Diamondbacks' Drey Jameson dominates Padres with velocity, control

As the days trickled out of July, with the baseball world’s focus firmly on Juan Soto and the upcoming trade deadline, Drey Jameson sat in the home clubhouse beneath Greater Nevada Field.

The task at hand was preparing for the 48th minor league start of his career, a Triple-A date between Jameson’s Reno Aces and the Salt Lake Bees. Jameson, though, thinks about his outings in the larger context. Each minor league start is an opportunity to grow; an opportunity to get a smidge closer to being a major league pitcher.

And in late July, with the Diamondbacks beginning to peek towards the future, each start for Reno’s pitchers was an audition.

“It could be three dominating starts and you get the call or it could be three terrible starts and you're not getting the call at all this year,” Jameson said then, speaking over the phone.

The primary objective back then was to reach the threshold he crossed Thursday night, when he made his major league debut in a commanding 4-0 win over the Padres. But Jameson had bigger ambitions, too.

“The goal,” Jameson said, “is once I’m up there, I’m never back.”

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On Thursday, he made a significant stride towards that end. He went seven scoreless innings, allowed two hits, walked one and struck out five. Meanwhile, Ketel Marte, Emmanuel Rivera and Carson Kelly provided the pop, each slugging solo home runs.

Against just his second major league batter, Jameson went face to face with Soto, a foreboding task even with the Padres’ superstar mired in a deep slump. Jameson fell behind 2-0 but worked his way back with five four-seam fastballs. The third of those clocked in at 98.9 mph — the fastest pitch from a Diamondbacks starter since Rubby De La Rosa in 2015. Two pitches later, he spotted 97.6 on the inside edge, freezing Soto for his first major league strikeout.

“That, to me, said that he was prepared and ready to go out there and attack,” Diamondbacks manager Torey Lovullo said.

In the second inning, Jameson got two more strikeouts on fastballs over 97 mph. In the sixth, he used a change-up in the zone to sit down Soto. And in the seventh, after the Padres’ first real flurry of hard contact went unrewarded, he pulled out some of his best offerings of the night.

First, he used a backfoot slider to strike out Josh Bell, who lost his footing trying to get down to the pitch. Then, facing his last batter of the game, he set up Brandon Drury with a swinging strike on a slider away before jamming him with a sinker that ran in on his hands.

“He has all the things that you can't teach guys,” pitching coordinator Dan Carlson said last month. “You can help guys improve their skills, but I can't teach everybody to throw 100. I can't teach everybody to get super sink on your fastball or nasty slide to the slider.”

Certainly, the potential potency of Jameson’s arsenal was on full display against the Padres.

In the majors, though, that’s not always enough. So before the game, Lovullo offered up two challenges, neither of which had to do with Jameson’s stuff.

One: Put the ball on the plate. Two: Don’t waste pitches.

Check and check. Jameson threw over two-thirds of his pitches for strikes, only getting into four three-ball counts. And, in part because of his strong command, he needed just 90 pitches to get through seven innings.

“When you're supposed to put somebody away, you make the pitch right then,” Lovullo said. “… And he did a good job of that.”

Entering the night, Jameson’s gameplan was to attack the plate, primarily using his two fastballs. He followed through on that goal, throwing his four-seamer and sinker a combined 72% of the time.

“(He has) the ability to throw the sinker down and then the four-seam at the top of the zone,” Kelly, the Diamondbacks catcher, said. “He's got good life and good spin on that four-seam at the top and then that sinker, it falls off the table. As a hitter, I know first-hand that it's hard to cover both of those.”

The success of both pitches served as a reward for Jameson’s willingness to address his weaknesses head on — a common theme in conversations with those who have worked with him. In spring training in 2021, he developed the sinker after asking Matt Peacock about his grip on the pitch. This year, he began using it with more regularity.

“I needed a pitch that, when I fell behind to guys, that could either get me right back in that count or get a quick out,” Jameson said. On Thursday, he didn’t get a single whiff on the pitch but used it to induce four groundouts and a soft lineout.

The four-seamer, by contrast, has always been Jameson’s most dynamic pitch. As a triple-digit offering for years, it drew the attention of Diamondbacks scouts and helped him move through the minors with ease. But after struggling against more advanced hitters in Triple-A, he adapted by trading two or three ticks of velocity for better command.

Those adjustments helped Jameson earn a call up despite subpar surface-level numbers. Against the Padres, they helped him turn a dream into a reality that he himself still can’t quite process.

“It’s something that I've been waiting for my whole life,” Jameson said, his smile almost turning into a disbelieving laugh. “And it happened.”

Theo Mackie covers Arizona high school sports and the Arizona Diamondbacks. He can be reached by email at theo.mackie@gannett.com and on Twitter @theo_mackie.

This article originally appeared on Arizona Republic: Another dazzling MLB debut: Diamondbacks' Drey Jameson dominates Padres