Forrest Whitley, Tony Blanco Jr. Headline 10 Statcast Standouts (Aug 4)
Image credit: Tony Blanco Jr. (Tom DiPace)
Every Monday morning, we highlight 10 players who stood out to us based on their underlying Statcast metrics. Data will usually be through Saturday of that week, but may include some data from Sunday games. These are not full scouting reports, but often serve as good early indicators of prospects who might be ready to break out or are demonstrating MLB-ready skills.
Last week, we made the case for Hao-Yu Lee as a top-100 caliber prospect and marveled at Carter Jensen’s enormous power ceiling. This week we’ll discuss:
- Did the Rays fix Forrest Whitley?
- Eli’s new prospect crush
- The next great Braves pitcher
- A pair of Cubs hitters brimming with potential
- Is it too soon to crown a new king in Canada?
- Is Nick Schnell more than a Quad-A player?
- Christian Franklin’s clearer path to the majors
- Will the Rays unlock Everson Pereira?
- A name to know in the Reds’ org
10 Statcast Standouts
Forrest Whitley, RHP, Rays
Last week, we dove into Robbie Snelling’s arsenal, which Josh Norris captured. Whitley, who was also dominant that night, was captured, as well:
We wanted to accumulate more data so we can dive into changes the Rays have helped Whitley make. However, the story of Forrest Whitley isn’t just about how he looks right now. It’s also about how promising he was as a youngster in the Astros’ system. In the words of J.J. Cooper: “I can’t fully quit Whitley.” Those words encapsulate both Whitley’s prior prospect glory and the tantalizing potential he still oozes.
In 2018, Whitley ranked as BA’s No. 10 overall prospect and tops in the Astros’ system. He was coming off a 2017 season in which he struck out 143 batters in just 92 innings as a 19-year-old, including 26 strikeouts in 14.2 innings at Double-A. Then injuries derailed his career, and Whitley would spend the next half decade recovering from various ailments, and struggling to get back on the mound, let alone recapturing what made him so promising.
At long last, the Astros gave up, and he was promptly scooped up by the Rays. He struggled briefly in the majors after his debut and was outrighted to the minors:
Here’s the crazy thing: No one claimed him. All 28 other teams passed on the opportunity to scoop him up. We’re not talking about a soft-tossing pitcher with minimal tools without the upside to be a dominant MLB pitcher. We’re talking about a 6-foot-7 dude who can touch 99 mph and sit 96 with plus-plus feel for spin and the ability to throw strikes.
Teams just spent over $400 million dollars mining talent from college and high school trying to nab guys they can develop in their systems. Whitley’s raw tools are right up there with almost anyone in the draft class, and he was essentially free from an acquisition cost standpoint. Rather than having to wait two or three years for the typical college pitcher to see if they can make it, here you can have a ready-made MLB arm, if you have a plan to help him.
Whitley’s MLB numbers this season have been terrible, but he’s been absolutely dominant at Triple-A since joining the Rays:
| Team | IP | K | BB | K% | BB% | ERA | FIP |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Durham | 18.2 | 27 | 4 | 36.0% | 5.3% | 2.89 | 3.65 |
Whitley has struggled with giving up home runs, which is less of an issue for pitchers who can limit walks. If he’s rediscovered the command he showed in 2017, that’s a very promising sign.
That’s a very long preamble, to ask the question: What changes have the Rays helped Whitley make, and will they meaningfully alter his career trajectory?
Let’s take a look at Whitley’s arsenal in the Astros’ organization:
Whitley’s biggest challenge is a lack of a plus fastball. He throws both a four-seam and two-seam fastball, but the four-seam doesn’t have enough ride, and the two-seam doesn’t have enough sink. The chart is somewhat misleading, as the better fastballs are the ones classified as four-seamers, while the ones with less ride are lumped in with the sinkers. This is likely why every other team passed on Whitley: He can’t create a plus riding fastball, and he can’t leverage seam-shifted wake to create late movement, which is usually key for a good changeup, sinker or sweeper.
At this point, making a change to Whitley’s mechanics are more likely to create harm than good, so the Rays were limited to simple modifications, such as usage changes, and small tweaks to certain pitch types.
Let’s take a look at how they’ve re-shaped the arsenal:
The solution to helping pitchers with average fastballs is to just throw those pitches less and throw a cutter instead. The Yankees have done that with Max Fried, and he’s having a tremendous season. While Whitley doesn’t have a hard cutter that he can throw in the same velocity band as his fastball, the Rays have significantly increased his 89 mph cutter usage, from 5% with the Astros to 31% with the Rays. They may have also tweaked the spin axis, getting it to have a little more drop.
The sinker has been mostly dropped in favor of a higher proportion of four-seam shapes, and have done so almost exclusively to righties, where he can mix it in effectively to get ground balls. This usage change has helped the fastball play up.
