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A positive number means that the pitcher saves that many runs relative to league average per 100 of that pitch they throw. In simple terms, they look at the outcome of every pitch, taking count into consideration, and assign it a value in runs. It’s Pitch Info’s Pitch Values per 100 pitches. That last column is a bit of an esoteric metric. Here’s the list (sorry for the awful graphics, Chorus is a bit broken so I’m improvising): But his pitch is almost straight up-and-down, with no horizontal break, and he throws it much slower. Clayton Kershaw, for example, gets similar ride. I used only vertical break, horizontal break, and velocity.

But it’s a lot! That movement would put him in the 95th percentile among all four-seam fastballs in the big leagues last year.įrom there, I went to the tape to look for a fastball that most mimicked Whitley’s. 10.2 inches is just a number, of course, and picturing a slightly shrunken Subway sandwich as how much a fastball moves isn’t all that helpful. On average, Whitley got 10.2 inches of ride on his fastball. The velocity will play - he sat 95-96, which is several cuts below Jordan Hicks but still good. That’s what put him on the map, and you can see why. And because of that, I’m going to do an incredibly irresponsible thing and compare each of them to existing major league pitches based on movement profiles.įirst, we’ve got the fastball. There, his pitches were captured for posterity. Or there wasn’t, at least, until Whitley went to the fall league.

There’s no public database of minor league pitch types and velocities, no Statcast for prospects. You can hack together the whiff rate if you’re willing to wade through minor league data - he got whiffs on 30% of opposing swings, in case you’re wondering, which would have been third-highest among major league Cardinals behind Giovanny Gallegos and Jack Flaherty, not that you can make a straight comparison between minor and major league whiff rates.īut the stuff was still a mystery. Scouts were in on Whitley this year - his velo and spin took a step forward, and he started missing a lot of bats. Relief types aren’t usually huge prospects, but Whitley’s numbers were just that good, and even if that’s all we had to go on, he’d be an intriguing name for 2020 a year after being on no one’s radar.īut that’s not all we have to go on. He shoved in Fall League as well, posting 13 strikeouts and only one walk in 11 innings. Then he went to Triple-A and improved every number 28.1% strikeouts, 4.2% walks, and a 2.02 FIP/1.52 ERA combination.įrom scouting the stat line alone, it’s clear that Whitley had a great year. His 1.83 ERA was tremendous, and it was backed up by the peripherals a 27.9% strikeout rate is awesome, a 7.9% walk rate is great, and a 3.17 FIP will play for sure. He wasn’t really a strikeout artist before this year - and then he overwhelmed Double-A. It was well-deserved after his frankly ridiculous 2019. More or less concurrently with my first seeing his name, Whitley was sent to the Arizona Fall League. It’s not an exaggeration to say that I’d never heard the name, which is phenomenally rare in this modern era of prospect clutching and 50-deep farm system reports. When we finalized my list of 68 players to talk about, there were 67 players I’d heard of before. I’m overjoyed to report that I’ll be contributing the Cardinals player profiles to the 2020 Baseball Prospectus Annual. Instead, though, I’d like to take a short, deep-ish dive into one of those relief prospects today. I must confess, I was a little frustrated: I’d tabbed that as my own topic for this week, and he did it better than I would have. Although he's struggled recently, Whitley will remain a top candidate for a potential call-up moving forward.Earlier this week, Aaron wrote about the team’s startlingly deep relief corps ( ). After surrendering one run over his first 8.2 innings with the Cardinals this season, the right-hander has given up seven runs over his last four frames. Whitley will head back to Memphis after he appeared in three games following his promotion May 26, allowing three runs on four hits and three walks while striking out two over 2.2 frames. Whitley was optioned to Triple-A Memphis on Friday, Derrick Goold of the St.