The 7th best reliever in the 2018 Valley League is Antonio Menendez, a big, physical righthander from Wake Forest.
Listed at 6-foot-4, 205 pounds, Antonio effectively uses three different arm slots to keep hitters off balance. (I saw him pitch once at the end of the season, and when he came straight over the top after a few sidearm pitches, it even surprised me in the stands!) His summer stats look like this:
| Char | ERA | W | L | G | SV | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | BAVG | WHIP | BB/9 | K/9 |
| 2018 | 1.75 | 1 | 0 | 15 | 3 | 25.7 | 12 | 5 | 5 | 11 | 39 | 0.141 | 0.895 | 3.9 | 13.7 |
| Play | 4.69 | 1 | 1 | 3 | 1 | 7.7 | 3 | 4 | 4 | 3 | 11 | 0.115 | 0.779 | 3.5 | 12.9 |
Among pitchers on this list, Antonio finished 6th in innings pitched, 4th in batting average against, 8th in WHIP, and 7th in K/9. He gave up runs in only 3 of his 15 regular season appearances, and once ripped off 10 straight shutout innings.
The sophomore actually pitched quite a bit for the Demon Deacons in 2018:
| WF | ERA | W | L | G | SV | IP | H | R | ER | BB | K | WIP | BB/9 | K/9 |
| 2018 | 9.99 | 0 | 5 | 25 | 0 | 24.0 | 23 | 28 | 27 | 22 | 27 | 1.875 | 8.3 | 10.1 |
Watch for a huge improvement for Antonio this coming spring.
Congrats on your excellent summer!
[…] list. The reliever’s list, however, was dominated by the Tom Sox. Hunter Gregory (#6), Antonio Menendez (#7), Cody Maw (#9), and Kirby McMullen (#14) all received individual writeups as top […]