Pregame Notes: Sean Burke can bolster claim to White Sox rotation spot

At the outset of the spring, Martín Pérez, Davis Martin and Jonathan Cannon were the only starting pitchers that the White Sox were openly confirming to be in the rotation, as they sought to foster competition in camp. The likes of no less than Bryse Wilson, Tyler Gilbert, Shane Smith and Nick Nastrini have all been stretching out this spring, as Drew Thorpe pushes to reclaim a spot of his own.

That said, the sight of a healthy Sean Burke sitting 96 mph early in camp is putting some pretty clear writing on the wall that everyone else is chasing the No. 5 slot.

“Burke put on a good show,” said pitching coach Ethan Katz. “What he did in those four games in the big leagues [last September] was phenomenal. The stuff is there. He has some of the best stuff in camp and in our organization too. He’s got power spin but the changeup -- he showed it in San Diego during one of his last outings and that’s something we’ve been really harping on trying to get more involved. He added a sinker, which has been a nice weapon and got some ground balls the other day with it. We’re getting a couple different things going to change it up, but if he pitches the way he did last year, we’ll be just fine too.”

Lenyn Sosa is 5-for-9 in Cactus League action with a pair of walks and doubles apiece. As an out-of-options player competing for a spot on a team that took its sweet time scoring more than four runs in a game this spring, it’s the showing he had to have. But after building off a strong offensive September and immolating the Venezuelan winter league for 25 games, the polite plaudits are trending slightly toward becoming playing time commitments.

“He looks great,” Will Venable told reporters this weekend. “A guy who uses the whole field, has got power in his game. We’ll continue to find ways to get him in there and expose him to different positions. As we are getting closer to the season, we’ll all figure out how everyone fits in, and slots in. One thing, we’ll find ways to get his bat in the lineup for sure.”

To boil down a summary of Sosa’s Trackman data into brass tacks: His swing is big league caliber; what he decides to swing at needs work. If Sosa has felt like a revelation in one moment and unplayable the next, it’s because his turbo-aggressiveness lends him a streakiness dependent upon whether the competition feels compelled to throw him strikes. He might be an All-Star if he came up with the bases loaded all the time.

Instead, Sosa has played during an era of White Sox baseball where he’s much more likely to bat four times with the bases empty, and he makes for a compelling test case on whether this new regime can forge any real plate discipline gains.

Sosa’s 11 plate appearances don’t tell us much about this effort yet, but what’s good for the gander should spill down to individual geese. With the White Sox housing their new Trajekt machine – of which Tim Elko is a vocal devotee – at Camelback through the spring until it gets shipped to Rate Field at the end of March, the South Siders are seventh in MLB in total walks (43). All but one team ahead of them has played more games, and their overall walk rate is 12.4 percent.

Probably no MLB team will walk in 12.4 percent of their plate appearances this season, but it’s nice to be able to say “it’s only spring” about something other than a 2-7 record.

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