The biggest alteration has come with the changeup. Before he was using it sparingly, and the Rays have increased the usage considerably, tweaking the release so it’s now coming out about two mph slower. This has helped the shape, adding about two inches of drop. Against lefties in Triple-A, the changeup is now his most-used secondary at 31%, and he’s getting whiffs on 38.5% of swings and 25% of pitches against them. He’s also using it a lot against righties (about 12% of the time) with similar whiff numbers. The changeup might be the key to unlocking Whitley.
The slurve and curve are the two pitches that have seen the largest reductions in usage, going from a combined 33% to just 13%. It’s possible that he’s added an inch of sweep to the slurve, but there’s not enough data yet to be confident in that. What is clear is the pitch mix intention: The breaking balls are primarily used against righties, with very infrequent usage against lefties. I think the slurve/sweeper is the better breaking ball, especially against righties, but there’s no reason to stop throwing the curve just yet.
Let’s quickly summarize the changes:
- Reduce fastball usage in favor of more cutters
- Improve the changeup shape and dramatically increase the usage
- Tweak the slurve and reduce the usage
The changeup alone should transform the arsenal. However, there is likely still headroom for other tweaks and changes, which might be easier to accomplish with a full offseason. According to Baseball Savant, here are the active spin percentages for Whitley’s pitches:
His fastball and sinker are both high-efficiency pitches, which in this case means that 95.3% of the spin on his fastball is contributing to horizontal or vertical movement. This makes it difficult to create a seam-shifted wake (SSW) pitch, for which you need to have enough gyro spin to create those forces. Logan Webb is a great example of lower-efficiency pitches that leverage SSW:
So what does that mean for Whitley? First, it suggests he might be able to transform his slurve into a true sweeper, which could be a dynamic weapon against righties. Second, his fastball might be fixable if he can learn to get a more vertical spin axis. Even adding an inch of ride would make the pitch play up a tremendous amount. Similarly, he may also be able to tweak the sinker to become more of a true SSW pitch, which would increase the movement differentials between the two pitches. These are much harder changes to make, however. Even getting to a slightly-above-average fastball shape will catapult Whitley’s game back into front-of-the-rotation type potential.
What the Rays have done is quite simple, yet supremely elegant. Whether or not it pans out is still an open question until Whitley has success at the major league level.
Tony Blanco Jr, 1B/OF, Pirates
On Wednesday, Blanco did this:
Then on Saturday, he did this:
That’s a massive dude with massive power. Here are all the hardest-hit balls in the majors this season:
Blanco’s 118.9 mph would rank sixth, and his 119.8 mph would rank third. That translates to this Statcast card in the early going:
That’s legitimate 80-grade power, with the flyball exit velocities and hard-hit launch angles confirming the swing visual to say that he’ll make his best contact in the air. As is often the case with players of this ilk, there are huge questions around his ability to make contact. However, the contact quality is so enormous, he might be an even more extreme version of Spencer Jones.
For me, this prospect archetype if my evaluation kryptonite: I just can’t resist the potential. Blanco Jr. is my new official prospect crush. I’ll be following his journey closely, until he either flames out with massive whiffs or cracks the majors and crushes a baseball 120 mph.
Didier Fuentes, RHP, Braves
Geoff Pontes highlighted Fuentes as a potential breakout prospect before this season.
- Fuentes in High-A this season: 13 IP, 5.54 ERA. Result? Promotion.
- Fuentes in Double-A this season: 21.2 IP, 4.98 ERA. Result? Promotion.
When it comes to young pitchers, stuff trumps performance. In Fuentes’ case, he has three plus pitches from a stuff perspective, and he’s already reached the majors at just 20 years old. Let’s take a look at why he’s looking like the next big thing for the Braves:
The fastball is easy to explain, as he gets about 1.2 to 1.5 inches of ride above what the typical pitcher would from his arm slot. That, combined with the 95-96 mph velocity, makes it an easy plus pitch, roughly 0.5 runs/100 pitches better than a league average fastball.
The sweeper (light purple cluster) is a little harder to explain, and we’ll need to get a little more technical to drill into it. It doesn’t get huge sweep, nor does it hit the magical 85-86 mph threshold we usually want to see from sliders.
Every pitch has an expected vertical and horizontal break given the spin xis of the pitch. Based on that, we can see how much the pitch’s movement deviated from that and estimate SSW movement.
Sweepers almost always have positive lift from SSW. That means the pitch won’t drop as much as you’d expect given the spin axis. The opposite is generally true for sinkers and offspeed pitches.
Fuentes’ sweeper gets about 2-3 inches of extra drop, which is highly unusual. The pitch is thrown with almost pure sidespin and a spin direction pushing the ball up, so it’s definitely not a curve ball, which would have a lot of spin pushing the ball down. Being different is usually good when it comes to pitching, and his sweeper is certainly unusual. It’s possible this is also just a weird slider and not necessarily a “sweeper.” Pitch classification is an art, as well as a science. But no matter how you slice it, it’s a very good pitch.
