Adrian Houser walked more batters than he struck out in his White Sox debut on Tuesday night, holding the Mariners offense scoreless for six innings by way of a pair of double-play grounders, an inning-ending pickoff, and a few well-placed lineouts.
He wasn't perfect, is what needs to be acknowledged first, before allowing that for someone who opted out of his minor league deal last week not knowing what would come next, he was pretty good.
"He was amazing," said Edgar Quero, who certainly didn't try to convince anyone that he had heard of Houser before he started his game prep on Tuesday.
But since the White Sox are contractually committed to Houser through the end of the year and functionally committed to needing his innings in the rotation indefinitely, there's an initial indicator they can already cling to in the hopes of getting what they paid for. And it's something that reliably correlates to better performance in literally every projection model.
He's throwing harder!
On a cool and misty night at Rate Field, Houser averaged 93.9 mph on his sinker and 94.8 mph on a four-seamer that played a big role in handling lefties. Both figures are not only almost a two-tick jump from where he sat last season, but if they held as his baselines, would represent the hardest the 32-year-old has thrown since 2019. The velocity jump also had knock-on effects for the effectiveness of Houser's curveball, which helped him tame a lefty-heavy Mariners order when opposite-handed hitters have typically been the sinker-baller's Achilles heel.
"I'm able to flip [the curveball] in there and get a strike or even a swing-and-miss when I need to," Houser said. "With all the stuff we've messed with and tinkered with and hammered down, it's correlated with the stuff getting a little bit sharper, and the curveball is one that's really gotten a little bit better. I'm throwing it a little bit harder, a little bit sharper. It's playing up."
The consistency of Houser's secondary, especially with how the curve paired with a four-seamer he flashed more often to keep hitters off the sinker, earned the admiration of former teammates who have seen him in the past.
Even one experiencing professional consequences from his arrival.
"That's probably the best I've seen him in a while," said Bryse Wilson. "I was with him pretty much all year in '23. We traded him after '23, but I think the addition of the curveball and how well that was used yesterday was something I hadn't seen from him. So definitely not surprised he did that, but excited for him and where his stuff's at and how he pitched."
As an Oklahoma native, Houser had received a few entreaties from a friend over the years to spend his offseason training at PitchingWRX, a facility in Oklahoma City where former Sox pitcher Lane Ramsey is the chief of operations. It's patronized by the like of Jackson Jobe, Andrew Heaney and perhaps most notably, Davis Martin, who stood to be the least surprised by the velocity Houser touted in his debut.
"He came in and threw his end-of-year bullpen at PitchingWRX, at the end of the '24 season just to get a gauge of where he was at," Martin said. "They made some mechanical changes in that one bullpen and I think he went from [92 to 95 mph] in a snap. You kind of knew it was going to be a good offseason. He fixed a lot of things and now he's rocking and rolling."
Houser had held off coming to the facility a while. But a 2024 season that saw him shifted to the bullpen, pile up a 5.84 ERA before being designated for assignment by the Mets and bounce around to the Triple-A affiliates of two other organizations served as plenty of impetus.
"Knowing that there's something I know is wrong and I can't quite pinpoint it, but I need to do something," Houser said of his feeling after '24. "It's about an hour and a half, hour and 45 from my house and I never really bought into it, but after last year it was like, 'You know what? I think I'm going to do it.' And it turned out to be a really big benefit from me."
The overriding theme of the fix sounds simple enough from description, removed from the strength building and reps needed to make it second nature. Houser has found more power from dipping deeper and riding longer on his back leg in his delivery, but lacked the balance to pull it off until he started setting up his hands farther away from his body. With his arms more extended, Houser is able to push on the gas pedal a little harder for a little longer.
"I was able to really get into my backside and use my lower half, versus being tall and falling down the mound or getting to my knee and not having much push-off," Houser said. "I noticed that it actually helped with my arm path on all my other pitches. I was able to get to my changeup and my curveball and my slider a little bit better. This isn't just a velo thing or a balance thing, it's an actual arm path and overall mechanics thing."
As Houser's progression with the Rangers bears out, it hasn't been quite as seamless of a process as a transformative first bullpen makes it sound. He stumbled with a couple of ERA-spiking clunkers, particularly the seven runs over one-third of an inning on April 27, before righting the ship at Triple-A Round Rock enough that he and his agent decided to use their May 15 opt-out. But 2023 was the most recent of three seasons in Houser's career where he maintained a better-than-average ERA for more than 100 innings, so there's past history of the level of results the Sox are seeking. And he threw seven innings of scoreless baseball against the White Sox in 2020, so even Rate Field has witnessed standalone nights where Houser's sinker was too heavy to be lifted in any fashion.
"He's a big body and there's a lot of conviction behind it," Martin said. "When he's dealing with two-seam and four-seam, you are getting a different look at the same velocity. He's putting them in good spots, setting it up well. It's an uptick in velo from last year, so I'm sure he's just hyper-confident in his fastball and that's what it looked like to me from the dugout."
As has been established before, this is a pitcher who was scuffling in Triple-A a few weeks ago before triggering an opt-out from an organization that's not inclined to let reliable innings-eaters walk away. But Houser is armed with a tweak that's reason for optimism that he can return to his previous heights the White Sox have opportunity for him to prove it, and these are the sort of marriages they're supposed to be seeking at this point in their trajectory.
"We're at this spot where if we keep hammering this down, we're in a good spot of throwing the ball," Houser said. "With my opt-out I had a shot to maybe get a big league opportunity. I was able to get this opportunity and don't want it to go to waste now."
