Prospect Profile: Kevin Whelan

Staying with my theme recent theme of soon to be bullpen weapons for the Yankees, today’s prospect profile will be on Yankees’ minor league reliever Kevin Whelan. Prior to the 2004 season, no one would have expected Whelan to be involved in a discussion such as this, as Whelan was a catcher for his entire baseball career until then. Unfortunately, Whelan was not much of a hitter, as he only hit .245 and .233 during the 2003 and 2004 seasons respectively, but since he had a strong arm behind the plate he started to tinker with pitching. He still didn’t pitch as much as he would have liked to while still at Texas A&M due to an injury to another catcher on the team, but he did still manage to do enough pitching to compile a 3.57 ERA in 39.2 innings. This was enough of a sampling for the Detroit Tigers to select Whelan in the 4th round of the 2005 draft. Whelan continued to excel while picking up pitching basically on the fly, compiling a 2.25 ERA in low A Oneonta and a 0.73 ERA with A class West Michigan in 2005, while also sporting an obscene 14.25 and 16.05 K/9 respectively. Things got better from there in Whelan’s first full season in the minors, as he posted a 2.72 ERA with 27 saves while acting as high A class Lakeland’s closer. It was after that season that Whelan found himself as part of the package the Detroit Tigers sent the Yankees, along with Humberto Sanchez and Anthony Clagget, to acquire Gary Sheffield. Once the Yankees had control of Whelan, they took a very odd approach with his development. The Yankees had Whelan start out the 2007 as a starting pitcher in high A class Tampa in an effort to help him learn better control, and Whelan actually did very well, going 2-0 with a 1.93 ERA. It seemed at the time to have helped him with his control, as his BB/9 of 3.86 was quite a bit lower then his career rate of 5.14, although his K rates did decline a bit as a starter. The Yankees still seemed to have little intention of keeping Whelan in the rotation and he was sent back to the bullpen and promoted to AA Trenton. Things did not go as well for Whelan in Trenton, where his 2.98 ERA was good but his worst in the minors and his walk rate nearly doubled to 6.96 and he uncorked 8 wild pitches.
The thing that caught scouts eyes and kept Whelan as a pitcher was the fact that the first time he began pitching he was throwing in the high 90’s. 96 mph is the usual speed for his fastball and he also features a 2 seem fastball and a splitter that is usually in the high 80’s. As stated earlier, Whelan’s biggest flaw is his control. Whelan dominates when he finds the strike zone, as he overpowered hitters with a career K/9 of 11.59, but his 5.14 BB/9 is much higher then one would like to see from a reliever, or anyone really. Walks out of the bullpen can kill a team, but when a pitcher misses as many bats with K’s as Whelan does it makes it hurt a bit less. Still, he’ll likely have to work on his control if he hopes to become an elite reliever in this league. At age 23, Whelan is a little older then most players at this stage of development, mostly because he didn’t even start pitching until he was in college, so it hurts his long term value a bit, but he isn’t that far behind. With the current state of the Yankee’s bullpen, Whelan has a chance to make an appearance in the majors as soon as this season with a hot start, but it may not be until September call ups. Whelan could start the year in AAA Scranton/Wilkes-Barre if they want to be aggressive, but they may start him as Trenton’s closer to let him work on his control at a lower level a little longer. Either way, the Yankees’ are depending on Whelan as well as Humberto Sanchez and JB Cox to be fixtures in their bullpen for years to come, and to avoid bullpen scenarios as bad as they face in 2008.