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. If he’s able to have success like he did in limited 2020 action next year, the end of the bullpen (especially with Hicks returning) could again be a real strength of the team.Earlier this week, Aaron wrote about the team’s startlingly deep relief corps ( ).
#KODI WHITLEY FULL#
Hopefully we can get a full season out of him and see what he can do. He could be optioned to Memphis if there’s some sort of roster crunch, but I would expect that they’ll start him in the big leagues unless there is a pressing reason for them not to do so. Outlook: Assuming the elbow trouble is out of the way, there’s no reason to think Whitley won’t be on the 2021 Opening Day roster. Could he have been a dominant rookie reliever, in the line of Todd Worrell and Jordan Hicks? Would the league have made adjustments and would he have been able to adapt? A lot of questions still surround Whitley, but in the limited sample, there’s a lot to be excited about. That gap between them, though, makes you wonder what might have been. It’s tough to say that two innings after his return inspired people with confidence, but they were good innings that were in line with his early work. He didn’t return until the last week of the season, where he basically picked up where he left off against the Royals and the Brewers. Not only did he contract the virus, but his stay on that injured list was expanded due to some elbow trouble.
The future seemed bright for the young man, at least until COVID hit the team. Combined, he threw 2.2 scoreless innings against the Pirates and the Twins, striking out three in the process.
Which is what he did in his first two outings in July. It might have been a temporary thing until the rosters were trimmed by two (and then by two again) but it gave him a chance to make an impression. Even though he wasn’t on the 40-man roster when he arrived in Florida, by time Summer Camp was over and the season actually got started, the expanded rosters gave him an opportunity and he went “north” with the team.
Overview: There was a lot of buzz going into spring training about Whitley and he didn’t do anything in Florida to disabuse those impressions. As he has for the past few years, cardinalsgifs has lent his enormous talents to our header image and we thank him for it! There are just too many variables in the Year of COVID for that to be reasonable. So we’ll look at every player, we’ll take in some of their stats, but we won’t be giving out grades this season or delving too much into the positive/negative. This year, of course, was anything but typical. Usually, I like to term this like the players are packing up their locker and then seeing Mike Shildt before they head off for the winter. They might have gotten a couple of innings, they might have played every day, but if they played, they get a post. After every season (dating back to 2012), we’ve spent time looking at every player that got into a game for the St.
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