Lefty Pennington goes from nondrafted to on Royals' radar

This story was excerpted from Anne Rogers’ Royals Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.

KANSAS CITY -- On Aug. 4, 2020, Walter Pennington was walking from the bullpen to the dugout at Eck Stadium in Wichita, Kan., after pitching four innings for the Colorado Cyclones in the National Baseball Congress World Series, an independent and summer league tournament that has been held in Wichita since 1935.

Pennington was on the phone with his brother, deciding where they would eat dinner that night, when he heard someone in the stands call out to him.

“Hey, Penny, you interested in signing a professional contract?” Pennington remembers the man asking.

“I’m like, ‘Hold up, who are you?’” Pennington said. “I mean, he looked like a dad. [He] was wearing a visor and everything.”

The man in the visor was Matt Price, a Royals area scout. One of his coverage areas is Kansas, and he was scouting the NBC World Series after the 2020 MLB Draft, which had been shortened to five rounds because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The Royals usually send their scouts out after a Draft to find any undrafted free agents who could help fill a need. In 2020, they targeted left-handed pitching depth. Price liked what he saw that day from Pennington, who was filling in on the Cyclones’ staff because of a connection to his trainer in Denver.

That’s where Pennington was spending the summer after his senior year at the Colorado School of Mines, where he majored in engineering while playing for the school’s baseball team. When players got an extra year of eligibility because of COVID-19, Pennington had plans to return to try and raise his Draft stock.

Turns out, he didn’t need to.

“You spend all this time in showcases, and it’s funny how it’s that one instant changed my whole life,” Pennington said.

Four years later, Pennington is pitching for Triple-A Omaha and has a 2.03 ERA and 69 strikeouts in 44 1/3 innings. He has steadily gotten better at each Minor League level, showing he belongs just as much as his teammates who were drafted and given big signing bonuses.

Two weeks ago, Pennington was named International League Pitcher of the Week after he struck out 12 batters over 6 1/3 scoreless innings while allowing just one hit and no walks. The 26-year-old is not ranked on the Royals' Top 30 Prospects list, according to MLB Pipeline, but he is turning into a potential big league bullpen option.

Not only is he pitching high-leverage innings for the Storm Chasers, but 16 of his 26 appearances this year have been one or more innings.

“Last year, it was just a grind to get through three,” Pennington said. “Now, I welcome it. I want to be able to go one inning late in games in high leverage if they need it. I just want to be versatile, show them I can give them whatever they need at the big league level.”

Pennington doesn’t throw hard, hovering in the low-90s. But his arsenal includes a slider that misses bats, and he has introduced a cutter after working with Royals assistant pitching coach Zach Bove in Pennington’s first big league Spring Training this year. That pitch tunnels well with his slider and speaks overall to his deception.

Royals second baseman Michael Massey remembers facing Pennington in the spring and thinking the ball looked like a lacrosse ball coming out of Pennington’s hand. Massey couldn’t pick up the spin.

“There’s a combination of deception and stuff that pitchers have,” Royals senior director of pitching Paul Gibson said. “He hides the ball really well. They don’t take a lot of great swings off his breaking ball. And he pitches on the edges. Something that doesn’t happen every day with that Triple-A strike zone, he’s been able to throw strikes -- quality strikes.”

For Pennington, strike-throwing has been the biggest change this year. In 2023, Pennington recorded a 24.7% strikeout rate and a 12% walk rate in Triple-A. This year, those numbers are 39.4% and 8%.

The difference stemmed from conversations Pennington had with bullpen coach Mitch Stetter over the offseason about throwing first-pitch strikes, winning 1-1 counts and overall attacking the zone, something that carried over into the spring with the big league team.

In the big league clubhouse in Surprise, Ariz., “Pennington’s punchies” was written on the whiteboard when Cactus League games started, keeping tally of all the strikeouts Pennington racked up.

There’s no counter in the Storm Chasers’ clubhouse, but plenty of people are still taking notice of Pennington’s results.

“Especially with the elimination of teams and the limit on how many players we can have -- three years ago, somebody could have said, ‘He’s an extra guy after the Draft, we don't have investment,’” Gibson said. “But it never happened -- and he never let it happen. He just kept getting better.”