A first look at Noah Schultz

Mistakes were made in Noah Schultz's first inning of work against the Bowling Green Hot Rods on Saturday night.

There were mistakes in execution, like when Schultz opened his evening with a pair of walks. When Schultz tried to atone for one of them with a successful pickoff move with runners on the corners and one out, first baseman Bryce Willits correctly prioritized the runner on third, but delayed his decision to throw until the runner could scramble back safely.

A successful rundown would've given Schultz a second out with only one man on. Instead, Schultz faced two runners in scoring position, and both came around to score when Schultz made his last mistake: a grooved 0-2 fastball to lefty Cooper Kinney:

The choice of putaway pitch was a curious one, especially since Schultz then faced yet another lefty Tatem Levins, and dispatched him on three sliders.

Kinney's two-run double produced the only hit and runs Schultz allowed over his four innings. Schultz retired the next 10 he faced, and while he issued his final walk to his penultimate batter -- which quickly became a runner on third after a stolen base and a wild pitch -- he locked up Brock Jones with a slider to bring his evening to a close.

My first look at Schultz jived with the general impression he's made over his young career. There's the idea that he's very, very tall. Once you calibrate his 6-foot-9-inch frame against his teammates, there's no mistaking him for anybody else in a dugout or bullpen from hundreds of feet away. Even when it's kind of disguised when he's hunching over for his back-leg drive, that just means he unfolds at angles and distances seldom seen.

Also, when he gets in trouble, it's not because opponents are hitting their way into it.

Which isn't to say that Schultz's wounds were entirely self-inflicted. Chandler Simpson drew the walk that opened Schultz's evening, and Simpson has a track record of working walks, including taking a close 2-2 pitch just below the zone in this one. Schultz also wouldn't be the first young pitcher to have issues correcting a control issue during an inning, and he has size, age (20) and experience (39 professional innings) as plausible excuses.

When he's humming along and in the zone, his two-seamers are beat into the ground, and the sliders generate a lot of whiffs, especially from lefties (and Bowling Green's lineup had seven of them). There were only a couple of balls in play that looked like possible hits based on the way they left the bat.

When Schultz struck out 10 Asheville Tourists over four innings to open his season, it was fair to wonder whether the Sally League would pose any meaningful challenge whatsoever. The competition has provided a little more feedback since. But while Schultz has since allowed six runs over eight innings, three-quarters of those innings were a breeze, with blips in control spoiling the remaining two frames.

If you were only promoting him based on effectiveness, you could probably ship him up to Birmingham at any time. Double-A hitters would likely do a better job of telling him what he needs to know, whether by punishing mistakes in the strike zone with more regularity, or better detecting the release point differential between his fastball and breaking ball.

If building up his in-game and in-season workload is the priority -- and he's up to 12 innings in 2024 after throwing just 27 last year -- then Winston-Salem looks considerably easier for allowing Schultz to reach a required quantity of ups and downs. He seems to baffle A-ball hitters on his physicality alone, but he's not at the point where he can sleepwalk his way through a Winston-Salem start and lower his ERA in the process. At least not yet.