Starting the High-A Vancouver Canadians game on Wednesday, the 19-year-old left-handed pitcher hurled five innings of one-run ball, walking just one batter and striking out six.
He dialed in from there. In the bottom of the second, the first two batters put the ball in play for outs, a ground out and a pop out. After a single, King struck out Mejía, his first of six strikeouts on the night.
King’s best inning was the bottom of the third. The Blue Jays’ third round pick got the lead-off hitter to swing and miss twice, before getting the out thanks to a lineout. Up next was Yassel Soler, who struck out swinging, as did Carlos Virahonda for a clean third inning.
Johnny King struck out six over five one-run innings last night.
He generated 17 whiffs on 43 total swings, and six of them came in the third inning. Here’s all the swings he generated in the third.
In the fourth, Kayson Cunningham led off the inning. He was moved to second thanks to a ground out, but King struck out his fourth batter of the game, before getting a ground out to end the inning.
With the strong performance, King’s ERA now sits at 2.41 over 52.1 innings of work. He’s also struck out 31.3% of the batters he’s faced this season, white his BB% is rather high. Though by issuing one free pass in this game, King’s BB% dropped from 13.5% to 12.6 BB%.
It wouldn’t be surprising to see King join the Double-A New Hampshire Fisher Cats at some point around the All-Star break. He’s pitched effectively at the High-A level and has dominated hitters. That said, for how many remaining starts he has left in British Columbia, he’ll need to continue to limit the walks.