PHOENIX -- Strikeouts are expensive.
"The cost of pitching this offseason, it's skyrocketed as far as the guys that have the high K percentages," said White Sox senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister.
With Martín Pérez's one-year $5 million deal (with $1.5 million deferred via a 2026 mutual option buyout) marking the team's largest free agent outlay of the winter, such a summary offers enough to know that the White Sox's budget shut them out from adding much swing-and-miss stuff to their pitching staff. They were 22nd in the league in strikeout rate as a staff last year, and that was with Garrett Crochet striking out over 35 percent of hitters across his 146 innings.
The resulting whiff deficit mandates Sox pitching find a different way to live to have any measure of success, produce a healthy mix of multi-year contributors and trade assets, and hell, maybe win some ballgames. The plan is to rely on weak contact and weird arm angles.
"The interesting thing we found over the last year-plus is that the type of arm action and the delivery that the scouts brought in the organization are actually really good seam effects-type of pitchers," Bannister said. "Ironically, you're going after more of a verty, riding fastball. But as we've gotten to know these guys, and gotten them in the lab and started to work with them, a lot of them have really outlier characteristics on getting late movement on the ball.
"So while it's a little more contact-heavy, there's a lot of damage suppression in there, just because they're getting a lot of late movement. The seam effects some of these guys can generate are pretty extreme. You're not seeing the higher K percentages, but I think as these guys get in the zone more, the things we prioritize on the analytical side, and have really stepped up our game as an organization in a lot of regards, we're finding these pitchers can really pound the zone, generate that late movement, have arsenals that move late in contrast. There's some really talented arms here that are almost being developed in a different version than why they were acquired."
A good example would be Sean Burke, looking to build off his four sublime September outings in his 2024 debut. A big and physical six-foot-six right-hander who can throw two different sharply dropping breaking balls off a riding mid-90s fastball, Burke wouldn't be getting to asked to deviate from a north-south attack if it was still 2018.
But as idyllic were the results in his first 19 major league innings, Burke is also quick to recall an incident from 2024 where he spammed Brent Rooker with sliders for a strikeout in their first encounter of the game, only to see the A's slugger ignore the inner half of the strike zone and whack him for a homer by their third encounter. In response, Burke has been working on a two-seam fastball alongside the seam effects changeup Bannister helped him with last year; both weapons designed to allow the 25-year-old to work east-west for weak contact against hitters who would otherwise try to eliminate the arm side of the plate.
"Three years ago I would have told you I probably won't be throwing a two-seamer, but here we are today, so who knows what it will be in three years?" said Burke. "The starters have to do both a little bit, because hitters are getting so good and the approaches of hitters are getting simplified to the point that they know certain guys, they're just going to sit on an area. And every single guy might not get a hit, but they're going to get a few guys that are going to be able to get a barrel on a ball and hit the ball hard. So, just trying to avoid that."
And the White Sox feel it's an example of their recent success finding changeup solutions for a host of the prospect arms they have in camp; pitchers who are comfortable spinning breaking balls, but have never previously felt natural when trying to generate arm-side movement. Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith are the most prominent examples, but Rule 5 pick Shane Smith, who so naturally cuts the ball to his glove side that he started utilizing with his fastball last year, is also now throwing a similar changeup to Burke after working on it all offseason. Grant Taylor, whose raw stuff is such that he's cracking top-100 prospect lists despite minimal professional track record, finds the kick changeup to be just as revelatory as Davis Martin found it to be when he effectively learned it overnight last August.
"It's definitely a lot easier than trying to pronate a changeup," Taylor said, who now has a counterweight to his three different breaking balls. "I've been trying to do that my whole life and never had success, so it's a relief that you can throw something like a cutter and it goes arm side."
Taylor, who clipped 101.2 mph in his Cactus League debut, has one of the most powerful right arms in minor league baseball, and changeup development becoming an organizational strength could help put him right alongside Schultz and Smith in leading a high-powered rotation in the future. But lacking that kind of firepower in the present, this current White Sox pitching staff is more broadly composed of pitchers who rely on entering the strike zone in a unique way, more so than doing it with overwhelming stuff.
