It's a compliment delivered in a mean fashion, but the eight left-handers the Guardians sent out against Jonathan Cannon isn't going to be much higher than what he normally faces going forward. The book is out on how his sinker and changeup pairing plays to righties, and teams are going to opt to probe his vulnerability to left-handed slugging instead.
The White Sox internally believe Cannon matches up a lot better with teams that can't flood the zone with lefties as much as the Guardians did while sealing up a sweep on Thursday, as homers from Kyle Manzardo and Steven Kwan raised his splits against southpaws to .278/.333/.488 for his career. But Cleveland, nor this issue going forward, is a problem that Cannon can readily duck, as he's already faced majority lefties than righties for his career.
As is true for pretty much any pitcher, thigh-high is a location Cannon cannot live at against left-handed hitters, and he was notably breaking that directive on his locations for a four-seamer heeded to elevate to Kwan and a backfoot sweeper that didn't get home to Manzardo. While Cannon feels his changeup might be his best pitch and uses it liberally to left-handers, he's toggling between his cutter and a below-average four-seamer as harder pitches to set it up.
Even though he needs to be precise with offerings that don't play as well as his sinker does to righties, pitching coach Ethan Katz is stressing that overcooking the pitches isn't the way out either.
"He's his own worst enemy because when he tries to do more, he can overthink things and it can lead to bigger misses," Katz said. "We want to simplify things. We want to keep him on the attack and let his stuff play in-zone."
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Any of the previous four major league seasons that have seen Matt Thaiss get any sustained playing time have also seen him flirt with a 30 percent strikeout rate. Since he's always posted some of the lowest chase rates in the league, Thaiss believed the issue lay in his plate coverage.
"I’ve always been able to draw some walks, but I’m getting to more pitches at the top of the zone right now where I’ve in years past have swung and missed," Thaiss said. "It’s good to be back with Marcus [Thames], working with Marcus, and kind of shortening things up."
Rather than a bat speed increase, early Statcast bat-tracking data has Thaiss' swing length as significantly shorter (7.8 feet in 2024 to 7.4 feet at present). In turn his poor career in-zone contact rate of 75.8 percent has vaulted up to 86.8 percent in the early going, and Thaiss is spoiling pitches that used to end at-bats against him. Paired with his pre-existing patience, Thaiss has walked eight times and struck out six so far in 31 plate appearances (.227/.419/.318).
While director of hitting Ryan Fuller's end-of-spring interview was my first hearing about Thaiss' swing adjustments, he's made a point of giving credit to Thames, with whom he had a pre-existing rapport from their time together with the Angels.
"I had Marcus in '23 and I felt like offensively in the big leagues those were some of my better numbers. I had a really good couple of months stretch with him, so there's a comfort level with him just from being together in the past. He knows me and we got into camp early on and hit the ground running, getting back to simple things," Thaiss said.
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Lefty White Sox reliever Fraser Ellard has switched his orientation from pronation to supination the old-fashioned way. As he's worked over the years, trying to backspin the perfect riding four-seam fastball, his tendency to turn over his wrist to produce armside run has ebbed away.
"Thankfully no surgeries or big injuries to change it," Ellard said. "Katz has been awesome with that stuff. Our organization does a good job of letting guys figure things out, but being there to help with the data and the metrics and stuff. It was [a message of] 'both of those [his sinker and four-seamer] are going to play, do what's comfortable, but here's some of the data.' So it was 'Do whatever you want,' and I feel like this is best for me."
As a result, just like the more surgically-borne supinators in the clubhouse with him, Ellard is throwing a seam-shifted changeup, like Shane Smith is thriving with and Sean Burke is still developing. Users are often told to throw it like a cutter, and Ellard sticks to the cue hard enough that it occasionally gets tagged as one on Statcast. But even as merely a four-pitch reliever out of the pen, Ellard is touting more versatility than the average lefty out of the pen. While he mostly thinks of himself as throwing fastballs up and throwing sliders diving off of it, he's got a piece of his arsenal that corresponds to every quadrant of the strike zone.
"I'm just going to rip this [fastball] to the top of the zone and if it's off to the glove side or the arm side, I don't really care that much," Ellard said. "The next thing for the righties is using the changeup more often. That neutralizes their ability to cover both sides of the plate, and they can't really sit on anything, whereas last year if I was mostly throwing [four-seamers] and sliders, they might be able to protect against the four-seam in and pull a slider. Now I have something that goes down and away at you, down and in on you and you still have something that's strictly up, so good luck."
Ellard's four-seam velocity (94.3 mph) is down a tick from last season so far, so the multiple shapes can play a mitigating role for now. But also whoever rises to handle leverage opportunities in the uncertain White Sox bullpen will have to show newfound versatility.
