White Sox pitching is trying to make the most of their meager stuff

Ideally, the top of the rotation for the next good White Sox team is currently in Double-A Birmingham. Such an outlook puts a lot of pressure on Noah Schultz, Hagen Smith and Grant Taylor to look a tick more steady than they've all been so far in 2025, but ratchets down the intensity of the questions players are trying to answer at the major league level.

Rather than is this a future ace?, it's more manageable queries like is this a starter? or is this a big leaguer? or can we get this guy through five innings today?

"I think we're trying to pitch out of situations with what we have," said pitching coach Ethan Katz.

The White Sox are 18th in team ERA in the early going, which feels like an accomplishment because last year's group finished 28th, but also the raw ingredients haven't improved. The standings that FanGraphs houses for the Stuff+ model has the White Sox pitching staff at dead-last in the majors, similarly lacking in velocity, and the team doesn't argue their internal measures say differently.

That they've produced middle-of-the-pack results from bottom-of-the-barrel velocity and movement can sound like a boast. With their collective stuff inducing the second-fewest out of zone chases in the sport, Sox pitchers have clearly had to hew close to their game plans to fare as well as they have. But in talking to Sox personnel, the pride in the early results can be subsumed into the anxiety about navigating the 126 remaining games, especially without Martín Pérez, the one starter established enough to soak up extra innings on demand.

Sox pitching is enjoying merely the fifth-largest positive gap between their ERA and FIP in baseball, but the four teams over-performing harder than them all have happier medium to regress to. For a pitching staff dedicated to working east-west across the strike zone to counter their lack of ability to blow hitters away, the crackdown on umpires' buffer zones in calling strikes is acutely felt around these parts.

"We wanted to really continue with that up and in quadrant to lefties by using [Jonathan Cannon's] sinker up there," Katz said. "He struck out Yordan [Alvarez Friday] night with it, but it didn't get called."

With all Sox pitchers, but notably with Cannon as he's bounced back for 24 innings of 3.38 ERA over his last four outings, the concept of "creating space" has been in frequent use -- stressing the necessity of making opposing hitters respect every corner of the strike zone so that their stuff can play. For example, Cannon's seam effects changeup has emerged as his most effective and most used offering, but has to be set up in painstaking fashion to really work.

Cannon has to make opposing hitters conscious of protecting high and glove side in order to swing over the top of his changeup diving to the opposite corner. Not only that, but Cannon might toggle between cutter, sinker and four-seamer when he's going up and in to the lefties stacked against them, rather than risk any one fastball shape getting over-exposed. The laborious nature of carving out every little bit of margin for error even trickles down to the praise Edgar Quero receives from coaches, as he's quickly embracing an ask for Sox catchers to relocate their setups frequently and prime their pitchers for trying to nick different corners in one at-bat. All of it represents trends taking place in pitching across the league, as the benefits of showing different pitch types becomes quantified, but it's all lent an extra emphasis as the Sox account for pitchers working with less power stuff.

"I like having the wide arsenal," Cannon said. "Especially for someone like me, and even someone like Davis [Martin], we're not going to be the guys that go out and strike out 14 guys per nine innings. Knowing what your swing-and-miss pitch is, and knowing how to get to it, I think is important."

A large reason why a reader suggestion was necessary to bring this to light is that Jared Shuster's changeup has long been unquestionably his best pitch, as he's demonstrated the ability to pronate his wrist to execute a traditional changeup since his amateur days. If Shuster's offseason plan post-2024 had been crowdsourced from Sox Machine readers, it would have taken a while before "get a better changeup" came up. But the message he got from Katz and Matt Wise was that a seam effects changeup was an opportunity for him to improve, and maybe simplify the process for his sinker and slider alongside it.

"It feels natural and the other pitches are in the same lane, and from there it's just about putting it where I want to, it makes it a lot easier," Shuster said of the new pitch. "They mentioned the new changeup for me and it's played pretty well. I'm really happy with it."

But even if Shuster didn't feel like he's added extra run to his sinker since he's stopped needing to flip his wrist orientation pitch-to-pitch, there wouldn't be any point in leaving any developmental meat on the bone. Not with this group.

"The biggest thing is that with the guys we have and the stuff we have, we're trying to enhance on the margins every single way to get the most out of them," Katz said.

The Stuff+ model could be selling the White Sox short, for what it's worth. Pitch grade models can struggle with changeups, which are often effective for reasons distinct from their raw movement characteristics. It was a source of bemusement for Drew Thorpe how poorly his changeup scored on pitch grade metrics, despite clearly generating his best results. In particular, Stuff+ thinks Shuster and Shane Smith are the only Sox pitchers throwing above-average changeups despite the success Cannon and Martin are enjoying.

"We have new bags of tricks on the coaching side to kind of develop these changeups, and just their natural arm characteristics and deliveries have lent itself to kind of developing these plus pitches," Brian Bannister said. "These guys have really been leveraging them and going out and getting more confidence and throwing them lately."

Quickly installing effective changeups, though they have added more than a few that are not overnight sensations, would be a boon to the White Sox organization if they could do it repeatedly, as it's a feel pitch that typically takes years of reps. But it also doesn't have to be their only thing, especially on the major league level. It's just taken on prominence for a team hunting any thing that can help them navigate through the nightly crucible of pitching nine innings in the majors without overpowering stuff.

"It just so happened that a lot of the arms that we have when I came to the organization that the scouts had prioritized, just have very natural synergistic characteristics to a really good changeup," Bannister said. "But it doesn't mean we have to keep going after that characteristic specifically. You like to have a lot of different looks that can handle different opposing lineups, lefties versus righties, etc. So we want a staff that's very diversified and can handle a lot of different types of hitters."

One day. Until then, they'll have to execute.