Extended break could trouble teams
Lillis-White to face top prospects in Arizona league
Conor Lillis-White and Arizona have made up.
Lillis-White, a former ace with the UBC Thunderbirds, will gladly spend the next couple of months in the southwest state, thanks to landing a spot among baseball’s best prospects in the Arizona Fall League following a stellar summer as a reliever in the Los Angeles Angels’ farm system.
He will play for the Scottsdale Scorpions, with home games based out of the San Francisco Giants’ spring-training facility there. The season begins next Tuesday with the Scorpions hosting the Mesa Solar Sox.
Lillis-White, 25, started his pro career two summers ago some 15 minutes south in Tempe, with the Angels’ rookie-league team based out of Los Angeles’s spring-training complex there. He was a 32nd round pick earlier that summer.
The 6-foot-4, 220-pound lefthander had some elbow trouble that season, and the Angels reassigned him to the same level to begin 2016. That can be scary stuff in baseball. Big league teams often don’t wait on players selected that low, regardless of the reason why. The Angels did give him a chance to find his footing, and Lillis-White has flourished since.
This season, he held opposing hitters to a .179 average in 67 innings, the last 44 ⅔ coming with the Mobile Bay Bears of the double A Southern League. Lillis-White began the 2017 campaign with the Inland Empire 66ers of the advanced single-A California League.
In the 39 games over the two stops, he was 5-4 with a 3.90 earned-run average.
“I’d be lying if I told you there weren’t days in the rookie league in Arizona where I wasn’t worried,” said Lillis-White. “It was hard for me to get out of there. You get hurt and then you realize that it’s back to Square 1, and that’s demonstrating the ability to be consistently healthy. It never felt, though, like the Angels had quit on me. It just took me some time to begin my upward arc.”
The Arizona Fall League was founded in 1992 to give big-league teams a crack at pitting their top prospects from various levels against one another. Each of the Arizona Fall League’s six teams takes players from five majorleague organizations. Lillis-White and the other Angels prospects are joined on the Scorpions by up-andcomers from the Giants, Cincinnati Reds, New York Mets and the New York Yankees.
There are some guys who aren’t your traditional prospect, guys with stories similar to Lillis White. Mickey Jannis is a 5-foot-9 right-hander with Scottsdale. He’s a Mets farmhand who turns 30 in December, a 44th-round draft pick in 2010. The draft went from 50 rounds to 40 in 2012.
The rosters, though, are also loaded with the tales you’d expect. Scottsdale lists 38 players. Eight of them were first-round picks, including right-hander Dillon Tate, a Yankees prospect now who received a US$4.2-million signing bonus when he was selected fourth overall by the Texas Rangers in the 2015 draft.
“I think it’s mainly a chance just to experience what it’s like to face the best hitters in the minor leagues,” said Lillis-White, whose best pitch is his curveball, which often freezes left-handed hitters in particular.
“It’s a test you look forward to. You have to understand it’s going to be difficult. You’re not going to get away with any mistakes.”
How Lillis-White performs over the Arizona Fall schedule will obviously be a factor in where the Angels assign him to start next season. He did have some control trouble with Mobile, walking 32 in his 26 games there. He finished with 37 walks and 81 strikeouts over the campaign.
Lillis-White shared the Bus Phillips Memorial Trophy, which goes to the University of B.C. male athlete of the year, with swimmer Coleman Allen in 2015.
That was Lillis-White’s senior season when he posted a 9-4 record with a 3.27 ERA in 15 starts for the university.
It never felt, though, like the Angels had quit on me. It just took me some time to begin my upward arc.