SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — When Carson Whisenhunt earned his first major-league victory last season, his San Francisco Giants teammates dragged the left-handed rookie into the shower and gave him the obligatory beer dousing.
When Whisenhunt earned his second major-league victory, it felt more like he’d been hit with a bucket of cold water. And not the celebratory kind.
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“That’s when I was like, ‘This is not working,'” said Whisenhunt, who battled through five innings in a 12-3 victory over the Chicago Cubs on Aug. 27. “I was thinking, ‘I’ve got one out pitch, I’ve got to use it and hope they aren’t sitting on it.’ And they probably were. Especially when I was tipping it.”
The day was a struggle, if ultimately a successful one. Whisenhunt gave up three runs on five hits and three walks. Like his previous four starts, including his major-league debut, his fastball velocity was down a touch and he wasn’t missing bats. He threw 195 four-seam fastballs over his five assignments and generated just 22 whiffs. His changeup continued to grade out as a premium pitch, maybe the best among all left-handed starting pitching prospects. But the Cubs and other teams were taking comfortable and aggressive swings at it.
“That’s when I was like, ‘OK, I gotta change something.’ I gotta find a third pitch that I can throw whenever,” Whisenhunt said. “We figured out how I was tipping changeup. You could see my wrist (cocked) out of my glove in the stretch. So we worked on that. Can’t see it anymore. I was super focused on what I needed to do after that.
“Then I got hurt.”
Whisenhunt’s lower back flared up and that unsatisfying win over the Cubs ended up being his last appearance of the season. He entered the offseason with mixed emotions. On one hand, he fulfilled a dream by reaching the big leagues. He got to celebrate his debut with his family, and the Whisenhunt clan has a story that’ll be told at every family reunion for decades. His father, Dennis, had to travel a lot farther than their home state of North Carolina to reach San Francisco. He was on a business trip in the Philippines when word arrived of Carson’s promotion. And he was in the middle of trying to locate his wallet, which he’d left on his inbound flight.
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Now it’s Carson’s turn to retrieve something valuable to put in his back pocket. He might be the buzziest pitcher in the first week of Giants camp. His four-seam fastball, which averaged 92.6 mph last season, is sitting a bit higher than that and touching 95. He’s enthused about the early work he’s done with new pitching director Frank Anderson, pitching coach Justin Meccage and assistant Christian Wonders. He didn’t completely scrap the idea of a slider as his third pitch. Instead, he changed its movement profile into a slurve and made it his fourth. He hopes that pitch shape will complement a new cutter that is showing promise.
Top MLB Stories“We’ve talked about me throwing a cutter for a couple years but never followed through on it,” Whisenhunt said. “But they stuck pretty heavy on it. Like, ‘We’re going to figure this out.’ I really like where both of them are.”
A couple of weeks before Christmas, Whisenhunt flew from North Carolina to Scottsdale and joined Landen Roupp, Carson Seymour, Trevor McDonald and Blade Tidwell for what amounted to a minicamp with members of manager Tony Vitello’s coaching staff. The new coaches had connected with nearly every pitcher via phone calls and teleconferences but hoped to develop a stronger rapport and provide some direction so the group of young arms — whose development will be vital to the Giants’ success this season — could be prepared to hit the ground running when they reported to camp.
Whisenhunt was an eager participant. The 25-year-old missed most of the previous two springs either because he was dealing with an injury or the Giants were slow-playing him because he’d ended the year with back or elbow issues.
“I haven’t had the chance to have a full spring training to showcase myself,” said Whisenhunt, who was a first-round talent out of East Carolina University that the Giants were able to draft in the second round in 2022 because of a suspension for a positive drug test. “So I haven’t gotten really good feedback from them going into the season, pinpointing what to work on.”
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Whisenhunt incorporated banded exercises into his offseason workouts to strengthen his lower half. He’d been sinking into his back hip to create leverage. Now, at Anderson’s suggestion, he’s standing a little taller and holding himself over the rubber longer.
“From there, just get down the mound,” Whisenhunt said.
If Whisenhunt can use his other pitches to create count leverage, then his changeup could emerge as one of the better offerings in the league. He gained a feel for throwing it at an early age, using it as an out pitch against Little Leaguers because his father wouldn’t allow him to throw a curveball or slider. It also meant that pronation, or rotating the palm downward, became more natural to him than the supination required to throw a high-spin breaking ball.
The cutter might turn out to be a happy medium. There’s only one way to find out, and Whisenhunt is grateful to be healthy this spring and on track to get feedback from hitters.
“Facing hitters will be a big help to understanding that pitch and what I want out of it,” he said. “Then we can start moving the ball around, play with which location is best and in which counts. I’m excited. I feel it’s going to help me a lot this year.”
Vitello is sipping from a fire hose as he learns about the dozens of pitchers in camp, and he lacks a frame of reference to say which pitchers have shown the most improvement from last season. But he watched Whisenhunt, Tidwell and Hayden Birdsong throw off a mound in December. And there’s clear progress based on the stuff he’s seeing from that trio in this opening week of camp.
“Ultimately, it will be up to them to take that progress and put it into action when hitters are out there,” Vitello said. “But that young group has been at it, and you’ve seen improvement.”
