Stiever stifles the competition
With six quality starts over his first six outings, Jonathan Stiever has become the White Sox hottest pitching prospect
On July 20, 2019, the hottest pitching prospect in the White Sox system made his way up to the mound with his mind locked in and his arm ready to dominate against the Down East Wood Ducks, the top team in the Carolina League.
But despite facing a club with one of the best records in all of Minor League baseball and a lineup packed with powerful hitters, Jonathan Stiever rose to the occasion.
Striking out the first batter, Franklin Rollin, Stiever felt his mind relax as he prepared to face his next opponent.
With the 2019 Futures Game MVP stepping up to the batters box, Stiever didn’t let Sam Huff’s stellar hitting record distract him from dishing out his best pitches. After fouling off two pitches and watching the third strike come in over the plate, Huff hung his head down in defeat and walked back to the dugout, while Stiever took a few seconds to repose himself for one last out to end the first inning.
Stiever struck out the next two batters he faced before sitting down 12 straight over his last four innings on the bump. As one of his most prolific outings in his professional career, Stiever only gave up two hits in seven innings while garnering nine strikeouts.
As Stiever has excited fans with six quality starts over his first six outings in a Dash uniform, his coaches have marveled at what they’ve seen on the mound.
“Very, very repeatable delivery,” said Dash pitching coach, Matt Zaleski. “It has good direction towards home plate, it’s pretty free and easy, he’s not a max effort type pitcher, even though he’s got good velo [velocity]. That ability to repeat and his delivery to get the extension allows him to throw everything over the plate.”
Due to his recent dominance, teammates have been dubbing him “Verlander,” an ode to perennial All-Star Justin Verlander.
While his great performances on the diamond may look as though Stiever has only ever ate, breathed, and bled baseball growing up, that’s not how the Wisconsin native got to where he is today.
Growing up in small town Cedarburg, Wis., with approximately 11,000 residents, Stiever, like most kids from his home state, was also drawn to football.
“Being from Wisconsin, it’s kind of part of the territory,” said Stiever. “Especially football. Everybody grows up watching the Badgers and Packers and all that, so everybody plays football growing up and I was pretty good at it. And then baseball obviously, it was just one of the sports in the spring. I didn’t really stick to one sport all year round, so I just played both of those.”
Although Stiever never focused solely on just one sport until his college rolled around, the constant change of scenery allowed for him to stay busy and avoid any burn out on either football or baseball.
While the multi-sport athlete found his athleticism to come naturally, football was a game that taught Stiever an extreme work ethic that has come to pay off in the long run with his baseball career.
“I think football is a lot more intense,” said Stiever. “Day-in and day-out, so you kind of learn how to have everyday be more physically demanding than baseball, so it was really a grind in football. And then you go to baseball, and the Minor Leagues is obviously pretty tough because of the constant playing, but that helps just going through each of those and just doing different things.”
Dominating on both sides of the ball as a safety and wide receiver, Stiever was never overlooked as an athlete garnering all-state honors for his offensive and defensive performances.
While the 22-year old preferred to play on the defensive side of football, his talents showcased on both sides of the ball.
In a shining senior season with the Bulldogs in 2014, Stiever tallied 694 total receiving yards with seven touchdowns in just nine games as a wide receiver. As Stiever became a star player in his hometown, he also collected 47 tackles, 38 which were solo, and four interceptions as a safety.
After his impressive performance in his final season of football, Stiever was awarded the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel Football State Player of the Year, which honors the top high school football player in southeastern Wisconsin.
“It was cool I guess, you don’t really play for the recognition,” said Stiever of the award. “It was more of, I just enjoyed playing it and that just kind of came along with it. I didn’t make it a goal of mine to get any awards, it was just to play and enjoy it.”
After bringing in much recognition to his talents and leading Cedarburg to the WIAA Division 2 State Quarterfinalist title, Stiever put himself in a position to draw in looks from college coaches.
“I didn’t really pursue football by any sort,” said Stiever. “I got recruited a little bit by Wisconsin, so I looked at that a little bit just because I grew up a huge Badgers fan so I had to kind of, but that was the only football school I gave any consideration.”
Luckily for the Chicago White Sox, baseball was always Stiever’s first choice. Although he didn’t receive many offers to continue his career on the mound, the pitcher found his new temporary home at the University of Indiana where he studied Finance.
“It kind of just fell into my lap, as weird as that sounds,” said Stiever. “There was a coaching change going into my senior year and the new coaches didn’t really have a recruiting class, and I wasn’t really that recruited out of high school for baseball, so they just needed guys.”
Starting off his freshman year as a Hoosier, Stiever made four starts picking up a 1–1 record with 30 strikeouts. In his first career start against Butler, the right-hander picked up a win when he tossed four innings allowing only one hit while sitting down three batters.
After a great start to his career at Indiana, Stiever spent his 2016 summer with the Vermont Mountaineers of the New England Collegiate League. With a 3.03 ERA in 35 innings pitched, Stiever allowed for just 12 earned runs, registering a 2.60 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
Heading into his sophomore season, Stiever secured the slot as the regular Friday night starter, propelling Indiana to a winning season. With 14 starts on the bump and allowing just nine walks, the pitcher ranked first in the Big 10 and 14th nationally, in his strikeout-to-walk ratio (6.33).
While Stiever continued to make a name for himself, the pitcher received an invite to compete with the Brewster White Caps in the Cape Cod League in 2017.
As a junior, the right-hander continued to dominate on the mound every Friday night, as he registered a career high of 97 strikeouts in 16 starts. With only 38 earned runs allowed, Stiever was projected to become a high-round draft pick.
Come June 5, 2018, Stiever’s projections became a reality when he was selected in the fifth round of the MLB Draft by the Chicago White Sox.
As the 22-year old began his career in the Minor Leagues, he continued to exceed all expectations, moving through the ranks quickly as he now continues in his first full season pitching at a professional level.
Throughout his time in Low-A Kannapolis, Stiever was strong, but he was not as successful as he’s been so far in Winston-Salem. His ERA is steadying a few runs lower for the Dash (2.08) than what it was with the Intimidators (4.74), but not because his pitching dynamics have changed, rather the way in which his pitching is applied to the hitters.
“He was using pitches to certain sided hitters and wrong counts,” said Zaleski. “That was the first thing we went to work on, how to approach hitters, how his pitches play to certain sided hitters. Because he does have unbelievable stuff, it’s just allowing him to learn how to use that stuff in proper counts and with proper type of hitters.”
Since Stiever has come to learn more about the specifics of pitching with the White Sox organization, his numbers have skyrocketed, getting the opportunity to showcase his powerful arm on the mound.
Stiever has sat down 45 batters while only giving up nine earned runs in a total of 39 innings with the Dash. The pitcher has continued to hold his ground and live up to his name as he prevails with a 5.62 strikeout-to-walk ratio.
With the way Stiever is rolling, he’ll be facing off against more talented lineups in the not-to-distant future.
But, as he has found in his recent dominance, Stiever has plans to continue to attack, on repeatable motion at a time.
