Baseball's top pitching prospect Forrest Whitley made his Minute Maid debut
Astros star prospect Whitley knocked around early
Mar 25, 2019, 8:45 pm
Forrest Whitley. Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Baseball's best pitching prospect will start the season in the minor leagues and just like his pro baseball journey to this point his Minute Maid debut was filled with ups and downs.
Forrest Whitley tossed three innings, allowing six hits and three runs while striking out two. He threw 67 pitches with 43 being thrown for strikes. He mixed in his slider and changeup with a fastball that sat at or above 95 mph most of the night. He occasionally went to his curveball as well.
"This outing was pretty weird," Whitley said after his start. "I haven't had one of these in a while, kind of had everything but my fastball. It's kinda hard to pitch without the fastball without the number one."
The Pirates got to the 21-year-old early. After the lead-off batter singled to right Sterling Marte took a 1-2 offering deep to right field for a double. Later in the inning with a runner on first Pirates catcher Francisco Cerveelli would blast a 2-0 fastball for a no-doubter home run to left field. Whitley would recover for a strikeout of Melky Cabrera producing three swings and misses and the strikeout with his slider in the dirt.
He settled down in the second inning producing a groundout, flyout, and strikeout swinging with his fastball on 15 pitches. The third saw him induce a pair of groundouts before an infield single. Jung Ho Kang would square up a ball for a hard hit single that would draw pitching coach Brent Strom from the dugout. Whitley would force a flyout to end the inning and his day.
How was the first of hopefully many starts in the Astros home ballpark?
"It was cool," said Whitley. "Very cool stadium, a lot bigger than I anticipated but it was a good time for sure."
Whitley said spending time with veteran pitchers Justin Verlander and Gerrit Cole was very important for him this spring. He said the preparation routine of each pitcher was different but both resulted in positive outcomes. Whitley said while he learned about their routines, he will be exploring his own process ahead of his return to the majors.
The 6-feet-7 inch tall righty played all of last season for the Astros Double-A affiliate where he appeared in just eight games for the Hooks due to is 50-game suspension to start the season. He produced a 3.76 ERA in his minor league work last year. He also pitched in the Arizona Fall League where his ERA was 4.15. He will begin the 2019 campaign playing for the Astros Triple-A affiliate the Round Rock Express.
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They’ll be watching in Canada, not just because of Shai Gilgeous-Alexander, though the NBA’s scoring champion and MVP favorite who plays for Oklahoma City surely helps lure in fans who are north of the border.
They’ll be watching from Serbia and Greece, the homelands of Denver star Nikola Jokic and Milwaukee star Giannis Antetokounmpo. Alperen Sengun will have them watching Houston games in the middle of the night in Turkey, too. Slovenian fans will be watching Luka Doncic and the Lakers play their playoff opener at 2:30 a.m. Sunday, 5:30 p.m. Saturday in Los Angeles. Fans in Cameroon will be tuned in to see Pascal Siakam and the Indiana Pacers. Defending champion Boston features, among others, Kristaps Porzingis of Latvia and Al Horford of the Dominican Republic.
Once again, the NBA playoffs are setting up to be a showcase for international stars.
In a season where the five statistical champions were from five different countries, an NBA first — Gilgeous-Alexander is Canadian, rebounding champion Domantas Sabonis of Sacramento is from Lithuania, blocked shots champion Victor Wembanyama of San Antonio is from France, steals champion Dyson Daniels of Atlanta is from Australia, and assists champion Trae Young of the Hawks is from the U.S. — the postseason will have plenty of international feel as well. Gilgeous-Alexander is in, while Sabonis and Daniels (along with Young, obviously) could join him if their teams get through the play-in tournament.
“We have a tremendous number of international players in this league,” NBA Commissioner Adam Silver said earlier this season. “It’s roughly 30% of our players representing, at least on opening day, 43 different countries, so there’s much more of a global sense around our teams.”
By the end of the season, it wound up being 44 different countries — at least in terms of countries where players who scored in the NBA this season were born. For the first time in NBA history, players from one country other than the U.S. combined to score more than 15,000 points; Canadian players scored 15,588 this season, led by Gilgeous-Alexander, the first scoring champion from that country.
Gilgeous-Alexander is favored to be MVP this season. It'll be either him or Jokic, which means it'll be a seventh consecutive year with an international MVP for the NBA. Antetokounmpo won twice, then Jokic won three of the next four, with Cameroon-born Joel Embiid of the Philadelphia 76ers winning two seasons ago.
“Shai is in the category of you do not stop him,” Toronto coach Darko Rajakovic said after a game between the Raptors and Thunder this season.
In other words, he's like a lot of other international guys now. Nobody truly stops Jokic, Antetokounmpo and Doncic either.
And this season brought another international first: Doncic finished atop the NBA's most popular jersey list, meaning NBAStore.com sold more of his jerseys than they did anyone else's. Sure, that was bolstered by Doncic changing jerseys midseason when he was traded by Dallas to the Los Angeles Lakers, but it still is significant.
The Slovenian star is the first international player to finish atop the most popular jerseys list — and the first player other than Stephen Curry or LeBron James to hold that spot in more than a decade, since soon-to-be-enshrined Basketball Hall of Famer Carmelo Anthony did it when he was with New York in 2012-13.
“We’re so small, we have 2 million people. But really, our sport is amazing,” fellow Slovene Ajsa Sivka said when she was drafted by the WNBA's Chicago Sky on Monday night and asked about Doncic and other top Slovenian athletes. “No matter what sport, we have at least someone that’s great in it. I’m just really proud to be Slovenian.”
All this comes at a time where the NBA is more serious than perhaps ever before about growing its international footprint. Last month, FIBA — the sport's international governing body — and the NBA announced a plan to partner on a new European basketball league that has been taking shape for many years. The initial target calls for a 16-team league and it potentially could involve many of the biggest franchise names in Europe, such as Real Madrid, Paris Saint-Germain and Manchester City.
It was a season where four players topped 2,000 points in the NBA and three of them were international with Gilgeous-Alexander, Jokic and Antetokounmpo. Globally, time spent watching NBA League Pass was up 6% over last season. More people watched NBA games in France this season than ever before, even with Wembanyama missing the final two months. NBA-related social media views in Canada this season set records, and league metrics show more fans than ever were watching in the Asia-Pacific region — already a basketball hotbed — as well.
FIBA secretary general Andreas Zagklis said the numbers — which are clearly being fueled by the continued international growth — suggest the game is very strong right now.
“Looking around the world, and of course here in North America," Zagklis said, "the NBA is most popular and more commercially successful than ever.”