MiLB Strikeout Leader Daniel Straily Joins Swingin’ A’s
The Oakland Athletics won their second fifteen-inning game in a week last Friday, topping the Toronto Blue Jays 5-4, continuing their penchant for zany victories this season. While two 15-inning victories in one week is quite the story, another story caught the eye of A’s fans everywhere as Oakland called up pitching prospect Dan Straily to toe the rubber.
After going relatively unnoticed until this season, Straily has made headlines for himself for leading the Minor Leagues in strikeouts this season, tallying 175 in 22 starts!
Straily has split time between Class “AA” Midland and Class “AAA” Sacramento before receiving the promotion to Oakland on Friday.
In addition to his impressive strikeout totals, Straily has 2.60 ERA with eight wins (three coming in AA and five coming in AAA).
Even more impressive was Straily’s debut, in which he pitched the first six innings of the wild 15-inning affair, allowing five hits and one run, while striking out five and walking only one as well.
While Straily has undoubtedly turned a few heads with his strikeout totals and his impressive Major League debut, he was a relatively unheralded prospect coming into this season, and only within the last few months has he gained recognition.
In 2010, with Class “A” Kane County, he went 10-7 (in 28 starts) with a 4.32 ERA, striking out 149. The next year, he went 11-9 with the High Class “A” Stockton, tallying 154 K’s.
His stat lines aren’t overly-impressive, but he did have some nice strikeout totals—which makes his current number of 175 K’s jaw dropping!
Aside from an impressive fastball hitting the mid-90s, scouting reports indicate he has a decent slider and an average off-speed pitch. Scouts have said that he’ll need to have better command of his secondary pitches if wants to continue to turn heads, (as batters higher up in the ranks will undoubtedly tee off on a fastball if they know it’s coming.)
Still, the A’s seem to continually churn out impressive young pitching talent that often times they can’t afford to keep around.
Call it smart drafting, call it Billy Beane’s “Moneyball”, but whatever you want to call it, it’s impressive.
The main reason the A’s are contending this season is due to the young arms of Jarrod Parker (7-5, 3.44 ERA), Tommy Milone (9-9, 3.91 ERA), and A.J. Griffin (3-0, 2.42 ERA).
And there’s no reason that the A’s couldn’t make some serious noise down the stretch in September, due to the addition of another young arm in Mr. Daniel Straily.
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