For high school pitchers, velocity is their currency. How hard can you throw? If they can hit 90 mph with their fastball, it usually means they are considered one of the top pitchers in their towns.

Cody Reed, who made his Major League debut with the Reds in 2016, vividly remembers the first time he found out he was throwing 90 mph. It just took him longer than most pro pitchers.

Growing up in Horn Lake, Mississippi, about 15 miles from Memphis, Reed was considered a great high school pitcher. He led his team to a district title. He later had his jersey retired. But there was one number that defined his arm: 83 mph.

It’s a story, Reed says, that he loves sharing when he speaks to young baseball players. He wasn’t much different than them.

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During Reed’s senior season, he had one scholarship offer to play college baseball: Northwest Mississippi Community College, which was about a 25-minute drive from his house. When his fastball was topping out at 83 mph, he didn’t see a big future in baseball. Listed at 6-foot-5, he was still skinny, and the velocity wasn’t there.

“All my high school buddies, they all joke with me, like, ‘Who would’ve thought back then, when you couldn’t throw an egg and break it against the wall,’” Reed said. “That was the big joke or I couldn’t break glass with my fastball.”

At the end of his senior season, Reed was invited to play in the state’s all-star game, which featured some SEC baseball commits. The all-star team practiced beforehand, and Reed remembers players sizing him up. Here’s this tall dude, who is left-handed and wears goggles on the mound. They figured he must throw 100 mph.

“I’m throwing bullpens, and they were like, ‘Man, how hard do you throw?’” Reed said. “I’m like, ‘Dude, I throw like 82-83 tops. That’s all I got.’ They were like, ‘Really?’”

During the all-star game, Reed was given an inning to pitch, like most of the other pitchers. He took the mound and started warming up on the field before his inning started. After his final warm-up pitch, the catcher threw down to second base. Infielders, as usual, quickly threw the ball around before approaching the mound.

The shortstop asked Reed how hard he could throw. Not now, Reed said. It was time to focus on the upcoming inning, not joke around.

“He put the ball in my glove,” Reed said, “and held it there and said, ‘Your first warm-up pitch was 90.’ I was like, ‘What? 90!’”

Talk about an adrenaline rush. After every pitch during the inning, Reed quickly turned his head to catch the radar gun on the scoreboard. He topped out at 91 mph. He felt so good that he asked to pitch another inning.

One of Reed’s coaches in the all-star game called Bill Selby, an assistant coach at Northwest Mississippi CC, during the game to talk about his recruit.

“It’s in the middle of the game, ‘Hey, I’m just giving you a heads up. Cody just threw an inning and he was 88-90,’” Selby remembered. “I said, ‘Cody Reed?’ He said, ‘Yes, and I’m just here to tell you that Ole Miss is here to talk to him.’ I said, ‘Well, I would too if I saw that.’

It was a revelation for Reed. He couldn’t believe it. Ole Miss was suddenly interested and offered a chance to walk-on. Reed turned down the opportunity, knowing his family probably couldn’t afford to send him there without a scholarship, and decided to go to his nearby junior college.

From there, Reed’s velocity jumped. He went from touching 90 with his fastball to regularly throwing 88 mph before the start of his freshman season. A solid high school basketball player, it was the first time Reed focused solely on baseball. Plus, he attacked the weight room.

Reed attributes his spike in velocity to focusing on one sport and his body filled out. Selby liked how basketball gave him more athleticism, but he finally had time to do baseball-specific workouts with his arm.

“I just think it was a big case of ‘Really, you think I could do this?’” said Selby, who went to the same high school as Reed and played in 36 games with the Reds in 2001. “I think it took some limitations he may have put on himself off. When he’s like, ‘Dude, I was throwing that hard?’ It’s almost like a sense of adrenaline.”

When Reed was a second-round pick by the Kansas City Royals in 2013, his fastball touched 97 mph – a meteoric 14 mph jump in two years. Reed jokes that he couldn’t keep track of how many times he was drug tested afterward.

This offseason, he's continued to throw bullpens and workout at his former junior college. He said he feels confident after a few solid starts at the end of the 2018 season and he had success pitching out of the bullpen.

He recently took the school's baseball players to dinner at Zaxby's and Selby believes Reed could make a good coach one day with how well he relates to younger pitchers.

“Everyone’s dream in high school is to play professional baseball and me topping out at 83, I was like I don’t really have a shot because you hear about these high school guys throwing 100,” Reed said. “You’re like, ‘How? I can’t do that.’

"It’s fun to look back now and see the hard work that I’ve put in and where I’m at now."