Less than an hour after walking five batters over 4⅓ innings in his last start, it was clear that the gears were turning in Noah Schultz's head about the mechanical reason behind it.
"I thought initially we looked at it being an eyesight thing, starting the pitches in the wrong spots," Schultz said. "But I think there's more stuff to look at. I think it could be a front-side thing. I think there's a few things where we're going to look back and look at some video, definitely to see."
While his outlier size, mid-90s velocity, funky arm slot and mystifying sweeper are big parts of his prospect status, Schultz's best stints as a pro were often defined by elite control. As such, 16 walks in his last 20 innings is the sort of thing he has notes about.
So a day later, still sweating from a clinic of pitcher fielding practice drills the White Sox had put the whole staff through before the Crosstown series, Schultz already had a diagnosis, and he indeed felt there was an issue with his front side in his delivery.
"Looked at a lot of stuff," Schultz said of his video review. "I think it's a lot with posture too. I'm kind of leaning forward and stuff. My first move is kind of forward, instead of staying up. We found that messed with the release point of stuff. That's why I had something like yanked cutters and yanked fastballs and then over-correcting would lead to the spray stuff."
Schultz is more of a rotational mover down the mound than a linear one, which was visible in the way his right knee injury threw off the shapes of his pitches last year. But because of his delivery's nature, keeping his front shoulder up rather than dipping at first move is crucial for him to stay closed long enough for his spindly legs to be in sync with his short, compact arm action.
In a previous era of White Sox baseball, we might have Don Cooper summing this up as Schultz simply "getting too quick" in his delivery. Now, we have fancy technical language to force upon the baseball-watching populace.
"I was over-rotating a bit, which led to the sprays that aren't even close," Schultz said. "There's a lot of video, a lot of feed that I can look at. Like in Charlotte this year, where I had a lower walk rate, I can compare and contrast videos, which has been super helpful."
Gosh, that almost sounds like an invitation.
Schultz said that back in Charlotte, where he posted a 19-to-2 strikeout-to-walk ratio in 14 innings, his sweeper and cutter had been reliable tools for getting himself back in the strike zone whenever he had a brief control outage. And with how much his attack plans to right-handers have been built around busting them inside with velocity, he wants to restore his ability to command soft stuff to the back door with more consistency.
Ideally, the White Sox view Schultz as the type of pitcher who has a wide bevy of options to flip through when any one specific weapon isn't working.
"Noah's super-exciting about everything," said pitching coach Zach Bove. "There were a couple outings where he wasn't landing the sweeper, which is one of his strengths, but he was able to get through off some more changeups, his sinker moving arm-side and the four-seam, and the cutter's been a good pitch since he's added it back. There's been some outings where he didn't throw a lot of changeups, but he could still work through just going hard.
"In a perfect world, you have all your pitches working that day, but that just doesn't happen, even to the really good guys. Being able to pivot and making sure your pitches are good enough to get through a lineup two, three times, Noah has those qualities for sure."
Perhaps that's all the more reason Schultz is less obsessed with the specifics of this problem and more consumed with improving the problem-solving. The raw ingredients are present for a pitcher who can ably shuffle between different attack plans when one is deficient, or flummox a lineup repeatedly when it's all working. But his underlying ability level stands in contrast to a couple of Futures Game appearances that have hit the rocks, a major league debut he admits was compromised by nerves, and a six-start track record at the highest level that doesn't match his previously demonstrated abilities.
Adjustment speed is usually the separator between talented young players and true elite performers, and Schultz wants to knock down that barrier.
"It's a lot of stuff along the lines of needing to pick it up quicker, instead of needing to look at it between innings, being able to adjust on the fly a little bit better. " Schultz said. "Remember the last at-bat Maikel [Garcia], it was just four sprays that weren't even close. I looked at it and it was one of those where I wish I picked it up a little bit earlier."
For a White Sox team that is literally sitting in a playoff spot at the moment, Schultz is a needed avenue for upgrading their rotation. Their success is heavily rooted in having the best offense in baseball over the last month, while Davis Martin's All-Star caliber play makes him the only White Sox starting pitcher with a sub-4.00 ERA, and injuries to Shane Smith and Tanner McDougal have thinned the pool of potential replacements should a need arise.
Schultz always represented a central piece of future, theoretical White Sox playoff-caliber rotations. And the wildness of the last month is that now he might carry the same importance in the present. Thankfully, and necessarily, he thinks he's already pretty far along in righting the ship.
"Some of the sweepers below, some of the arm-side misses on the fastball, when he’s in the zone he’s obviously very effective," said Will Venable. "It does seem like he’s just a click away from being in the zone more. Obviously, we know good results will follow."
