The White Sox used Monday's off day to shuffle their rotation for the three-game series against the Cleveland Guardians. Instead of Lance Lynn, Mike Clevinger and Michael Kopech the next three days, Pedro Grifol is instead throwing Lynn, Clevinger and Dylan Cease. The shift means that Cease will throw on normal rest, and Kopech will get an extra two days between starts before he opens the series against the Royals on Friday.
Given the hole the White Sox have dug themselves, it makes sense to start Cease on regular rest whenever possible, especially when it involves a direct rival. Say what you will about Cease's performance this season, but there really isn't a scenario where you'd rather see Kopech on the mound instead.
Still, part of me wanted to see Kopech take the ball against Cleveland just due to the clash in extreme profiles. Kopech gets the second-fewest swings of any qualifying starter in baseball, facing the team with the third-highest chase rate. Kopech's induced only five swinging strikes in each of his last two starts, whereas the Guardians have the second-highest contact rate on pitches out of the zone.
If you're an optimist, the Guardians would've helped Kopech out by meekly putting his non-strikes into play, because they have the league's lowest hard-hit rate. If you're a pessimist, Kopech's wildness would've made too many pitches uncompetitive for a Guardians team that draws its share of walks due to their ability to spoil pitches, and then they would've had fun running. Either way, Guaranteed Rate Field figured to be a land of contrasts.
Alas, Kopech will instead be held for Kansas City. It's theoretically doing him a favor in terms of competition, because while the Royals just took three of four from the White Sox, they've lost all four of their games since, including a no-hit bid on Monday.
But besides the shift to the lower-leverage opponent, I'm curious if the Sox are making use of those extra days to revise Kopech's arsenal, because it seems like he needs more than extra rest.
Somewhere during the 2022 season -- and about a month before the knee injury that ultimately defined his year -- he shed the horizontal movement on his slider. It appeared to be a conscious decision to give it a different movement profile than his curveball, and while the number of sweeping sliders dropped after April, it didn't initially make an impact on his performance.
- April: 19 IP, 9 H, 9 BB, 18 K, 1.42 ERA
- May: 23 IP, 8 H, 10 BB, 21 K, 1.17 ERA
Then he tweaked his knee in June, and the rest of his season became a matter of survival until surgery in October. Kopech's slider suffered in terms of effectiveness, but his fastball wasn't at its best either. His curve did make strides when he elected to throw it, so perhaps Kopech made progress -- halting, lurching, unsteady progress -- toward a three-pitch mix despite all the noise.
Not so much. He's eight starts into the fresh season, the fastball has regained its steam, and nobody's making any references to his knee. The noise is more or less gone, which makes it easier to hear his slider getting crushed.
| Year | Horz Mov | Whiff% | xSLG |
|---|---|---|---|
| 2021 | 9.2 | 36.0 | .301 |
| 2022 | 4.7 | 21.3 | .429 |
| 2023 | 5.1 | 21.5 | .661 |
And maybe it wouldn't hurt so much if Kopech's curveball eased the strain, but that pitch has gone backwards, too. He had a problem with tipping it early in the season, and although he's featured it more often this month, it's been good for one swinging strike all season.
It seems like the quest to turn Kopech into a three-pitch pitcher has effectively rendered him a one-pitch pitcher, and the need to wring every bit of productivity from his fastball has him firing it all over the place, like this spatter against the Astros shows.
Only one of his last six starts has featured fewer than four free bases (walks + HBP), and that's when the White Sox gave him 11 runs in the second inning. Kopech succeeded in throwing strikes, but he also gave up four homers.
Assuming the White Sox offense won't provide their pitchers preposterously large cushions on a regular basis, it's hard to see a path toward a starter who can take control. If Kopech has the option of toggling his slider back to the sweeper that served as a respectable second pitch in 2021, it might be worth exploring. You might be inclined to point out that Kopech succeeded with that particular pitch mix from the bullpen, not as a starter expected to face entire lineups two or three times, but his current breaking stuff doesn't look like it'll play anywhere.
