You may recall Joel Kuhnel from his days with the Cincinnati Reds. Big guy, he is – listed at 6’5” and 290 lbs. He was an 11th round pick out of the University of Texas-Arlington, threw a heavy heater, and made it into 14 games with the Reds in 2019-2020 before injuries shut him down for most of 2021.
He was a big part of the 2022 Reds bullpen most of the entire year, though, getting into 53 games, pitching 58.0 IP, and even logging a save, his 6.36 ERA wholly different than the 3.96 FIP he posted,
as he did own a pretty impressive 56/14 K/BB in his time. With similarly frustrating surface stats during the start of the 2023 season and a dwindling ability to be jockeyed back and forth between Cincinnati and AAA Louisville, Kuhnel was designated for assignment and eventually traded to the Houston Astros for cash.
Since then, he has bounced like a basketball that rolled down the driveway. He’s been with Houston, Tampa, and eventually with the Athletics, the latter of whom traded him to the Milwaukee Brewers after the A’s, too, had DFA’d him late last week.
What’s interesting about any of this, you ask? Well, the Brewers – who have a pitching lab that has turned just about anyone into superstars – seem to have known exactly what to do when they got their hands on Kuhnel. Here’s a quick glimpse at what his stuff looked like with the A’s vs. what it looked like in his first appearance on the mound for Milwaukee:
So, in the matter of two days, he went from throwing his fastball at 94 mph to touching a hundred (with a 99.5 mph average overall). That’s even significantly higher than the 96.4 mph he averaged during his first call-up with Cincinnati in 2019 as a young buck.
That a team uncovered something like this is pretty miraculous at the macro level, and insanely frustrating on the micro level for the Reds. Not only is he their former arm, he’s now doing this within the division while their own bullpen is a raging conflagration that has already derailed their entire season.
For the Brewers, though, he’s just their latest success story even if this doesn’t pan out with Kuhnel being a perennial All Star. That they can clearly identify these kinds of inefficiencies right under the noses of the rest of the sport – particularly within the NL Central – is a pretty damning indictment of the clubs trying to chase them down.
The Reds, who are already 10.5 games back of the 41-23 Brewers, will face Milwaukee seven times between now and July 2nd.
