When the trade was announced, it was somewhat of a shock to hear that the Royals had given up on him so quickly, and that it could have even caught Finnegan off guard.
At TCU, Finnegan started games. He could have possibly spent the entire 2015 season with the Royals in Kansas City, and Cueto might have been traded to another team instead. But during his wildly successful stint with the Kansas Royals last season, Finnegan was used as in short relief.
“The Royals kind of screwed me over this year”, Finnegan said to The Courier-Journal. “But, you could tell they just didn’t have a clue what to do with me”.
Finnegan wasn’t impressed with how the Royals treated him, telling Jonathan Lintner of the Courier-Journal that he thought the club had no idea what they were doing with his development. In eight starts with the Louisville, the Cincinnati Reds AAA affiliate, Finnegan has been tuned up to an 0-3 record with 6.23 ERA and a 1.582 WHIP. He struck out 30 compared to 31 hits allowed while working with Bats pitching coach Ted Power, who called the Texan “a very determined young man”. He was a college starting pitcher. For now he’ll get “every opportunity to start”, and remain there for the foreseeable future. He was one of three left-handed pitchers sent to the Reds in exchange for pitcher Johnny Cueto. “But I never felt, or meant to say, anything bad about the KC org. I’m grateful to the Royals for everything”, Finnegan tweeted. “He proved he could do that last year and this year”. Axisa noted that the Javelinas don’t sport as shiny a roster as any of the other AFL teams in terms of prospect hype (and that’s why Blandino gets top billing), but the top end suggestion for Blandino’s projection at the big leagues seems like something we’d all be pretty OK with. How the team handles having both he and Eugenio Suarez in the middle infield juggle will be one of the larger storylines heading into next season, but I believe it’s a problem the Reds will be happy to have. “These guys have been welcoming”. I really hope Cueto finds a way to fix things before the playoffs roll around, since I’d like nothing more than to see him succeed on the biggest of baseball stages. “I see him as a guy who can pitch seventh and eighth inning of ball games – lefty who can be a setup type of guy”.
“His stuff’s been good, it’s just a matter of harnessing it, throwing a higher percentage of strikes”, Price said. He hasn’t pitched a whole lot.