After two consecutive years of whiff concerns, South Carolina 1B/OF Ethan Petry is turning a corner. He’s blistering pitches per usual, but the hit tool has taken a step forward.
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Petry has been one of the most polarizing prospects in college baseball since he was a freshman in 2023. He slashed .376/.471/.733 with 23 homers in his first collegiate campaign. But a 40 percent whiff rate against sliders and a 22 percent in-zone whiff rate left scouts asking whether he would be able to handle the most advanced pitching Major League Baseball will throw his way.
YOU HAVE TO BE KIDDING ME
ETHAN. MF. PETRY.
THE FRESHMAN IS A SUPERSTAR pic.twitter.com/hvdTRHm9zt
— 11Point7 College Baseball (@11point7) April 7, 2023
Petry put up a similar bruising baseball card as a sophomore. He slashed .306/.471/.693 with 21 homers in 2024. But many metrics measures of a good hitter were backing up. After running a 21 percent strikeout rate as a freshman, Petry punched out north of 25 percent of the time as a sophomore. His overall whiff rate jumped six percent to 34 percent.
He struggled mightily against elevated fastballs and top-tier velocity. His walk rate did get healthier, up 5.5 percent to north of 17 percent on the season. But as a whole, Petry’s game was backing up, and scouts were taking notice.
After largely being considered a top-ten pick candidate in 2025 following his freshman season, Petry was now being broadcast in the second round by most publications.
This past summer, the Cape provided signs of a similarly troubling forecast. A whiff rate north of 34 percent once again presented itself. But something was clicking into gear for Petry. He was adjusting late in counts. His strikeout rate fell to 16.5 percent last summer. And he wasn’t sacrificing exit velocities to get there.
Petry has always been one of the more prodigious batted-ball event guys in college baseball. He hit a ball 114 mph as a sophomore and has routinely ranked near the top of college baseball in peak exit velocities. He led all players on the Cape with a 105.2 mph 90th percentile exit velocity last summer. He’s always been able to compress a baseball. But if the signs of a burgeoning hit tool were real, could he re-establish his draft stock?
Things are certainly moving in the right direction for Petry in 2025. Some of his bat-to-ball metrics have begun to blossom.
Petry’s overall whiff rate in 2025 sits at 20 percent. That’s more than ten percent better than his career mark entering the season. Perhaps more impressive is the fact his in-zone whiff rate has dropped to 10.5 percent. His in-zone whiff rate entering the year was almost 25 percent. His ability to cover pitches in the zone this year has been nothing short of a remarkable jump.
Petry hasn’t had to sacrifice his bat speed to get to this point, either. He’s hitting the ball as hard as ever. But there is one part of his game that has been thrown into neutral. He’s on pace for just 14 homers this year, in large part due to his newfangled approach in the box. Petry has been letting the ball travel and focusing on playing with the right-center field gap. Those adjustments have brought his slider whiff percentage down from 40 percent in 2023 to just north of 17 percent in 2025. Obviously a huge improvement. But it comes with a catch.
While 2023 and 2024 produced flawed results in a lot of ways, Petry certainly knew how to get to his pull-side. His 38 percent pull-side air-contact rate ranked extremely high among his peers, placing him in the same bucket as guys like Jared Jones of LSU, Nick Kurtz of Wake Forest and Jace LaViolette of Texas A&M. This season his emphasis on the hit tool has seen that rate hit the brakes.
Petry is hitting the ball in the air to the pull side less than 25 percent of the time. It’s clearly had an impact on his ability to hit the ball over the fence. But maybe this is the happy medium teams want to see. If nothing else, Petry is working hard to make adjustments, a trait to consider on his profile in and of itself.
And then Ethan Petry unloads for career homer No. 49!
? SECN+#Gamecocks | #ForeverToThee pic.twitter.com/IMPGhfOhNK
— Gamecock Baseball (@GamecockBasebll) March 8, 2025
Through 26 games, Petry is slashing .359/.474/.663 with six homers.
Petry is still playing some right field for the Gamecocks this season, but he’s splitting time at first base. The latter will likely be his eventual full-time position as a pro.
Finding a perfect marriage between getting to his pull side and maintaining his bat-to-ball improvements would elevate Petry’s draft stock back into the first round. As things currently stand, he’s likely right on the fringes of being called inside the top 30 picks. He’s not far from cementing his name inside that range. Maybe one more adjustment will get him there.
- 2025 MLB Draft: Top 400 Prospects - April 17, 2025
- A CRUCIAL benchmark for college hitters - April 2, 2025
- Ethan Petry has turned a corner - March 27, 2025
