4/15/25
From his first warm-up pitch to the last pitch he threw in the outing Bell was very impressive for his mixture of present arsenal, easy athletic delivery, feel to throw strikes and the future projection to his profile. An athletic mover who works from a slightly cross-fire landing position while showing a loose fast arm the delivery/arm stroke and operation that all project a long term starters profile. Bell boasts an interesting ceiling to where he could fit in a future rotation at the next level with development to his present foundation. His present FB shows consistent 85-88 MPH velocity with running life to his arm side, but touched 89 MPH multiple times over the outing and popped a 90 MPH reading on his last pitch of a dominant five inning outing. The southpaw followed up the high quality FB with a mixture of three different off-speed offerings: 70-73 MPH CB, 74-76 MPH SLD and a 77-78 MPH CHG. Bell used the CB as his primary secondary in this outing which flashed power in the vertical shape when thrown in the 73 MPH range, but did get softer/loopier when he backed off to 70-71 MPH range. The SLD featured two-plane shape with less vertical depth and more glove side tilt in the shape, but it appeared more of a chase pitch to LHH or below the zone to the back foot against RHH, but on this day he appeared to have slightly less feel for the SLD utilizing the more vertically breaking CB. His CHG appeared a few times later in the outing to RH hitters and is thrown with quality arm speed and flashes fade to the arm side, but didn’t have significant depth vertically giving me more of a soft contact offering vs. bat missing offering at present. The outing itself was even more impressive than just the pure stuff he showcased by dominating his opponents for five innings racking up 10 Ks, 20+ whiffs on a mixture of his offerings and allowing just two hits and one walk with only one ball hit hard off him over the course of the game. His first three innings were electric retiring seven of nine hitters via a strikeout, then he scuffled in the fourth with a leadoff walk and a pair of soft singles before responding to leave the bases loaded by inducing a pop up and a strikeout while finishing the outing with two more Ks in the fifth hitting 90 MPH on his final pitch of the outing.