White Sox adding Grant Taylor to bullpen

Watching Grant Taylor demoralize Southern League hitters out of the Birmingham bullpen over the past month, there was a growing sense that he wasn't going to be doing that particular task for much longer.

He'd pitched nine scoreless outings in as many chances out of the pen, allowing just three singles and a walk while striking out 18. Over the last week, he pitched his first multi-inning relief appearance, his first mid-inning relief appearance, and his first relief appearance on back-to-back days, all without incident. That seemed to follow the checklist that Chris Getz outlined when talking to reporters last Friday:

The rhythm of being in the bullpen is obviously different than being a starter with how often you're being used. You've got one up and you've got two ups, getting multiple outs, so we want to check those boxes, make sure that he's in a good position and we'll move forward with it.

That left only two avenues for further growth: returning to the Barons rotation or joining the major league bullpen, and the White Sox have chosen the latter. As initially reported by James Fox, the White Sox will be adding Taylor to the 40-man and 26-man rosters for the start of the series in Houston. A corresponding move will be required for both.

When asked on today's Sox Machine Podcast who would be the next White Sox prospect called up, Taylor came to mind ...

... because when I talked to Taylor and his coaches in Birmingham last week, everybody said that he'd be pitching in relief until informed otherwise, and everybody sounded enamored with Taylor's version of relief.

"It's the same arsenal, you just see the stuff tick up a little bit out of the pen," said Birmingham pitching coach John Kovalik. "He was never really trying to save bullets for later in the outing when we had him in the rotation, but I think now that he knows he's only going to be throwing an inning at a time, he can truly actually air it out."

In relief, Taylor was reliably touching 100 with his fastball, but he also demonstrated the capacity for using his other pitches in fastball counts. He ranked his 94-mph cutter as his most consistent secondary pitch, followed by an 84-mph curveball and a slider that comes in around 87. In what could be his final appearance for Birmingham, he struck out both batters he faced, finishing Sam Brown on a hammer curve, and then Denzer Guzman on three straight 100-mph fastballs:

Taylor probably won't be thrown into high-leverage situations right away, but Jordan Leasure has the worst performance in the AL in terms of Win Probability Added, as well as the most meltdowns in the White Sox bullpen according to FanGraphs. If Taylor's initial outings look anywhere as easy as the ones in Double-A, there's a late-inning vacancy for a hard-throwing, bat-missing righty with his name all over it.

From there, Getz hasn't closed the door on Taylor returning to the rotation, using Garrett Crochet as an example of somebody the White Sox were able to stretch into a starter in fairly short order. But should Taylor's high-octane stuff translate to the toughest situations, it could be difficult for Will Venable to let him go.