This just simply isn't supposed to happen.
What? Take your pick.
A Rule 5 pick not only making the Boston Red Sox as a pitcher, but then emerging as the kind of legitimate weapon organizations are starved for. And there is the other thing: the fact the Yankees let this aforementioned player go to the Red Sox for nothing in return.
But it has happened. It is happening. With Thursday afternoon at Camden Yards offering the latest example of this unexpected emergence.
It won't exactly make up for Babe Ruth, but Garrett Whitlock sure seems like someone who has turned into a dream scenario for the Red Sox and a nightmare for those guys from the Bronx.
"He had the physicality, the pitchablity and the makeup," said Red Sox director of pro scouting Gus Quattlebaum. "It doesn’t matter what team he’s coming from, but it is certainly a good story."
As it looks now, it's a great story.
"You see it, and it’s like, 'Wow, he belongs.' The tempo. The conviction," said Red Sox manager Alex Cora after watching Whitlock's two perfect innings in the Sox' series-opening win over the Orioles.
"Most of the time, Rule 5 guys don’t shake off your catcher, but he knows what he wants to do and he does. He shakes him off and goes to the pitch he feels is right in that situation. He’s been great for us. We still have to be careful. This is not what he’s used to, but we do believe his stuff will play. This is the second time they’ve seen him, and you saw the swings. We’re comfortable with him. That was a situation where we’re down, get the lead, he was hot, so why not? We needed him, and he did an outstanding job.”
Understand, prior to pitching in these high-leverage situations in the major leagues the 24-year-old Whitlock most recent competitive undertaking was with New York's Double-A team on July 3, 2019 in Portland against the Sea Dogs.
That was the day Whitlock's Yankees career for all intent and purposes ended, while pushing him down the path to the Red Sox.
The former 18th-round pick had first gotten on the Red Sox' radar thanks to scout Bob Hamelin, whose job it was to cover the Yankees' minor league teams. His report: This guy could eventually be part of a major league rotation.
"It's a good reminder for our scouts their work can pay dividends, even two or three years later," said Quattlebaum, citing Hamelin's insight.
But the Sox' scout wasn't alone in his Whitlock intrigue. Having watched the righty dominate the Sea Dogs in back-to-back starts earlier in 2019, Portland pitching coach Paul Abbott was intrigued.
A closer look seemed like a good idea. But this was going to be a bit complicated. There was a Tommy John surgery and no 2020 season. The good news was that because of Whitlock's recent history the talent-rich Yankees were likely to leave him off their 40-man roster. The bad news was it wasn't clear exactly what the pitcher's next team would be getting.
"We knew this was going to trickier than normal," Quattlebaum said. "We were going to have to dig."
The Red Sox used contacts who knew contacts who knew contacts. Any connections to Whitlock were sought out to find out about the player and the person.
Sox director of analytics Joe McDonald and Harrison Slutsky, the team's director of pro scouting, took the lead. The pair took the recommendations, crunched the available analytics and, finally, used one of the advantages that teams have when prioritizing Rule 5 picks -- the ability to look at up to three players medical information. (Conversely, looking at medical information for players on other teams aren't allowed in trades until the deals are agreed upon.)
Whitlock was being viewed as a Rule 5 priority, so it only made sense that he would be one of the three players the Red Sox would request medicals on.
"The medical staff deserves credit," Quattlebaum said. "It can still be like looking through a pinhole. You don’t truly get to see whole picture without hands on guy. But they did great job."
With all the information, the Red Sox were convinced: Whitlock would immediately become one of their top starting pitching prospects if he landed with Boston. And that was before his fastball crept up three miles-per-hour. ("We liked his fastball," noted the Sox' scouting director, "but we didn't think it would be like this.")
And it didn't hurt he was was a good guy with a great work ethic.
"The makeup was off the charts from people we talked to," Quattlebaum said.
So with the fourth pick in the Rule 5 Draft, the Red Sox got their guy. (The three players picked in front of Whitlock have also remained on their respective major league rosters, with No. 3 pick Akil Baddoo, starting his big-league career by going 5-for-11 with two homers in Detroit's outfield.)
While the Red Sox were thrilled with the process and the payoff, they managed to get some additional peace of mind with video evidence of Whitlock's offseason workouts, along with glowing reports back from new Portland pitching coach Lance Carter, who had visited the pitcher in Alabama.
Then came the punctuation: Cora's assessment.
Publicly, the Red Sox manager went out of his way during his first press conference of spring training to identify Whitlock as someone to keep an eye on. Privately, the message was more of the same.
"Alex called me pretty quickly after seeing him for the first time," said Quattlebaum with a laugh.
"We’re going to explore every avenue to get talent," he added. "We truly are going to try and get as many talented players as we can, any way possible. And then when you come into these avenues at this low cost, why not?"
As it turns out, "Why not?" might have landed the Red Sox one of their most important pitchers.
