Joe Bisenius Profile

Joe Bisenius is a 24 year old right handed reliever who made his Major League debut for the Phillies in last night's loss to the Braves. He's a fastball/slider guy who works in the low 90's and gets plenty of swinging third strikes on sliders in the dirt. The Phils drafted him in the 12 round back in 2004 out of NAIA powerhouse Oklahoma City College, where he was a starter. They kept him in the rotation for his first pro season, but moved him to the bullpen during his 2005 season spent in the Sally League. Bisenius came alive last season, getting good results in both the Florida State and the Eastern League.

As was evident in his stat line above, he showed good stuff last night, striking out Pete Orr on a really nice slider and freezing Kelly Johnson on a fastball inside. His slider has a lot of hard, downward movement and his fastball tailed away from left handed hitters. He did leave a slider hanging to Scott Thorman, the first batter he faced. Thorman pulled it down the right field line before getting gunned down trying to stretch his double into a triple. That let 2 inherited runners score and put the game out of reach. On that level, the appearance was a failure, but all things considered, he had a decent showing. He pitched an inning and a third, allowing 2 hits, a walk, and struck out 2. He wasn't charged for any runs.

Bisenius does need to work on his command a bit. His pitches have a lot of run, which may lead to him always having a higher than ideal walk rate. Hopefully he will be able to curtail that enough to be a good ML pitcher. He has the talent to do so.

Other things to know is that he has a slight ground ball tendency, nothing on the Brandon Webb/Jake Westbrook scale, but chances are that if somebody does make contact with his slider, it will probably head over to the second baseman pretty quickly. It also bears noticing that he was pretty good at keeping the ball in the park last season.

So now if you're watching your team face the Phillies and some anonymous reliever named Joe comes into the game, you know what to expect.