June 4, 2019 at 4:53 PM
Red Sox select Brock Bell with seventh-round pick
With their seventh pick in the 2019 MLB Draft the Red Sox took right-handed pitcher Brock Bell out of State College of Florida Manatee-Sarasota. Bell was ranked 192nd by Perfect Game USA, the 55th college pitcher outside of the top 138 by Fangraphs, and was listed as one of the top 50 Junior College Prospects heading into the 2018 season.
Coming from a baseball family (he is the son of former Pirate Jay Bell), Brock Bell has taken a rather unconventional path to professional baseball. Bell came to SCF as a two-way player and dominated on the mound his freshman year, and planned to continue to hit before undergoing Tommy John surgery ten games into the 2018 season. The JuCo product has since given up hitting and has only just recently returned to the mound. Bell has pitched in just seven games thus far in 2019 but his performance in that time has been extraordinary, striking out 23 batters and walking only three in 13 innings pitched good for a 15.92 K/9.
His velocity has also caught scouts eye's with Perfect Game reporting his fastball now touching 97 mph when it had previously sat in the 88-91 range. In addition to his power fastball Bell sports two average secondary pitches in a breaking ball and changeup that occasionally flash plus. Long term scouts see a reliever profile, and his good size and relative rawness could translate into a potential impact arm out of the pen if he can develop a better than average secondary offering.
Photo Credit: Brock Bell by State College of Florida Manatee-Saratoga