Thanks for making me question it as I did go dig up the statcast data. Petrutz does have better average exit velocity than I thought. His average EV was 88.5 which puts him 43rd of 233 A ball hitters that faced more than 200 pitches tracked with statcast, which is 82nd percentile. Where Petrutz was absolutely horrendous was hitting the ball straight into the ground with a horrible 0.8 launch angle. That launch angle puts him at the 6th worst in A ball. Maybe there is hope he can improve that and at least even hit line drives and maybe some fly balls. If I had looked at all the data, I would probably have Petrutz around 35ish on my rankings instead for hope he can lift the ball even a little.
Interestingly the Cards look to drafted a lot of low launch angle guys that bash the ball into the ground in 2024. Maybe a draft philosophy of target those guys as they fall and hope you can fix it. It is impressive seeing “high floor” Wetherholt’s numbers as he has an average EV of 91.9 which puts him at 4th best in A ball. Wetherholt had a 8.9% launch angle which could be a better, but it isn’t horrible as Wetherholt is built more like a line drive hitter and I don’t want him changing that too much. There is a lot of power potential in his bat as even even in MLB Wetherholt would be top 30 in average EV.