{"id":29865,"date":"2025-07-29T11:42:05","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T11:42:05","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/29865\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T11:42:05","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T11:42:05","slug":"carson-whisenhunt-ends-mlb-debut-strong-nbc-sports-bay-area-california","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/29865\/","title":{"rendered":"Carson Whisenhunt ends MLB debut strong \u2013 NBC Sports Bay Area & California"},"content":{"rendered":"

SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 It took eight pitches for Giants top pitching prospect Carson Whisenhunt<\/a> to get his “Welcome to Major League Baseball” moment Monday in front of the home fans at Oracle Park.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Whisenhunt\u2019s second pitch of his MLB debut was hit 100 miles per hour and traveled 382 feet to center field by Pittsburgh Pirates leadoff batter Tommy Pham, falling nine feet short of the fence and into Jung Hoo Lee\u2019s glove. The next batter, Andrew McCutchen, also flew out to Lee, but Whisenhunt wasn\u2019t as lucky when the third batter he faced stepped into the box.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The revered changeup that scouts have touted since Whisenhunt\u2019s college days at East Carolina caught the fat part of the plate on the first pitch Nick Gonzales saw, and he launched it 390 feet into the left-field bleachers. But Whisenhunt immediately regrouped and earned his first big league strikeout with that same changeup right after to end the top of the first inning.<\/p>\n

His Giants teammates quickly picked up the young left-hander, tying the game in the bottom of the first and later climbing out of a tough hole that Whisenhunt dug early on. Yet they still found a heartbreaking way to lose against the last-place Pirates, falling 6-5 and making Buster Posey\u2019s decision at the MLB trade deadline<\/a> that much more difficult.<\/p>\n

Whisenhunt, 24, went from looking like his day could be done after two innings if it weren\u2019t for such a gassed bullpen to throwing five innings and leaving with the score tied 4-4. The former second-round draft pick allowed five hits and four earned runs, walking two and striking out three.<\/p>\n

Here are three takeaways from the Giants\u2019 fourth consecutive loss.<\/p>\n

The Whiz<\/p>\n

Through 18 games for Triple-A Sacramento, Whisenhunt\u2019s changeup was falling off the table and missing bats left and right. He had thrown the pitch 36.5 percent of the time for the River Cats, with opponents hitting .193 off it. Of the 86 strikeouts he had for Sacramento, 63 came via changeup.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The calling card wasn\u2019t the same in his major league debut. Gonzales\u2019 homer was just the start. Isiah Kiner-Falefa doubled off Whisenhunt\u2019s changeup in the second inning to score two runs, and Tommy Pham followed him with an RBI single against the off-speed pitch to make it a 4-1 game in favor of the Pirates.<\/p>\n

Command and control also were huge parts of Whisenhunt\u2019s minor league success. That part of his game didn\u2019t travel to San Francisco, at least in the first two innings. Whisenhunt issued two straight walks in the second inning that bit him, and he clearly wasn\u2019t getting his changeup to do what he wanted.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Nerves then disappeared just as his command and control arrived. Whisenhunt tossed three consecutive scoreless innings after giving up four runs through the first two innings. The Pirates only registered two more hits off him the next three innings, and Whisenhunt didn\u2019t have another walk.<\/p>\n

One Streak Snapped\u00a0<\/p>\n

After how absurdly bad the Giants hit with runners in scoring position while being swept by the New York Mets<\/a> over a three-game series, something had to give. Brett Wisely put an end to the team-wide failures in the bottom of the second inning when his ground-rule double scored Mike Yastrzemski from third base. It was the Giants\u2019 first hit with a runner in scoring position since Wednesday.<\/p>\n

They were 0-for-23 in that area against the Mets. Willy Adames singled to right field with the bases loaded two batters after Wisely, bringing in another run to cut the deficit to one.<\/p>\n

The inning then ended after back-to-back strikeouts with the bases loaded, putting any good vibes on pause.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Adames again came through in the bottom of the fourth, lining a two-out single to left field that scored Heliot Ramos from third base. The Giants shortstop continued his strong July with a 3-for-5 night and now is batting .341 (28-for-82) for the month<\/a>.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Giants wound up going 4-for-13 with runners in scoring position, leaving 10 runners on base.<\/p>\n

Cutch\u2019d<\/p>\n

A decade has passed since McCutchen was an MLB All-Star, winning his fourth straight Silver Slugger and finding himself in the MVP conversation. He briefly was a Giant in 2018, and a New York Yankee that same season. Since then, McCutchen also has been on the Philadelphia Phillies and Milwaukee Brewers, but he\u2019ll always be a Pirate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

And in the seventh inning Monday night, McCutchen turned back the clock and found his power against one of his oddly former teams. The 38-year-old took a two-strike slider in the heart of the zone from reliever Carson Seymour and hammered it over the left-field wall to give the Pirates a two-run lead. It was McCutchen\u2019s second homer in his last four games, but only his third since June 19.<\/p>\n

The blast was McCutchen\u2019s 10th home run of the 2025 MLB season, giving him double-digit homers in every season since his 2009 debut. It also gave the Giants their 10th loss in their last 12 games.<\/p>\n

Download and follow the Giants Talk Podcast<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"SAN FRANCISCO \u2013 It took eight pitches for Giants top pitching prospect Carson Whisenhunt to get his “Welcome…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29866,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[558],"tags":[64,63,26001,28376,591,85,5151],"class_list":{"0":"post-29865","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-mlb","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-carson-whisenhunt","11":"tag-giants-observations","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-sports","14":"tag-willy-adames"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=29865"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29865\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29866"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29865"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29865"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29865"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}