Yale, Trumbull product Whiteman lighting up Double- A
HARTFORD — Simon Whiteman had played at Dunkin’ Donuts Park once before, in a pre- draft showcase with a bunch of other prospects a couple of years earlier, but never in an actual professional game.
It didn’t take long for Whiteman to get acclimated to The Dunk on Tuesday night.
On the very first pitch he saw in his debut at the downtown Hartford ballpark, Whiteman ripped a line drive down the leftfield line for a double off Yard Goats pitcher David Hill. It was the first twobagger at the Double- A level for Whiteman, who had been promoted to Richmond a week earlier.
He added a single later in the game, then ripped two more hits on Wednesday night.
Not bad for the Trumbull product and Yale graduate, who had numerous family and friends, including parents Marian and Jamie and girlfriend Theodora, watching from the stands.
“The atmosphere is awesome, it gets a lot of fans, the field’s beautiful, and being so close to home with friends and family in the stands, it’s just kind of icing on the cake,” Whiteman said on Thursday afternoon, in the midst of the Flying Squirrels’ six- game series in Hartford. “I’m really happy to be here. It’s almost like I don’t want to go home.”
Then, Whiteman quickly reconsiders that statement.
“But I do want to go home,” he added, “because I’ve spent four weeks straight on the road. So, I’m ready.”
Whiteman will have to find a new home next week in Richmond, Virginia, when he finally gets to play a home game for the first time in a month. He was near the end of a two- week road trip with High- A Eugene on June 13 when Emeralds’ hitting coach Cory Elasik asked to see him in the coaches’ office.
Whiteman was mired in a 1- for- 12 mini- slump, and figured the glass half- full Elasik just wanted to give him some encouragement.
Inside the office, Whiteman was greeted by manager Dennis Pelfrey.
“He thanked me for my time and the work I’ve put in there, and said I wasn’t going to be able to continue putting the work in,” Whiteman recalled. “I thought, ‘ Oh my gosh, they’re releasing me.’”
Not quite. Whiteman was being promoted to Richmond, where he’s the Flying Squirrel’s everyday shortstop. He joined the team last week in Somerset, where they dropped five of six games and Whiteman went hitless in his first 17 at- bats.
“Somerset’s pitching staff is pretty good, it’s tough to get hits,” he noted. “The higher up in the system you go, the better the pitching is. It’s just about staying consistent. I’m working on little things and getting better each day, feeling more and more comfortable as the days go by.”
And Whiteman sure felt more comfortable once his personal road show hit Hartford, ripping four hits in his first two games.
Whiteman, a Fairfield Prep grad, was selected by the Giants in the ninth round of the 2019 MLB Draft, shortly after graduating from Yale. He hit a combined .274 in his first two minor- league stops, and after the 2020 minorleague season was canceled due to the COVID- 19 pandemic, began this season at Eugene. Whiteman hit .268 with a .413 OBP in 28 games before being promoted.
Even more impressive has been his work on the basepaths, a calling card of his since his time at Yale, where he stole a remarkable 34 bases in 34 attempts as a senior. Between Eugene and Richmond, Whiteman has stolen 22 bases and been caught just twice.
“That’s a tool that’s gonna set me apart from all the rest,” he predicted.
There’s some irony in that, of course. Armed with a chemical engineering degree from Yale and once a Rhodes Scholarship candidate, Whiteman is a big believer in analytics. And the analytics community has notoriously frowned upon base- stealing, which has been down considerably in recent years in Major League Baseball.
Whiteman notes that, analytically, if a player can justify trying to steal bases if he’s successful on 70percent of his stolen base attempts, though 85- percent is the ideal goal.
“Obviously, it depends on the situation,” Whiteman said. “Getting thrown out when you’re down four runs is a lot worse than getting thrown out when you’re up two or three. But, all things considered, in baseball these days, it’s really difficult to string hits together. So, more and more emphasis has been put on extra- base hits, the long ball, stuff like that. But, if I walk, then I steal second and all of a sudden we put a single on, I score from that. Without that stolen base, you don’t score from first on a single. Pitchers are doing a much better job at getting runners and batters out these days. The game’s about scoring runs, and if I can do that, whatever way I can do that, that’s gonna make me a valuable player. The harder it is to get on base, the harder it is to score runs, the more valuable it is to get that extra 90 feet — whether by error, by good baserunning or by stealing a base.”
Sounds like pretty smart strategy from a guy who graduated Yale with a 3.97 grade- point average.
His next goal: finding an apartment in Richmond next week.