WHITLOCK’S EXPANDED ARSENAL IS PAYING OFF
Ever since Garrett Whitlock first moved to the starting rotation, much has been made about his ability to shoulder a starter’s workload.
Yet while Whitlock’s durability has often been an issue, his pitch mix has actually been just as big a hindrance to his success.
Last season Whitlock effectively only threw three pitches, a sinker, a changeup and a sweeper. If one of those pitches was ever off, batters could just guess between the other two, and as a result Whitlock often didn’t have the firepower to survive multiple trips through the lineup.
This year he set to do something about that.
Over the course of the offseason Whitlock fine tuned his pitch mix, adding multiple new offerings while tweaking his existing ones. The results have been undeniable, and through his first three starts Whitlock has posted a 1.26 ERA over 14.1
innings with 16 strikeouts and six walks.
“It was one of those things where if I didn’t have my changeup that day I was getting absolutely hammered because my breaking ball was just not competitive,” Whitlock said. “I think that helps with things where if one thing isn’t working I have other tools I can go to. I don’t have to rely on my one-seam to be able to try and get me out of four, five or six innings. I think that’s the big difference.”
The first step, according to new pitching coach Andrew Bailey, was improving Whitlock’s sinker. Last season opposing hitters batted .326 against it, so they tinkered with his grip and worked to maximize the pitch’s movement. Then they worked on his changeup and sweeper while introducing a new cutter.
Finally, with days remaining before camp was set to break, Bailey went to Whitlock with what he described as “the last piece of the puzzle.”
“How about a palm forward spike gyro slider?” Bailey asked. “And he’s like, ‘ What is that?’ “
The gyro slider, or a bullet slider, spins gyroscopically like a football spiral and breaks vertically instead of horizontally. The pitch is a great complement to his cutter and changeup and has helped give Whitlock the wellrounded arsenal he lacked previously.
With each passing outing, Whitlock is getting more comfortable.
“To be honest I feel like I just got confidence in my cutter tonight,” Whitlock said following Thursday’s start. “It’s still a growing process because I developed the gyro slider the last week of spring training and I developed the cutter in spring training, so it’s one of those things where I’m trying to get better each time I’m out there, but each time I have success with it, it increases the confidence for sure.”
So far this year Whitlock has only maxed out at five innings, but as time goes on the team is confident he’ll become more efficient and start pitching deeper into outings. Whitlock has always been good at staying in
the strike zone, Bailey said, so now the next step will be using his improved stuff to miss bats and draw weak contact faster so batters can’t drive up his pitch count as easily.
“We want contact against Garrett, we want early swings against Garrett, we want him in the strike zone early and often and to get them on the ground,” Bailey said. “His ability to do that has been great and the more comfortable he gets, the deeper he’s going to be able to go, because soon these foul balls are going to turn into ground ball outs and that’s what we want.”
The Red Sox have long viewed Whitlock as a future major league starter. Now he seems to finally be taking steps towards becoming the workhorse the team is counting on him to be.
Opportunity knocks
It’s no secret the Red Sox have big plans for Marcelo Mayer. The No. 4 overall pick in the 2021 MLB Draft has ranked among baseball’s top prospects
from the moment he was selected, and eventually the club envisions him as a franchise player and a fixture of the Red Sox middle infield.
But with Trevor Story now out for the year, Mayer’s development could become a more urgent priority.
With Story gone the Red Sox have a gaping hole at shortstop, and while the club plans to get by with a platoon of David Hamilton and Romy Gonzalez for now, that’s far from an ideal long-term solution. Mayer definitely isn’t an option yet, but if he performs well at Double-a and especially if he earns a promotion to Triple-a, there may come a point this summer where the club’s best option is to hand him the keys and give him a shot.
You don’t have to look far for examples of a club betting on its top young talent.
Last year the New York Yankees named Anthony Volpe, then only 21 years old, their starting shortstop despite his only having ever played 22 games above Double-a. It wasn’t a smooth adjustment, but Volpe still recorded 21 home runs, 24 stolen bases and played excellent defense as a rookie. Now in year two he’s ranked among the top hitters in baseball through the first two weeks of the season and could be an early Allstar contender.
