Instead of sending them to minor league affiliates by the end of spring training, the White Sox wound up sending a lot of their rotation depth options to Dr. Keith Meister. Drew Thorpe, Ky Bush, Mason Adams or even a young and developing Juan Carela would be fun options to consider to round out a rotation that has mostly been commendable in scrapping together a collective 3.85 ERA from its starting pitchers, despite the loss of Martín Pérez to a flexor strain.
Instead, all four have underwent Tommy John surgery before the season began. The impact of such was bound to be felt eventually, especially if “eventually” means “mid-May.”
Sources confirmed to Sox Machine what James Fox of Future Sox has reported, that the White Sox are signing veteran right-hander Adrian Houser and plan to have him start Tuesday night's game against the Mariners, assuming rain doesn't wash it away. The 32-year-old Houser recently was granted his release from a minor league deal with the Rangers, a day after he came an out shy of throwing a nine-inning shutout with Triple-A Round Rock on May 14. Houser had a 5.03 ERA overall with the Express this year, but seemingly found something over his last three outings, holding opposing hitters to a .169/.269/.220 batting line.
The White Sox officially announced Houser's deal on Tuesday afternoon as a one-year, $1.35 million agreement. Will Venable confirmed that Houser will be in the team's rotation going forward.
With a 4.21 ERA in over 600 career MLB innings, Houser has some defined characteristics of back-end innings eater. He’s a sinker-baller with a 51.8 percent career ground-ball rate, but has been a little shy of 50 percent in each of the last three seasons in the majors, and doesn’t miss enough bats to stave off trouble when his walk rate eclipses 10 percent. Houser has been sitting 93-96 mph and heavily leaning on his sinker once more to start out the year, and the early miss rates on his changeup are intriguing.
"His stuff has ticked up this year," Venable said. "He’s got experience, over 100 starts in the major leagues, so happy to slot him in and he’s going to put the ball on the ground against righties and got some different ways to get lefties out. Excited to add him to the mix."
An Oklahoma native, Houser spent the previous offseason throwing in the same training facility as Davis Martin and former Sox reliever Lane Ramsey. But his more obvious and relevant White Sox connection is bench coach Walker McKinven, after Houser spent eight years in the Brewers organization. Houser was more often a starter than a swingman like fellow former Brewer Bryse Wilson, and his old teammate's recent scuffles point to the most logical role for Houser to fill with his new club.
Wilson had been built up to a rotation role since Pérez went down with a flexor strain in April, and has yet to have a signature outing where his revamped east-west arsenal has flourished as designed. The 27-year-old right-hander has a 6.86 ERA with 29 hits allowed in 21 innings and a completely even 11-11 strikeout-to-walk ratio since moving from the bullpen. He will return to relieving in the wake of Wilson's addition.
“We're just gonna have to go back to the drawing board and kind of figure out how we want to sequence things and the execution, because the stuff is there,” Wilson said in Cincinnati after his last outing. “It's just about executing it and figuring out what's playing and adjusting to what hitters are doing."
Spirits are higher in the White Sox clubhouse and front office when players with a long-term future in the organization are driving the bus. Ideally, a scuffling Wilson would be a good opportunity to slide in a part of the franchise's future. But the starter options in the upper minors that have remained healthy have not put themselves in position for immediate consideration either. Wikelman González and Nick Nastrini have both been moved to the Triple-A bullpen, and Jairo Iriarte is in the middle of a Colson Montgomery-like reset at the team complex in Arizona.
Not only did Sox need to look outward to shore up the last spot in the rotation, but their dearth of established right-handed relief options already drove them to make a deal for veteran Miguel Castro earlier this week. Like Castro, Houser is a veteran who has spent the year with the Triple-A affiliate of a team with playoff ambitions and still became available, and expectations should be calibrated with that in mind.
But even with injuries and underperformance wiping out some of their compelling minor league options, the current White Sox rotation situation compelled some sort of action. So, here it is.
