When the Red Sox took lefthander Payton Tolle with their second-round selection and the No. 50 overall pick in the 2024 draft, he became the earliest pitcher taken by the team in the draft since Tanner Houck in the first round in 2017. Less than one year later, the 6-foot-6-inch, 250-pounder has been turning heads, having cracked Baseball America’s list of Top 100 prospects at No. 86. “Whenever you draft a guy or write him up, it’s like, ‘OK, this is what the best version would look like,’ ” said Red Sox director of pitching Justin Willard. “And I think he’s even exceeding that.” The fact that the 22-year-old Tolle has been on an upward arc since being selected 11 months ago isn’t a shock to the Sox given the view by both the team’s scouts and analysts entering last year’s draft. Tolle and his family had a long history with Red Sox area scout Chris Reilly, when Tolle was still a two-way player in high school and Reilly was scouting for the Athletics. Reilly learned that Tolle’s mother, Jina, was in a years-long battle with colon cancer. Touched by the story, Reilly befriended the family and remained close with them after being hired by the Red Sox in 2020 and after Tolle enrolled at Wichita State. When Tolle transferred to TCU for his junior year, he’d moved back into Reilly’s coverage region. While a college transfer might mean starting with a blank slate for an area scout, that was anything but true with Reilly. “We would’ve never been in the position we were in with Payton if it wasn’t for [Reilly],” said Red Sox crosschecker Jim Robinson. Tolle had spent two seasons as a talented two-way player at Wichita State, but shifted his focus primarily to pitching at TCU. It didn’t take long for Reilly and Robinson to identify special traits that would make Tolle an early-round consideration for the Sox. For the Sox to take a player in the first couple of rounds , they’d need to see how the pitcher threw and the potential to start. Reilly and Robinson saw both, thanks to a fastball that — even at 90 miles per hour at Wichita State and 91.5 m.p.h. at TCU — hitters couldn’t touch, and size and physicality that suggested durability. “He was super competitive, great worker, monster size, a guy that you can see holding innings and really being a guy that can pitch for a long time like that,” said Robinson. As the spring season progressed, Tolle popped for the team’s analysts thanks to delivery characteristics that are almost never seen. Tolle’s delivery was an avalanche moving to the bottom of the mound. He released the ball 7¼ feet in front of the rubber — the sort of extension generated by Aroldis Chapman and just a handful of other lefties. Moreover, his low release point (under 6 feet) produced a riding fastball with unusual angle. Those traits combined to break hitters’ databases, with Tolle’s fastball exploding above barrels when it got to the plate. With those elements undergirding Tolle’s 37 percent strikeout rate — despite modest velocity, and despite pitching in a loaded Big-12 Conference — the lefty flashed brightly on the radar of the team’s analysts. “From an analytical perspective, we did start to receive some pitch-tracking data early in the season that just started to pop,” said Red Sox player valuation analyst Spencer Bingol. “A very important indicator of the ability to start in the future is having a really good fastball and throwing it for a lot of strikes. He checked those boxes.” Meanwhile, the Sox also saw a player with plenty of room to improve. His velocity bump in going from Wichita State to TCU pointed to even more potential as he committed more fully to a training program. And even though he was a fastball-dominant pitcher, the Sox saw enough in the shape of his slider and a seldom-used changeup to suggest traits that could be developed. “Lefthanded, already had velocity but there was probably more that could come. It’s a really good recipe,” said Robinson. “He was still in the pot, so to speak, but there’s a lot of good things that could come out of that.” The combination of favorable reviews from scouts, analysts, and members of the player development department made Tolle a pitcher whom the Sox believed worthy of their highest selection in seven years. To date, that view has been validated. His velocity has jumped, averaging 95 and topping out at 98 in recent weeks. His extension is averaging 7.6 feet — unmatched by any big league lefthander. Though Tolle has a good-not-great 3.92 ERA across 43 innings for High-A Greenville, he’s posted a 38 percent strikeout rate, second-best in the minors among pitchers with at least 40 innings. Exactly half of the swings against his four-seam fastball have resulted in misses — a 50 percent whiff rate that is more than double the High-A average of 23.5 percent. “The fact that he’s sitting 95 up to 98, did not expect that Year 1. We expected that maybe Year 2 or Year 3, but the trajectory he’s taken is pretty special,” said Willard. “Now it’s just continue to refine the other things around what he’s doing.” Tolle has been dominating with his fastball, a pitch he’s used 50 percent of the time, while also throwing a slider (25 percent), changeup (10-15 percent), and sweeper (10-15 percent). The changeup is necessary for Tolle to eventually handle big league righties. Meanwhile, one National League evaluator raised concerns about whether Tolle will have a starter’s command. As excited as they were to draft Tolle, their enthusiasm has only grown now that he’s pitching in their system and proving so overpowering with his fastball to raise the possibility of a promotion to Double A. “It’s a great start. We love him,” said Robinson. “You want to temper the enthusiasm a little bit because it’s his first year out, but it’s certainly exciting. So far, everything’s looking great.”
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