By now I'd imagine all of you know who David Festa is, top pitching prospect last year who got called up mid-season to fill the void Chris Paddack left after having yet another season ending injury. His results were middling and some of his underlying metrics don't impress but I'm here to convince you to buy in on a breakout next year (hence the article's name) so let's get right into it! Starting off, Festa's whopping 31.7% chase rate, 28.2% whiff rate and 27.8 K% all are well above league average bordering on elite, now why is he getting this crazy kind of chase and whiff rates? Well dear viewer, it all comes down to the pitch mix and Festa's certainly is set to impress. Festa relies on a 3 pitch mix, Fastball-Slider-Changeup in order from most to least used, a deceivingly simple set of offerings that when you dive into it there's a lot to love.

Displayed above is the pitch tracking data for Festa's 2024 season (praise be to Baseball Savant), if you look at pitch velocity or induced break (image attached) Festa's offerings look pretty average, but look to the Changeup and Slider's whiff rate. 39.4% and 29.1% is absolutely nuts and while the Changeup was hit hard on the very rare occasion someone put their bat to it those two pitches have been amazing at generating swing and miss leading to the really impressive strikeout numbers. The Fastball grades out well with above average ride but has been hit pretty hard and has by far been his least effective pitch so far, Festa's biggest issue though throughout his career has always been the control leading to too many walks and ballooning pitch counts, but I'm happy to report that this issue has gradually been decreasing across his time in the Twins organization to the point he was about league average in walks during his time with the Twins this season

Now looking Festa's rate stats since he was drafted we see that his BB/9 and WHIP have gradually decreased (with a low spike in his breakout 2022) while strikeouts have been steadily climbing, all this is a recipe for success and as long as he can continue to reign in the control of his pitches more and continue to generate the swing and miss he has year after year.

Now it would be unfair of me to not talk about the issues with the long ball Festa has had to contend with in 2024. As you can see in the table above Festa is most definitely a fly ball pitcher (as are many of the Twins rotation) and that means when he gets hit hard, it can do big damage. Festa gave up more solid contact and barrels than average and that's definitely been a problem with his HR/9 jumping from .9 in 2023 to 1.3 through 2024 (across both MLB and AAA). However with the ability to miss bats and generate chases as much as Festa has this problem can be minimized, especially with an even small jump in control to help prevent his Fastball from being either really hittable or too far out of the zone.

All in all while Festa has shown some signs for concern there's so many of the building blocks of a top end starter there that I'm 100% on the hype train, and I hope I was able to convince you to have a bit of hope that the mythical Falvey pitching pipeline is finally bearing the fruit we all dreamed of back in 2016