Houston Astros: The quick ascent of Forrest Whitley

The Houston Astros may have struck gold with their first round pick from the 2016 draft in starting pitcher Forrest Whitley.

The Houston Astros have not had the best of luck with their first round pitching selections in recent years as evidenced by the failure of Mark Appel and the non-signing of Brady Aiken. It’s interesting that it took them dropping in draft choice to number 17 in the first round to finally hit on a pitching prospect.

Now this is admittedly putting the cart before the horse or counting your eggs before they hatch or whatever other metaphor you want to use to describe proclaiming Forrest Whitley the next big thing before he even throws a pitch in triple-A much less the big leagues.

But it’s hard to not get excited about his rise through the minor leagues and the difference you can already see between him and the minor league career of Mark Appel. Consider the fact that Whitley was drafted just over a year ago and in his first full professional season he’s played across three levels already. That’s just incredible.

And he’s showing such great strikeout prowess at each level (Granted double-A was one start, but 11 strikeouts in six innings giving up no runs and no walks in that impressive debut). In 83.2 innings this season, he’s thrown 128 strikeouts for a K/9 of 13.77. To put that in perspective, Chris Sale leads all of the major leagues in K/9 with a rate of 12.83.

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Now Whitley is playing against minor leaguers, but he’s also only 19 years old, so he’s very advanced for his age. While his BB/9 leaves something to be desired as he’s averaging over three walks per nine innings, he can clean that up as he gets more seasoning in the minor leagues. Something to work on for the rest of the year going into next season.

It’s also important to note that due to the success of the major league team and the fact that we won’t have to worry about losing any starters from this season until 2019, we can take as long as we want next year before calling Whitley up, if at all, in the 2018 season.

The Houston Astros don’t want to make the same mistake they made with another former top 50 prospect in Jordan Lyles, who made his debut far too early in 2011 at the tender age of 20 years old only to flame out and not be able to handle the big leagues (ore at least not become what was expected of his career when he was a top 50 prospect.)

That said, Jordan Lyles never put up the numbers or showed the promise in the minor leagues that Forrest Whitley has over the past year. And it’s reassuring to think that the Astros may have an “ace” in the hole should they lose Dallas Keuchel to free agency in 2019.

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Whitley is on track to be with the team in 2019 with the potential for a late August to early September call-up in 2018 depending on how his second full year in pro-ball goes. As it stands right now, it’s hard to see him not making that early jump if he continues to make hitters whiff the way he has in the minors. And we certainly look forward to his arrival.

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