How this Wichita Wind Surge player went from Australian rugby dreams to baseball star
Growing up in Australia with a father who was born in New Zealand, the dream for Aaron Whitefield was to someday be a professional rugby player.
He still remembers watching the All Blacks, the New Zealand men’s national rugby team, and thinking he wanted to be like them.
So how did Whitefield end up in Wichita as a professional baseball player for the Wind Surge, chasing a new dream of playing in the major leagues for the Minnesota Twins? There are some days when the 24-year-old outfielder hitting .340 so far for the first-place Wind Surge thinks about his unusual journey.
“If you would have told me this five years ago, I would have told you I’m just an athlete playing another sport,” Whitefield said. “I always thought I was going to be a rugby player. That was my dream.”
Whitefield was raised in Brisbane by two parents who are world-class, fast-pitch softball players. He began playing the game himself and even represented Australia at the World Championships in Argentina when he was just 16.
That’s when a MLB scout from the Cincinnati Reds approached Whitefield after a softball game and asked if he had ever thought of playing baseball instead.
“In Australia, you don’t have baseball in middle school or high school,” Whitefield said. “It’s on TV maybe once a year and it’s usually when the Yankees play the Red Sox. So I thought it was a joke. Maybe one of my buddies playing a joke on me. But he told me that if I played a year of baseball, I could probably get looked at by some teams.”
It was enough to convince Whitefield to join a local baseball league. He said he didn’t immediately fall in love with the game, but enjoyed the challenge of baseball. He was also a physical specimen, a big body with elite speed on the bases and good instincts in the outfield.
After his first year of playing the sport, a scout from the Minnesota Twins liked what they saw in Whitefield enough to offer him a minor-league contract on the spot.
“I was like, ‘Yeah, let’s rock,’” Whitefield said. “But pro ball was basically my first taste of baseball, so I kind of got thrown in the deep end.”
He started playing for the Twins’ rookie ball team in the Gulf Coast League as an 18-year-old new to the sport in 2015. Back home in Australia, friends and family remained supportive, even if they were a little confused about how the professional baseball structure worked in America.
“They were expecting to be play in the MLB with the Twins the first week I got over here,” said Whitefield laughing. “I had to explain to my friends how it actually works. But they all thought it was pretty cool for me to come over here and doing something that I love to do. There’s not many (Australians) playing (baseball), so I feel like I’m kind of setting a pathway for the younger guys coming up now.”
For having very limited prior experience before coming to the United States, Whitefield has had an impressive start to his career.
In his first full season of professional baseball, Whitefield hit .298 and swiped 31 bases in 51 games in the GCL and was named a postseason all-star. He spent the next three years bouncing between Single-A ball and Double-A ball before the Twins decided to take a chance on him last summer for a brief stint at the major-league level, where Whitefield appeared in three games as a pinch runner and a defensive player in the outfield.
“I definitely feel like I accomplished part of my goal to get to where I wanted to get to, but I also didn’t want to just be up there for two weeks and come back down and play in the minor leagues,” Whitefield said. “That’s why I’ve really focused on the hitting side of things. I feel like for two years now, everyone has been waiting for me to hit. I know I got called up for my defense and my running, so now I have to show that I can hit.”
At 6-foot-4 and 210 pounds, Whitefield certainly looks the part of a major-league player. He’s one of the fastest players on every team he’s been on, as well as one of the best defensive players. The final piece is hitting.
Whitefield is still adjusting to a completely different swing than the one he had playing fast-pitch softball. As he’s advanced in the minor leagues, Whitefield has struggled with strikeouts. In 42 career games at the Double-A level, Whitefield is striking out on 35% of his at-bats.
Wichita manager Ramon Borrego actually managed Whitefield back in 2019 when he was coaching the Twins’ Double-A team in Pensacola, Florida. Whitefield struggled at the plate back then, as Borrego suspects it was bouncing back and forth between levels as the culprit for Whitefield hitting .197 that season.
“He’s a totally different guy right now,” Borrego said. “He’s been working a lot of different things and you can tell he’s focused on just trying to make contact, driving the ball to the gaps. You’re seeing more line drives. He’s got a lot of potential.”
Whitefield has developed a new routine after a nearly two-year break from minor-league baseball. He credited that new mental approach for his strong start in Wichita, where he is second on the team in hitting (.340) with a team-high six extra-base hits, including two home runs and eight runs batted in to go along with a team-high four stolen bases. He’s still struggling with strikeouts, but now he’s consistently putting the ball in play.
The hot start earned him the Double-A Central Hitter of the Week after the first week of the season. The Wind Surge (8-4) have the best record in Double-A Central with Whitefield leading the way, as the team travels to the Tulsa Drillers for its next six-game series on the road starting Tuesday.
After the brief MLB stint last summer, Whitefield is even more motivated to return to the Twins — this time on a full-time basis.
“I want to prove to (the Twins) that I have changed my hitting and here it is,” Whitefield said. “You can say all of the things you want, ‘Oh, I’m a better hitter,’ but it doesn’t matter until you go out there and actually put it on the field. Hopefully I can keep it going from the start to the end, showing them that the bat is there now.”
This story was originally published May 16, 2021 at 2:58 PM.
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