Chase Petty is throwing gas again, and hitters everywhere are in trouble

Might we even see him in Cincinnati this summer?

The Cincinnati Reds reportedly pursued Sonny Gray, the runner-up in the 2023 American League Cy Young Award voting, in free agency this winter. Gray, the former Red, eventually signed with the rival St. Louis Cardinals on a 3-year, $75 million contract, while the Reds turned around and spent potentially $86.25 million on other pitching options for their staff.

It’s hard not to view that pursuit/pivot as something of a challenge. The Reds, after all, will now have to go right through Gray and the Cardinals for NL Central supremacy for the next few years, and will have to do so with the arms they signed after he made the decision not to the club he pitched for from 2019-2021 (or the club for whom he grew up rooting).

To Gray, or not to Gray is the obvious decision to track. The Cardinals have him now, and the Cincinnati Reds do not.

The difference, though, is that the Reds still have something for forfeiting the services of Gray, and that something is back to chucking baseballs at damn near 100 miles per hour.

The Reds decision to trade Gray after the 2021 season eventually dented their chances at a miraculous 2023 run to the playoffs, a run that saw them fall 2 games short while the rotation they had in-house ran up a 5.43 ERA for the season - a mark worsted by only the lowly Oakland A’s and Colorado Rockies. Their trade of Gray to Minnesota after the 2021 season landed them young hurler Chase Petty, however, and that’s who the fine folks of the Red Reporter corner of the internet voted as the #3 prospect on the farm in the latest Community Prospect Rankings.

Petty made his way up to AA Chattanooga as a 20 year old last year, and the former 1st round pick of the Twins pitched to an excellent 1.72 ERA across 68.0 IP split between the Lookouts and the High-A Dayton Dragons. He did all of that with velocity that had dipped since the near 100 mph days of his senior season in high school, too, the days and speeds that made him a 1st round pick to begin with.

Now, though, it would appear that he’s worked his way back to that kind of elite velocity, and now has that to pair with the things he picked up last year while learning to get batters out without it. As a result, Petty - who won’t turn 21 until April - now seems back on track to be the kind of arm who makes his big league debut sooner rather than later, meaning he’s suddenly creating his own form of an intradivision challenge.

The next three years in the NL Central might not just be Sonny Gray vs. The Guys the Reds Signed Instead of Him. It may well turn into Sonny Gray vs. The Guy the Reds Got by Trading Him Away.