With a 6.12 ERA and not being able to get into the fifth inning in any of his last three starts, Anthony Kay is currently the weak link of a White Sox rotation that sent their previous weak link to Triple-A Charlotte after three starts.
There's not exactly a Noah Schultz waiting in the wings like there was for Shane Smith, but the left-hander isn't downplaying the need to get things right.
"Obviously, conversations today with [pitching coaches] Zach [Bove] and Bobby [Hearn] to try to right this ship, but overall, to get through four with the way I threw was better than I could have expected with how I felt," Kay said. "Just get the ball in the zone. I feel like the [scouting] report’s probably out now at this point, but getting deep into counts and guys are just taking now. I’ve got to do a better job of being aggressive and getting in the zone and doing a good job of getting into good pitcher’s counts, 0-2, 1-2 and that will lead to more success."
Despite sitting 96 mph with it, opponents are slugging .684 mph against Kay's four-seamer, and his outing against the Angels resembled an effort to mix the cutter and sinker in more, to better mirror the mix of fastball shapes that drove massive ground ball rates (55.8 percent, compared to 36.8 percent at present) for the left-hander in Japan.
"More sinkers, more sweepers, more of that east-west attack and use the four[-seamer] and the changeup for more of the putaways," said Bove.
There are just two issues with that. The first is that the Sox and Kay don't have precise data of what his usage was in NPB, and second, it's easier to tell someone to mix up their usage more than it is to carry it out when you're regularly behind in the count as often as Kay has been.
"A lot of my success over the last two years in Japan was the cutter," Kay said. "We kind of went over sequencing stuff that I’ve been doing early in the year and I just wasn’t getting the cutter in the zone a lot. That was a big focus over the last week, get it over the zone and have them to be a little bit more aggressive in the zone. They only got two hits off of it, the blooper over [Munetaka Murakami's] head and the infield single down the line. When it was in the strike zone, it was getting good results."
Bove mostly placed that in terms of Kay understanding his misses more, following an armside fastball miss with a pitch that moves glove side and the like. Compared to what Smith is working on in Charlotte, it sounds a bit more manageable for fixing in between starts.
⚙️⚙️⚙️
Outside of the up-and-down results of his three starts in Triple-A thus far (6.17 ERA, but also 15 strikeouts to six walks) the White Sox kinda-sorta want Shane Smith to re-complicate his delivery. The syncopated timing to his old first step messed with hitters' timing more than the simplified motion he arrived at spring with, but more to the point, Sox pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski described his arm path and lower half movement working against each other.
"First outing, I thought was a very good step in the right direction," Zaleski said. "The second outing in Jacksonville. It was another excellent step in the right direction. We sent him out for a sixth, which he hasn't done, and that's why he saw the two hit batters. His body was just gassed, and we were just trying to get him over the 80-pitch mark. Then the third outing, first inning was a little rocky. He got a little more linear in his delivery, front side started opening up. And then second inning, we corrected some stuff. Third inning, it kind of went back to some stuff that we saw when he was in Chicago, just arm path not matching up with what the body's wanting to do. When that happens, it's just very tough. So had a sideline with him [Sunday] and it was an excellent sideline. Kudos to him, he keeps putting in the work daily."
The overriding White Sox belief is that Smith is simply being asked to go back to what is natural for him, a delivery he's repped many times before, which should ease the difficulty. But part of the challenge of making a substantial mechanical adjustment midseason is simply logistical.
"You want him to rep it, you want him to get more reps of feeling more rotational so he does match up with his arm path," Zaleski said. "But it's hard, you also don't want to spike the workload throughout the week to where he's not feeling great on gameday."
⚙️⚙️⚙️
Wikelman González is having a great start to the season in the Charlotte bullpen, running a 2.57 ERA in 14 innings, backed by 20 strikeouts to just five walks after struggling with his control last season. Zaleski emphasizes how much they've talked to the 24-year-old about trusting his stuff with play and getting ahead of hitters, but they've also worked to restore the nastiest version of his power curveball.
"He was getting very flat in trying to sweep his breaking ball, and we got him back to more of the two-plane curveball that he had in Boston," Zaleski said. "He even had it at the start of the year last year when he was a starter. It just kind of organically somehow morphed into a sweeper with him working a little flatter."
"He throws it to righties and it starts out at their shoulder and he's got some interesting upshoot qualities when he does throw his fastball up and in to righties sometimes. So when you tunnel the curveball off that, it's very hard for righties to pull the triggers. Then for lefties, it's almost the opposite. Drop a couple backdoor curveballs in and then shoot a fastball up and away and it beats hitters."
⚙️⚙️⚙️
The home run allowed to Josh Lowe in the eighth inning Tuesday night was Jordan Leasure's fifth long ball yielded of the season in just 14⅓ innings, spiking his season ERA to 6.91. More worrisome is that despite still running strong miss rates, it was the third home run off his slider -- the pitch that powered his strong second half last year -- which is more than he allowed off his breaking ball all last season.
Leasure's fastball velocity is down half a tick from last year, but it's April, and a lot of his slider's movement profile looks identical. Bove sees more location issues than a foundational decline in the stuff of a reliever they tapped to be a trusted high-leverage option from the start of camp.
"He'll tell you, some of the execution hasn't been good and he's been burned on it," Bove said. "But really, it's not this overhaul with him. We still have a ton of confidence in him. Think he's really close to running off a couple good outings in a row, just cleaning up some execution, just making sure his fastball gets to the right spot, slider gets down specifically to the righties. And obviously the [split] change has the thing to lefties that we're going to continue to push.
"But we have a ton of confidence in Jordan. He's not far away, and we feel like he's gonna go on this positive run here soon."