He mixes in a huge curve ball, mostly as a chase pitch, and a changeup that is merely ok from a shape perspective and terrible from a performance standpoint. Some of those had splitter levels of spin, so this might be a pitch that he’s still developing/experimenting with. Don’t be fooled by the rough MLB start for Fuentes. He’s the real deal and will be a major part of the Braves’ rotation soon.
Owen Caissie, OF, Cubs
It’s important to see growth from young players. Let’s take a look at how Caissie has progressed from last season:
So far this season:
The top-line improvement is the most obvious. Caissie is now showing at least plus-plus power, increasing his 90th percentile exit velocity from a 65 to a 70 grade, while improving his launch angles and increasing his average exit velocities substantially, especially on fly balls.
There’s another key improvement that Caissie has made: He’s chasing breaking balls and off-speed pitches a lot less, with perhaps some regression against sliders. He’s both increased his in-zone aggression from 70.2% to 71.3% and reduced his chase from 30.9% to 28.3%, which is a massive overall improvement.
He’s not quite as dynamic against lefties, but he can more than hold his own, with a very patient, contact-oriented approach. This suggests he’s not a huge risk of being a platoon-only bat. The Cubs notably did not trade Caissie at the deadline, as he’s likely their insurance policy if Kyle Tucker leaves in free agency.
Jonathan Long, 3B/1B, Cubs
Long is very good at just about everything but getting the ball in the air. He’s perhaps a little too passive, too, especially against fastballs. In 2023, Long posted a wRC+ of 169, which he followed up with a 148 last season while reaching Double-A. He is slashing .312/.401/.501 this year in Triple-A, good for a 133 wRC+. Given his line-drive oriented swing, plus-or-better power and average-to-plus contact rates, the slash line matches the metrics. He’s flying under the radar, but this is a really good hitter with a very high floor.
Johnny King, LHP, Blue Jays
In 21 innings this season in the FSL, King has struck out 40 batters. This followed 41 Ks in just 24 innings in the FCL. You can see from the chart that his two primary pitches (fastball and curveball) both generate a ton of whiffs. The fastball is generating whiffs on 38.5% of swings and 17% of pitches, while the curveball clocks in at 52.2% of swings and 19.2% of pitches. The changeup is a little behind and could use more depth and deception.
It’s looking like at least two plus pitches that are already performing well. He’ll need a wider arsenal, and given the pronator-bias archetype, he appears likely to add a bullet slider, as well as some improvements to the changeup. I’m not ready to crown him as a Top 100 Prospect-caliber just yet, but King is certainly making a name for himself to start his career.
Nick Schnell, OF, Nationals
Schnell’s damage on contact profile is incredible, with roughly 65-to-70 grade raw power based on the high-end exit velocities, equal-or-greater game power given the launch angles and a propensity to make his best contact in the air. He’s also old for the level and whiffing a lot. His aggressive approach, inability to avoid chase and difficulty making contact on those chase pitches suggest a tough transition should he get a shot in the majors. Schnell’s power numbers at Triple-A look very real when paired with these metrics, which begs the question: Is he more than a Quad-A player?
Christian Franklin, OF, Nationals
Franklin was traded to the Nationals along with Ronny Cruz for Mike Soroka, which might open up a path to playing time for him. Here’s what the Nationals received in the deal:
Franklin has appeared in this series a couple times, so we’ll be brief. He makes a ton of contact, absolutely does not chase and has 65-grade raw power. The only thing that’s missing is good launch angles, which limits his power ceiling. Outside of that, it’s a nearly-flawless profile that looks ready to be tested at the major league level. He was blocked with the Cubs, so perhaps the change to Washington will give him a more realistic path to playing time.
Everson Pereira, OF, Rays
Pereira has pretty much been putting up these kinds of metrics for three years now at Triple-A, with no signs of substantive improvement. Everything is either amazing or terrible. It’s not a profile with a high probability of success, but perhaps the Rays think he can be a Jose Siri-type of player and give them a couple of good seasons. Sometimes changing orgs and getting different coaching can unlock a player.
Hector Rodriguez, OF, Reds
Rodriguez had a decent season last year at High-A, hitting .274/.309/.420 and looking like a long shot to make the major leagues. Fast forward to this season, and he’s absolutely dominating and cruising through Double-A with a .298/.357/.481 slash line and 140 wRC+ to earn himself a promotion to Triple-A.
It’s still very early, but he very much looks the part of a high batting average player, with lots of hard, line-drive contact and very little swing-and-miss. He’s perhaps overaggressive, but he has such tremendous bat-to-ball that he still won’t strike out a lot and will just get a lot of miss-hits. Rodriguez’s breakout is real, though his upside is limited by the line drive approach.
