This month:
- RHP Terry Doyle will be the lone White Sox representative at the Arizona Fall League's Rising Stars Game (live tonight on MLB Network at 7:10pm central). This game is essentially a showcase for the top talents in the AFL, as well the league's standout performers. Doyle, who just turned 26, is certainly more of the latter. Until his most recent start, he'd been pretty much unhitttable over 19.2 IP. He got beat up on Wednesday but his overall numbers remain impressive: 21.1 IP, 10 H, 4 BB, 16 K. In the very hitter friendly AFL, a 0.66 WHIP is pretty extraordinary even in that small sample size. Baseball America sums Doyle up about as well as I could: "Righthander has dominated AFL with average stuff and good pitchability."
- There are only two AFL stadiums equipped with Pitch F/X and, fortunately, one of Doyle's recent starts was at one of them. (Link to data). There wasn't much in the data that I hadn't been able to guess at from watching him a few times but it's always nice to get corroboration. His fastball was 90-93 MPH. Since he knows he will be throwing fewer pitches in his starts in the AFL as opposed to the regular season, he may be getting a tick or two more than usual on it. In any event, it's not a particularly good pitch, obviously lacking velocity and it doesn't have much movement. He does, however, appear to utilize a two-seamer on occasion that did show some nice movement. In an email exchange, Colin pointed out that he wasn't throwing it to righties, even though it looks like it would be effective against them. Both the data and Colin also confirmed what I had heard and observed about Doyle: he does have a good curveball when he's on and he can effectively throw it against righties and lefties. His changeup and slider were not impressive. I thought I'd previously seen him throw a cutter that was mid to upper 80s but I'm not seeing it in this start. Colin suggested that he may also be throwing a splitter or circle change and it shows promise. The repertoire doesn't suggest more than a back-end starter or swingman, though his solid command is a plus in his favor. He will hopefully get an inning of work tonight, which will let us refine the analysis.
- I'll quickly go over the other White Sox players in the AFL after the jump.