Earlier this week we also saw Jackson Holliday, just 20 years old and baseball’s consensus No. 1 overall prospect, make his MLB debut at Fenway Park for the Orioles. Joining him in the lineup was Colton Cowser, who was selected one pick after Mayer in the 2021 MLB Draft and who crushed the Red Sox over the three-game series.
Maybe the most relevant case study for Boston is Dustin Pedroia, who was called up late in 2006 and struggled over his monthlong cameo before taking off like a rocket the following year.
That could be the path forward for Mayer as well.
To be clear, Mayer needs at least a couple of months in the minors to re-establish himself after battling through a shoulder injury for most of last season. At 21 years old he’s already one of the youngest recent Red Sox draft picks to reach Double-a, but while he earned rave reviews from coaches and teammates for his defense and leadership, his .189 average and .609 OPS at the plate weren’t what anyone had in mind.
But now that he’s healthy Mayer is already showing what he’s really capable of, and entering the weekend he was hitting .400 with a home run and a 1.111 OPS through Portland’s first four games. If he keeps up that pace then it won’t be long before he earns a call to Triple-a.
And if we get to July or August and Mayer is still dominating, it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine him taking the field in Boston as well.
Ohtani exonerated?
When details of Ippei Mizuhara’s gambling activity first came to light, Major League Baseball was faced with a sensational and potentially devastating scandal. Could Shohei Ohtani, the sport’s biggest star and one of the most unique talents in baseball history, have been aware of his former interpreter’s betting? And worse, could he have been involved himself?
New developments suggest the sport may have avoided a worst case scenario.
Thursday federal prosecutors charged Mizuhara with bank fraud, alleging the former interpreter had gained access to one of Ohtani’s bank accounts and stolen $16 million over a nearly three-year period to pay off his gambling debts. Mizuhara allegedly impersonated Ohtani in phone calls with the bank to authorize wire transfers, and an analysis of Ohtani and Mizuhara’s phones produced no evidence that Ohtani was aware of Mizuhara’s actions or involved in any kind of gambling himself.
Mizuhara even allegedly admitted to the crime, texting his bookmaker after news of the story broke: “Technically I did steal from him. It’s all over for me.”
The criminal complaint supports Ohtani’s prior assertion that he’d been a victim of “massive theft” and portrays the Los Angeles Dodgers star as someone who had been taken advantage of by someone he considered a close friend.
There are still other unanswered questions, like how Ohtani could have failed to notice so much money was being withdrawn, but he wouldn’t be the first wealthy athlete to
be taken advantage of at the cost of millions of dollars. Some may continue to associate Ohtani with betting — gambling-related conspiracy theories followed Michael Jordan throughout his career too — but Thursday’s developments were as much of an exoneration as he and MLB could have hoped for.
And as for the money? Losing $16 million is a pretty tough blow, but considering Ohtani makes close to $40 million annually in endorsements and will be paid $700 million over the next 20 years by the Dodgers, he’ll probably manage OK.
Locals shining
Coming out of spring training, numerous locals playing minor league baseball earned promotions with their respective organizations, and two particularly notable examples were Methuen’s Dom Keegan and Westborough’s Ian Seymour, who have both moved up to the Tampa Bay Rays’ Double-a affiliate, the Montgomery Biscuits.
Keegan, a former Central
Catholic and Vanderbilt great, is currently the No. 5 prospect in the Rays system, according to MLB Pipeline. The catcher entered the weekend batting .278 through his first five games and homered in back-to-back games on Thursday and Friday.
Seymour, formerly of St. John’s (Shrewsbury) and Virginia Tech, ranks No. 19 in the Rays system and is back with Montgomery after making a brief cameo at Double-a late last year. Seymour got off to a great start last weekend, allowing one run over five innings while striking out nine in his season debut.
Other locals off to noteworthy starts include Matt Shaw, the former Worcester Academy and Maryland great who is batting .385 with the Chicago Cubs Double-a affiliate. Sebastian Keane and Cam Schlittler, former Northeastern University teammates from North Andover and Walpole, respectively, have also started the season together with the Hudson Valley Renegades, the Yankees’ High-a affiliate.