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Thomas White (Photo by Nick Cammett/Diamond Images via Getty Images)
By nearly any measure, Thomas White’s season has been spectacular. The 20-year-old mauled hitters at High-A and Double-A all spring and summer before earning a ticket to Triple-A for the tail end of the regular season and playoffs.
White has thrown 85 innings this year. Among pitchers who have crossed the 80-inning mark, his 38.5% strikeout rate trails only Trey Yesavage and Jonah Tong. His 14.61 strikeouts per nine innings are behind only Yesavage, and his 17.5% swinging-strike rate is fourth after Yesavage, Payton Tolle and Ty Johnson.
Here’s the part of the story where opposing hitters might want to close their eyes.
For all of White’s success in 2025, he believes it has come with mechanics that need to be reworked in the offseason. If all goes to plan, he’ll re-emerge in 2026 with better control and command—and an even more powerful arsenal.
“I’m just flying open and my stride’s way shorter than I want it to be,” White told Baseball America, describing the flaws he’s been fighting all year. “My extension’s not really there, so I’m just pulling out of it and not finishing through. It’s been pretty much a season-long thing. It’s tough to make the adjustments that I want to make during the season, so I kind of just have to work through it the best I can.”
White’s Triple-A debut with the Jacksonville Jumbo Shrimp, which came on the road on a soggy night in Charlotte on Sept. 6, pitted a lineup with 1,364 big league at-bats against a pitcher who, had he chosen a different path, would be months away from beginning his junior season at Vanderbilt.
By the time it was over, the outing had displayed White’s massive upside and laid bare the areas where he needs to improve to turn it into reality.
Over 4.2 innings, he struck out 10 hitters and drew 18 empty swings, the second-most in all of Triple-A that evening. But he also walked six hitters, hit another and threw just 47 of his 94 pitches for strikes. He held Charlotte hitless until his final inning, when the Knights put together a two-out rally that led to three runs and a call to the bullpen.
The lesson was clear: Getting hitters out multiple times in a game requires a lot more than electric stuff.
“I could tell what they were trying to do,” White said. “I think I also wasn’t exactly where I wanted to be last night. So, (if) I had my command and control the way I wanted it to be, I think it would have been a little more fun to go at them a second time instead of trying to work out my own issues. You could tell that they weren’t going to let me beat them the same way.”
Jacksonville has two series left in the regular season and has already clinched a spot in the International League playoffs. That leaves White with a few more turns before his season ends and he can get in the lab to work on the issues he’s identified.
Once those trouble areas get smoothed out, White anticipates a longer stride and greater extension in his delivery. Those two fixes should sharpen his command and control and add more velocity and carry to a fastball that has already touched triple-digits.
In other words, even after a season that cemented White’s place among the game’s elite pitching prospects, the best is yet to come.
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