A’s top prospect Waldichuk was a lightly recruited prep pitcher, but a former MLB All-Star saw his talent

It’s easy now to look at A’s starting pitching prospect Ken Waldichuk, marvel over the 6-foot-4 lefty’s funky arm angle and mid-90s fastball and see him taking a big step forward this season.

MLB.com ranks Waldichuk, 25, as the third-best left-handed pitching prospect in baseball but once upon a time he was just another high school pitcher throwing a low-80s fastball.

Among the small handful of people who foresaw big things for Waldichuk was former major league pitcher David Wells, a 239-game winner and two-time World Series champion who threw a perfect game with the Yankees in 1998.

After his retirement, Wells became the head baseball coach at Point Loma High School, his alma mater in San Diego. It was during a 2015 game against another San Diego high school, University City, that the paths of Wells and Waldichuk first crossed. University City coach Rick Frink remembers Wells coming to him.

“‘Who is that lefty you‘ve got? He’s ridiculous,’” Frink recalled.

Waldichuk was “lights out” that day, Frink said, and Wells let the kid know.

“It was at the end of the game, I was walking to the car and I saw him in the parking lot,” Waldichuk remembered. “I was like, ‘Oh, that’s David Wells.’ In the game, I was focused, trying to win. But afterward, he was like, ‘Good stuff.’”

Said Frink, “David Wells has a better eye for talent and played at a higher level than most people who coached high school baseball. Some of the comments he made to him were powerful.”

Attempts to reach Wells through his agent and other avenues proved unsuccessful.

Waldichuk was throwing a mid-80s cutter and a wipeout curveball at University City, where he went 6-2 with a 1.22 ERA and 79 strikeouts in 69 innings his junior year, according to MaxPreps.

“At that point, I was putting the ball wherever I wanted,” Waldichuk said. “I knew I needed to throw a little harder. (Wells) was just like, ‘Keep filling up the zone. You have good stuff.’ He just gave me the confidence to keep doing that.”

Despite his success, Waldichuk generated little interest from D-I programs.

University of San Diego coach Brock Ungricht was an assistant at Stanford at the time. He remembers recruiting Waldichuk, but said the academic piece didn’t align.

There was another coach who saw what Wells and Frink saw: former Saint Mary’s College coach Eric Valenzuela.

“Ken was a walk-on,” Valenzuela remembers. “Nobody was recruiting him. That’s not easy to do at Saint Mary’s, with the cost to go there (estimated at $53,572 by US News). He earned a scholarship while he was there because of the type of pitcher he was.”

Waldichuk said Valenzuela made one request of him for his freshman year: Show up in shape.

“Freshman year that really stuck with me and that’s why I stuck with it,” said Waldichuk said. “I showed up throwing 84-86 mph and by midseason I was touching 90 mph, and by the end of the season I was sitting at least 90 mph.”

In three seasons at Saint Mary’s, Waldichuk posted a 2.70 ERA with 275 strikeouts in 230 innings.

“He wasn’t a high-profile guy out of high school, but I give Eric credit for that,” Ungricht said. “There’s a chance, that age-old saying, ‘Don’t ever walk away from a left-handed pitcher.’ He gets an opportunity to go get innings, to pitch. There’s something to be said for that.”

The Yankees selected Waldichuk in the fifth round of the 2019 draft and watched him flourish in the minors.

In 2021, he began his first full season as a professional with 30-⅔ consecutive scoreless innings for High-A Hudson Valley, where he struck out 55 batters with a .120 batting average before a quick promotion to Double-A Somerset. In 215 2/3 innings in the Yankees system, he had 328 strikeouts.

But in the summer of 2022, the Yankees traded him to the A’s as part of the deal that sent Frankie Montas and Lou Trivino to the Bronx.

In seven big league starts with the A’s, the towering southpaw showed a lot of promise. He struck out 33 batters in 34 2/3 innings and a 4.93 ERA, though the advanced metrics paint the picture of a guy with bad luck; he had a 4.29 FIP and 1.21 WHIP, suggesting he could be in for a big year with the A’s in 2023.

Coming off a season in which they ranked 26th in MLB with a 4.69 ERA out of their starting rotation, the A’s are desperate for their young pitchers to step up.