A high school arm taken the year the White Sox last won the AL Central, Tanner McDougal has spent much of his professional career unknown to the fan base, mired in a stage of development where striding onto the stage of the Ramova Theatre to applause while his parents watched felt too distant to perceive. Even his draft story is colored by Sox scouts getting precious few looks at the Las Vegas-area prep star until he impressed at the MLB Draft combine, and before this January, he had only been to Chicago to throw in a high school showcase and for his first professional physical.
He vividly remembers toiling at the team complex in Arizona when Tim Anderson hit a walk-off home run in the Field of Dreams game, and when his elbow blew out in an ACL game that September, he began rehab believing he was racing back to contribute to a perennial contender.
"As a young guy you're like 'I want to be a part of that, that's what I want to do,'" McDougal said. "It's kind of crazy, the full-circle that it's become what it is, and having an opportunity to help this team get back to that, it means the world to me."
The SoxFest attendees who cheered McDougal were just as likely to just be impressed with how unfazed the out-of-towner was by being asked to down a Chicago Handshake on stage as they were to be aware of his triple-digit velocity, or seen video of his 3,000 RPM curveball. But McDougal rising to the moment when the spotlight is on him is a significant portion of understanding his prospect trajectory.
He didn't pitch at all in 2022, but in many ways, the 2024 season was McDougal's professional nadir, as post-TJ command troubles stretched into a second year and found him demoted to Low-A Kannapolis. But starting in the South Atlantic League playoffs that September, where he struck out nine in five no-hit innings, ending his outing raising his arms outstretched toward his own dugout after spinning an idyllic hammer curve to end his night, served as a reminder of the type of pitcher he should and could be, ahead of an offseason where he overhauled his training routine.
"I really enjoy the playoffs so much because it's so emotional," McDougal said. "When you can go out there and leave it all out there on the field and show your true colors on the field, and feel a certain type of way about how you're feeling, it's a big thing when you can release that and let it show."
It was an ending that now looks like a beginning, just as McDougal ending last season by allowing one hit in seven innings of postseason work in Birmingham's run to a second straight Southern League title affirmed that at his best, he has the talent that merits top-100 prospect consideration.
"He's put in a ton of work the last two offseasons," said director of pitching Brian Bannister. "Seeing him pumping 97 mph in the seventh inning and being dominant, with a much stronger physique, much more work, much more of a game plan and just much more maturity overall, he's a guy I really look forward to watch pitching."
In this vein, it's no surprise that McDougal is the sort of guy who, in his first big league camp and first opportunity to hawk his wares to the major league coaching staff, came out of the gate sitting in the triple-digits in his Cactus League debut. More experienced pitchers often try to build up velocity slowly in spring, but McDougal reasoned that altering his mechanics to ease his way in would do more harm than good, and simply used what his body gave him in the moment, which true to form, happened to be a lot.
But he doesn't actually regard his about-face in the 2024 playoffs, or any other adrenaline-soaked triumph as his a-ha moment, instead pointing to his bullpens with Bannister last spring -- where he ironically praises the Sox pitching director for his ability to "dumb it down" -- as where things began to really click for him to be a model of consistent production, rather than disparate flashes of major league ability at a level that was beneath his talent. As much as he seems like the sort of personality who would welcome being rescued from the subdued environs of the low minors and placed on major league stages that provide energy for him to feed off of, McDougal views pitching with emotion as a double-edged sword that must be carefully managed.
"There are opportunities in the game where you can be that guy that's fiery and loud," McDougal said. "There's also times where you need to pull the reins back a little bit and just be present with where you're at and not let your emotions get too high or too low, because this game will humble you very fast."
So instead, much of his spring has been spent with Bannister, carefully developing a seam-effects changeup, with the White Sox wary of McDougal practicing anything where he has to manipulate his wrist to create arm side movement, lest they interfere with his rapturous ability to spin the hell out of a breaking ball. It's just a wrinkle, McDougal explains, to show to hitters when he's facing them a third time, as starters cannot rely on velocity and bluster alone.
Back in August of '24, walking onto the Atrium Park field and seeing McDougal, merely weeks removed from his demotion, finish a bullpen, velocity and bluster might have been his defining characteristics at the time. His acute awareness that he did not belong there was both a long-term comfort and an immediate source of torment. He viewed Colson Montgomery (part of the same draft class and less than 40 minutes down I-85 at Triple-A Charlotte) and Davis Martin (pitching in Chicago but weeks removed from being his Winston-Salem teammate while rehabbing) as peers that he was supposed to be standing shoulder-to-shoulder with as part of the next good White Sox core.
So while there will always be eagerness and emotion to McDougal's operation, and it's hard to explain how someone who is steadfast about becoming a starting pitcher keeps offering up how willing he'd be to start out in the bullpen if it means cracking the majors, what he exudes now is a strange level of calm. He is 22 and there is a lot of work to be done, but the future he planned for himself doesn't seem as distant as an image of Anderson being mobbed in Iowa projected on a television screen anymore.
"There's definitely a sense of confidence knowing that I always felt I belonged here, even if some of the play didn't live up to that," McDougal said. "I think everybody's pulling on the same rope, in the same direction. The goal is very highlighted here. Everyone is pushing toward the same goal, which is win and play in October. Everything you're hearing in the media is what it is for a reason. There's definitely a different feel around here."
