DENVER – When Brandon Williamson checked his phone Sunday after making dinner with his wife and daughter, he saw three missed calls from Triple-A Louisville manager Pat Kelly with two voicemails.
The first voicemail from the longtime minor league manager was nice, Williamson said. The second one, not so much.
“By the time I called him back,” Williamson said, “I was like, ‘what’s up?’ He was like, ‘you know, you should probably answer your phone every once in a while.’ ”
Once Williamson finally picked up his phone, it was the call he’s been working toward his whole life. Williamson will make his major league debut Tuesday when he starts against the Colorado Rockies at Coors Field.
It wasn’t until Williamson saw all the missed calls from Kelly that he even really thought about a promotion to the big leagues.
“No, I did my best to not think about it,” said the 25-year-old Williamson. “It can eat you away pretty easily. I found that out the hard way. I wasn’t really expecting it or planning for it. I just let it happen.”
Williamson, a 6-foot-6 lefty, was the headline prospect in the Jesse Winker/Eugenio Suárez trade with Seattle before the 2022 season. He’s struggled with his command since he joined the Reds and his stats reflect that with a 6.62 ERA through eight starts at Triple-A this year with 27 strikeouts and 20 walks in 34 innings.
The Reds are short on starting pitching depth after Nick Lodolo, Williamson’s college teammate at TCU and close friend, went on the 15-day injured list with a calf injury that will sideline him for at least a month. Tuesday was Williamson’s day to start at Triple-A and he’s looked better in his last two starts, yielding nine hits and four runs in 11 2/3 innings with 11 strikeouts.
“After April I looked back and said, wow, my stats suck, but I do feel pretty good,” Williamson said. “I think that people, coaches around me saw some things moving in the right way even though the results weren’t coming at all. Then the last few starts, it all started just gelling together. I feel really confident and really comfortable with being here now.”
Williamson thought one of his breakthrough moments was a bullpen session before he faced the Triple-A Iowa Cubs. He dealt with shoulder pain last year and improving his shoulder strength was a focus all offseason. During this bullpen session, he wondered why he wasn’t trusting himself to let it loose.
Once he did, the results in the bullpen session were great. Then the game came, and he allowed eight runs in one-third of an inning.
“The worst start of my life,” he said. “I felt fantastic. I thought I was going to dominate. I got one out and I walked off and I was like, this sucked, but I felt phenomenal. And then the next two (were better).”
Williamson features a four-pitch mix with a low-90s fastball, a slider, a curveball and a changeup. When he’s at his best, those are all individually above-average pitches. In 2021, his last season in Seattle’s organization, he had the third-highest strikeout rate in all the minor leagues.
He was one of the last cuts in big-league camp as he competed for one of the final two spots in the starting rotation.
“He’s talented,” Reds Manager David Bell said. “Spring training didn’t go exactly how he wanted it to, and I think that carried over into the beginning of the season, but he continued to work at it. … Sometimes you work so hard to get here and there is a lot of pressure to get to this point. Now it just becomes about the game, going out and winning a baseball game, and letting your ability and your talent take over.”
TJ Friedl could return early next week
The Reds placed outfielder TJ Friedl on the 10-day injured list Monday with a left oblique strain, opening a roster spot for shortstop Matt McLain.
Friedl hadn’t played since last Thursday, unavailable off the bench for the Reds’ weekend series in Miami. He underwent pregame testing with the medical staff Sunday, which went well, but it was determined he likely wouldn’t be available to play in the three-game series against the Rockies.
In a best-case scenario, Friedl could return to next week against the St. Louis Cardinals.
“It didn’t make any sense to put any added pressure to think he could come back before that,” Bell said. “If everything goes well, he will swing off the tee on Friday and build back up over the weekend. The goal is for him to be able to play Monday, but everything would have to go perfect for that to happen just because of that type of injury, you have to be cautious.”
Joey Votto update
As a procedural move to make room for McLain on the 40-man roster, the Reds transferred Joey Votto the 60-day injured list. The 60-day IL move is retroactive to the start of the season, so Votto is eligible to return on May 29.
“Nothing has changed,” Bell said. “He’s still recovering and building back to the point his shoulder can withstand the grind of playing and allow him to be able to do what he needs to do in the field and mostly at the plate. He’s just not there yet.”
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