"The lower slot allows the east-west stuff to move a little bit more and be a little bit more deceptive and create more angle, linear-wise," said Bryse Wilson, whose attempt to move from swingman to starter is boosted by embracing a lower three-quarters arm slot to improve the action of his sinker/cutter/changeup-heavy mix. "This offseason that was a big focus; keep the same repertoire, but just see what those movement numbers look like from that slot and make adjustments when necessary."
"My delivery is kinda funky, [so we've just talked] about how to maximize it," said Brandon Eisert, a left-handed waiver claim from the Rays, who releases the ball from barely over 5 feet above the ground on average. "In general I try to keep my fastball at the top of the zone, but if it rides into righties it can be a tough neighborhood. Sliders, I go backfoot to them. With lefties, where the ball comes out it's kind of behind them, so I just try to get ahead with stuff."
As much as Tyler Gilbert's multi-instrumental talent (piano, guitar, drums, he professes to be game for any option) is fun spring training fodder, a New Year's Day trade to acquire him as a swingman was more rooted in his success after also dropping his arm slot mid-year last season. Penn Murfee, who has made a career out of throwing the way he did as a college infielder, comes in at an even lower angle from the right side. And while James Karinchak was still sitting 92-93 mph and was homered upon in his spring debut, it's not hard to understand the concept behind his NRI while watching his unique over-the-top delivery. People of all stripes can agree that Mike Clevinger's pitching style is nothing if not distinct.
The threshold for harnessing an outlier skill for a stretch of good relief innings can be breached in a single spring. The lack of career saves in camp is being sold as a intriguing level of opportunity, and sometimes future leverage relievers just need a soft landing spot to first get going.
"Being on the Dodgers is awesome, you get to learn a lot as a rookie from a lot of your idols," said Gus Varland, whose riding four-seamer from a flatter approach angle dominated in the strike zone down the stretch, fueling the best control of his career after being claimed off waivers mid-season. "But going out there is nerve-wracking at the end of the day no matter what the score is. I think I let that get the best of me sometimes. Then I come to the White Sox and I think, 'You know what? I'm just going to go pitch and do my thing,' and once I started having some success I realize, 'OK, I do belong here and I can do it.'"
Especially with Prelander Berroa's power arsenal now sidelined by a Grade 1 elbow strain, the bullpen's success through the first half and beyond, and avoiding the sort of chaotic collapses that made 121 possible last year, will be defined by the hit rate on the projects that Bannister and newly emphasized Sox analysts have identified.
"With the players on the market that we're able to access, you're looking for a lot of different looks; whether that's flatter approach angles in the zone or funky release points or some deception or some seam effects, you're just trying to tap into that," Bannister said. "Something we talk about with the R&D group and the player acquisition group, just valuing unique pitchers with so much velo in the game. What actually is leading to success on the pitching side of the equation nowadays? A lot of the time it's guys who have unique features or qualities. We don't know which one of those guys are going to separate themselves, but you want to bring them out, work with them one-on-one, customize the development to them and how they need to move, and fine-tune their arsenal and see who goes out and performs."
Such an approach sounds more compelling as a way to salvage and uncover talent in a year where fans have low expectations, but it applies to the White Sox's more ambitious pursuits as well. Schultz and Smith are power lefties, but were valued for having unique arm actions that make the dominant with largely two pitches. Jairo Iriarte is being developed to ensure that his release stays as alien as possible, and Bannister alluded to believing that newly acquired Wikelman González's control problems and inconsistencies in the Red Sox organization owe to throwing more over the top than what would be ideal for his body.
But what can't be overlooked in all this strategizing to find unique ways for pitchers to generate weak contact on a shoestring budget, is that it all falls apart if it's front of another White Sox defense that can't do the job.
"Will [Venable] is really into the pre-pitch work with the defense, and Walker [McKinven] has been great bringing over from Milwaukee a lot of his run prevention information, because that was his thing," Bannister said. "You have a nice melting pot of good philosophies and good things being done on the analytical side that's just going to raise the floor of what we put out on the field every single day."
