PHOENIX -- Tommy John surgery can often have unexpected consequences, but usually it's something like losing feel for pronating a changeup, and not a bromance between a stocky Dominican right-hander and a giant southpaw from Utah.
"It's been really nice to get to know him," Ky Bush said of fellow TJ rehabber Prelander Berroa. "He's one of the greatest dudes I've met. He's unreal. He's awesome. Honestly it's just his vibe and mindset, like just positive energy coming into clubhouse each day. He just makes it fun. Rehab can be pretty long. It can get pretty boring, or just kind of repetitive. So with him just coming in, keeping the positive vibes, just kind of kept it fun."7
After being the first TJ casualty of last spring, Bush is roughly halfway through a 10-week program of throwing bullpens in his recovery before he gets to graduate to facing hitters in live at-bats. The 26-year-old Bush isn't the first prospect that gets mentioned as a potential midseason rotation addition, but he was carving as much as any other member of the 2024 Birmingham Barons rotation (80⅔ IP, 51 H, 2.17 ERA). Between a triceps injury down the stretch of that year and TJ the following January, Bush has some backing for why the one glimpse of him in the major looked underpowered (17⅔, 16 BB, 5.60 ERA, 91.7 mph average fastball velocity).
"No one really wants Tommy John but it feels inevitable at this point with how the game is, so it's kind of nice to get a solution, to dial into what the issue was and get back to being healthy," Bush said. "I'm definitely rebuilding [my delivery] and not trying to change things, but there's stuff I knew I was not doing well in '24 and I'm trying to get my body to a better position. It's a rebuild and a re-tuning of what I was before."
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With the way scouts were talking about Aldrin Batista on the backfields during spring training in 2025, the White Sox prospect's breakout season already happened the prior year, when he recorded 110⅔ innings of 2.93 ERA ball (25.5 percent strikeout rate, 8.6 percent walks) across two levels of A-ball. But the long and lean 22-year-old right-hander looked to be on the precipice of something bigger when a stress fracture in his pitching elbow suffered in his first outing of last season knocked him out for four months.
He came back for a few relief outings at the end of the season in High-A, but was limited to 14 innings total on the year.
"One can usually sense that maybe something's not there, and I felt that something was coming, but I didn't expect it to be what it was," Batista said via interpreter. "Health is a process. As I got here and got back to doing the things I did before, after the injury and finally started to throw again without pain, that's when the confidence was really coming back."
Batista would be the guy to say health is a process. He won an organizational award for his conditioning at the start of last season (George Wolkow won the version of it for hitters), and talks about his adherence to his gym routine as the key to his 2024 coming out party before mentioning anything about his pitch mix.
Perhaps it's because pinning down the larger evolution of Batista's funky, sidewinding low slot delivery is more difficult. His arm slot was higher and he threw more four-seamers before the Dodgers traded him to the Sox for international bonus pool space in August of 2023, but the whole process was gradual, and video of Batista prior to the trade is hard to come by.
"It wasn't anything specific like I was told to lower it, it's just that in working with the coaches and finding what worked best for me," Batista said via interpreter. "I'm a more rotational pitcher, so the changes just naturally happened for me. It's just where I ended up. It wasn't a decision to move down or up or anything like that. It was just in the process of learning to adapt and getting better, it changed."
Chalk it up to Batista being a fitness nut, but he tends to place his progress in terms of body control, his understanding of small movements and repeating his delivery, and everything else being in service of that. His goal for his changeup, which flourished in 2024 to fill out his arsenal but lagged behind as he returned from injury last year, is simply to mirror his fastball in terms of arm speed and motion.
When it's all working, Batista sits 92-95 with everything he throws sinking and running, or sinking and sweeping out of the same tunnel, with the control to dream about him maturing into a reliable, innings-gobbling No. 4 starter. Ironically, it's the promise he shows that might push Batista to the bullpen.
Batista was Rule 5 eligible this past December, and a healthy 2025 would have made him a candidate to be protected. Instead, the Sox will face that choice again and need to push his pace to make Batista someone they can carry on the 40-man roster. He's expected to open the season in Double-A and ideally he'll hit the ground running, but could switch to relief if he struggles just so that he's in line to contribute to the majors during his option years. Instead, he's hoping to shake off a lost year and pick up where he left off in 2024.
"I'm feeling really good going into this year and I'm on the other side of this injury," Batista said via interpreter. "I feel like I'll be able to get back to what I was in 2024 and keep making strides."
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Zach DeLoach hit minor league free agency this past winter, and the other two-thirds of the Gregory Santos trade are preparing to return from TJ rehab this season with Berroa and 20-year-old left-hander Blake Larson, the 68th-overall selection (a competitive balance pick from the Mariners) from 2024.
Larson relocated to IMG Academy in Florida for his senior year, where he emerged as a lanky low-slot lefty with mid-90s velocity and a funky self-taught slider. But make no mistake, he was born in Iowa and is another Midwestern prep star turned White Sox prospect at his core. He didn't pitch at an affiliate in his draft year and blew out his elbow in the lead up to spring 2025, so Larson has yet to throw a professional pitch on record. But nearing the end of his own 10-week slate of bullpens and already viewed as a slow burn developmental project, Larson is hoping to have benefitted to a year spent adjusting to professional ball.
"This was a blessing in disguise," Larson said. "It's being able to focus on the little things. If I was in games I don't know how easy it would be to focus on cleaning some stuff up. Mentally, it's been a long process for sure. But it's helped me mature physically, personality and as a pitcher alone. There's some things in bullpens I'm working on that maybe before this surgery I wouldn't have been quite as open to work on."
Larson stands a a long-levered 6-foot-2, but also has clearly started the process of filling out some of his projection. He previously said he hoped to add core strength and stability when he was joining pro ball, and it sounds as though his time in the Camelback Ranch weight room has enabled some refinements. While he hasn't been able to throw for much of the last 13 months, the White Sox have still been able to dive in on how Larson's body moves.
"I'm definitely a rotational pitcher, and that's something that the White Sox have noted to me," Larson said, adding that his spot on the rubber and front foot angle have been adjusted in light of his inclination to spin open. "They said, 'Hey, you're, you're going to be a rotational pitcher. You know, that's who you are. We're not going to try and change that. There's always some things in there that you we can clean up.'"
Whether it's a changeup grip that will work for his wrist orientation or the state of his slider, Larson keeps thing pretty open-ended at this stage on individual pitches, since the structural changes he's undergoing could change the answers soon.
"It's kind of a recent thing, but I talked to the pitching coaches and the coordinators and they explained why shortening up my arm path will benefit me a bit more," Larson said. "Right now we're just trying to get the feel of everything. Not really too worried about grips too much. Mostly just worried about my arm action. As I get closer to live ABs and in games, that's something we'll start to worry about."
Repeatability, strike-throwing and deception are all benefits often targeted by shortening up a pitcher's arm path, but Larson indicated future health is also part of the motivation.
"It's making sure when I do come back that I'm in a good spot to keep me on the field for a while, rather than feel good now, and get hurt down the road," Larson said.
So there's a chance that Larson pitching for a White Sox affiliate will look meaningfully different from the last available video of him, but it should be seen this year at some point, which will be a welcome resolution.
"Every day I wake up, I'm excited to pitch, I'm ready to get on the mound," Larson said. "It's a blessing that this is such a long process. The trainers and the pitching staff, they're going to put me in when I'm ready. I'm not going to rush it this time. I'm going to continue doing what I need to do and the White Sox have done a great job of taking it slow, playing it smart."
