Colby White, a West Marion alum in the Tampa Bay Rays farm system, received his second promotion this year Tuesday as he was officially called up to Double-A Montgomery.
Early Sunday evening, after the Hot Rods finished a five-game series against the Wilmington Blue Rocks, White was called into the manager’s office in visitor’s locker room in Delaware where he was told that he’s proven everything the Rays wanted to see from him at High-A, and it was time for him to pack his bags for Alabama.
The Hot Rods had a 14-hour bus ride back to Kentucky, but White didn’t sleep a wink because he was too excited. When they got back to Bowling Green Monday morning around 7:30, he slept for three or four hours then drove to Montgomery to meet up with his new club at 6 p.m. By Tuesday morning, he was on the bus again heading to Pensacola, where the Biscuits began a five-game series with the Pensacola Blue Wahoos Tuesday night.
“It’s exciting,” White said about an hour before first pitch Tuesday. “The manager told me when I got here, ‘It’s just one call now.’ If I throw well and things unfold how they need to, it could be just one call (to the big leagues). It’s pretty sweet.”
While it’s more traditional for players to get called up to Triple-A before the big leagues, it’s not uncommon for players to jump from Double-A to the big leagues, especially relievers like White. While White’s quick rise through Tampa Bay’s minor league system has been quite fascinating, he said he believes baseball is much more mental than it is physical. He explained that if you believe in yourself and your abilities, and couple that with hard work, success will follow.
“I knew going into this year that I had worked arguably harder than any guy I was going to play with. Once I get going, that’s what gives me confidence,” he said. “I feel like that’s all it is, just trying to trust your stuff, trust your abilities, attack hitters and be the aggressor.”
The flame-throwing righty began the season in Low-A with the Charleston RiverDogs and earned a promotion after striking out 36 batters in just 16 1/3 innings without allowing a single earned run. He’s spent the past month-and-a-half in High-A, pitching for the Bowling Green Hot Rods, where he dominated once again. In 15 appearances (23 1/3 innings), he struck out 35 batters while allowing just eight hits and compiling a 2.31 ERA.
That prompted the Rays to be aggressive with White and tab him to begin pitching with the Montgomery Biscuits. Most prospects, even the elite ones, only get promoted once a year, and it takes a truly special season to get the call twice. That’s precisely what White has delivered as he has a 1.36 ERA and seven saves in 26 games this season, and he’s struck out an otherworldly 71 batters against just eight walks in 39 2/3 innings.
He chalks up his gaudy 71:9 strikeout-to-walk ratio to not giving hitters too much credit.
“A lot of times we forget that even Hall of Famers fail seven out of 10 times because we remember that one swing so often. That’s the big thing — not giving them credit to where I’m scared to throw the ball in the zone,” he said. “The Rays talk to us about analytics and how our stuff should play based on movement and velocity, and they basically told me if I throw my pitches over the 17-inch strike zone that good things should happen. As long as I’m the aggressor, I win strike one and win the even counts — the 1-1 counts, the 2-2 counts — the odds are in my favor.”
Another big development for White has been reintroducing a pitch that worked well for him in high school against lefties. About mid-season, he met with sports science team, and they let him know that lefties were hitting him a lot better than righties, particularly his slider. Against righties, his slider was dominating and getting a lot of swings-and-misses. Because his slider, which White throws in the high 80s, has a tighter horizontal break to it, without a whole lot of vertical movement, when lefties were thinking fastball, they were still able to get around on his slider and drive it to their pull side.
Then one game against the Hickory Crawdads (N.C.), he told his catcher he would try out his splitter to lefties. He threw three of them, all to lefties, and got three strikeouts. White said his splitter comes in at about 80-83 miles per hour and breaks a lot like a left-handed pitcher’s 12-to-6 curveball, with a little bit of run to his arm side.
The former Trojans star said he’s thankful to be back in the South and getting to play against teams like the Mississippi Braves, even if he’s doing so with a Biscuit on his hat.
