Key Highlights
- He went undrafted in 2015 and didn’t sign with the Tigers until August 2016.
- He’s a great case in the study of perseverance and the mental qualities necessary for physical competition, but he’s also an outlier in the realm of major league baseball. AdvertisementAdvertisementAdvertisementHis fastball has consistenly been in the upper percentiles of Statcast ratings (since 2021: 84th, 87th, 92nd, and 91st in 2024) and yet his career strikeouts per 9 of 6.8 is not what you’d expect from that velocity.
- To put it in perspective, that’s the same K/9 that Barry Zito had in 2010.
- With a sinker that averages 97 mph, you’d think that would be higher.
- Instead, he’s more of a groundball/home run-limiting righty who is still a work in progress even at 30 years old. This story from a couple of years ago reveals the process that moved him from a four-seam guy to a two-seam guy:[…] Foley did not throw a sinker at all until 2020. The story behind what is now one of the best pitches in baseball goes like this: That spring, the Tigers — still evolving in their analytic advancements — brought in a Driveline consultant to work with a select group of minor leaguers on pitch design. Foley estimates he threw three bullpens in front of the consultant.