Tejay Antone has been through it. A lot of it. You likely know that he’s coming back from his third Tommy John surgery and trying to get back to the big leagues. If he can do that he would be just the third player to do so.

Over the years he’s changed how he pitches. He’s gone from a guy who had solid average fastball velocity to a guy who was throwing in the upper 90’s in 2020 when he got to the big leagues. When he came back from his second Tommy John surgery his velocity wasn’t quite where it had been. And now that he’s coming back from his third one he’s added a new pitch and altered his pitch usage in a big way.

In 2025 Antone came back on the rehab trail in August. He showcased a cutter for the first time, but it was just something he sprinkled in and was the pitch he threw just 3% of the time when he was in Triple-A. The sample size there was small but it was over multiple games and he barely threw it.

We’re still in the small sample size this season, too. Tejay Antone has thrown just 42 pitches this season. But that cutter has been thrown 21 times. He’s barely throwing a fastball, with his 4-seamer and 2-seamer combining to be thrown just four times. His curveball and slider usage hasn’t really changed much.

Antone has essentially just replaced his fastball usage with a cutter. This year the pitch is averaging 91.0 MPH. The 4-seamer, which has only been thrown twice in the regular season, has topped out at 96.3 MPH. That’s the fastest he’s thrown while pitching in a park with pitch tracking since his return. The cutter gives him something that’s an in-between velocity from the fastball to the slider and curveball which work in the low-to-mid 80’s. But the cutter also moves a lot differently from either of his fastballs, too. Pitching is an art, as they say.

So far, so good for Antone. He has thrown 3.2 innings for Louisville across his three outings. He’s struck out five of the 11 hitters he’s faced and has not yet allowed a baserunner.

Rece Hinds and his hot start

There aren’t many players out to a hotter start in 2026 than Rece Hinds. After a spring where he hit .410/.465/.949 in 43 plate appearances with the Reds he’s doing about the same in Triple-A with Louisville. Through nine games he’s hitting .382/.476/.853 in 42 plate appearances with seven walks and nine strikeouts.

During that time Hinds has put 26 balls in play. His average exit velocity on those is 91 MPH. The MLB average is 88 MPH for context. But since we’ve been tracking this kind of data we’ve learned that the average exit velocity isn’t nearly as important as the exit velocity on the top 50% of batted balls from a player because everyone’s going to have their share of “mishits” that are mostly going to be turned into outs. But the ones guys hit “hard” can really make a difference in how those batted balls play out.

For Hinds his EV50 is at 105.2 MPH so far. For perspective on that, only seven big leaguers (out of 278 hitters that are currently qualified for the batting title) would be ahead of that mark (and one of those guys is Elly De La Cruz). The MLB average is right around 100 MPH in previous years.