”
He got six whiffs on the slider, four on the sweeper, three on the changeup and one on the sinker. All told, he got 14 whiffs on 33 swings.
Petty said he was trying to mix the pitches following his last outing with Triple-A Louisville on May 6 where he threw six hitless innings and struck out eight.
“I felt like the first start I didn’t mix enough, didn’t throw enough changeups, didn’t throw enough sweepers,” Petty said. “Last outing in Triple-A, I mixed up really, really good, and it showed for itself. That was the game plan today to mix it up a bit. Just had a couple unfortunate events and the free bags killed me.”
Petty had traffic on the bases throughout, with the Astros putting runners on first and second in the first and second innings. But he induced a Yainer Diaz double play to escape the first and struck out Brendan Rodgers and Cam Smith to end the second.
The Astros broke through in the third on a one-out three-run homer to left by Diaz. After allowing a single to Smith and walks to Jeremy Peña and Isaac Paredes to load the bases in the fourth, Petty’s day was done.
Petty did not know whether he would get another start with the Reds at this point, but he is ready if he does.
“We’ll see what happens,” Petty said. “Hopefully, I’ll get as many as I can this year. It’s just a building block. It’s a game just building off momentum, and hopefully, I can catch that momentum soon and keep building off it.”