Reynaldo López will make his second appearance of the spring when he faces the Reds in the first night game on the White Sox's Cactus League calendar. Alas, Cincinnati isn't offering a video broadcast or webcast of this one, so López's new look will remain elusive, at least against live competition.
The White Sox did try to step in and fill the gap with a produced video of López and Ethan Katz, and it's cool for a couple reasons. The first is the visual component, which gives you some idea of what his reworked mechanics look like.
It might have been a while since you watched López closely, because White Sox fans probably didn't want to see him at all. The unconventional angles of spring training make it difficult to stack up with readily available game video, but I found a James Fegan spring training video from 2019 that had a similar range and vantage point. Here they are side by side, with López's new version on the left.
James shot his in slo-mo, so he gets points for precision. The difference in frame rate makes it hard to match up the exact lowest point of López's new arm swing, but here's my best attempt at freezing it:
It may be off by a millimeter or three, but López's new arm path is indeed different, and similar to what Lucas Giolito and so many other pitchers have done. This recent Twitter thread by Travis Sawchik goes into details about the movement's movement, and other examples besides the in-house one that might set the bar a little too high. López doesn't need to be a Cy Young contender to help the White Sox this year. A decent No. 4 starter would be more than plenty.
Besides the mechanical alteration, you'll also want to listen to the audio. In particular, just before the two-minute mark is a conversation between López, Katz and Jonathan Lucroy, who is catching the session.
Lucroy [to López]: ... curveball? What do you like throwing better with two strikes?
Katz [to Lucroy]: So, the curveball. He threw it with the Nationals. That was his best secondary pitch. He came here, he dropped it. So the curveball is coming back into the picture this year. It's a brand new-- it's not brand new, but it's new, it's been a while. So it's back in the picture and getting him to re-acclimate that is kinda new for him.
Some might read that as a shot at Don Cooper, but a simple recitation of López's curveball usage from FanGraphs says the same thing:
- 2016: 25.3% (with Washington)
- 2017: 12.9% (with Chicago)
- 2018: 5.6%
- 2019: 6.6%
- 2020: n/a
The Cooper administration favored the slider over the curveball for pitchers because it's a more reliable strike-getting pitch. It transformed Gavin Floyd among others, but it's had diminishing returns, especially since a good curveball has proved to be an effective complement to the high fastball that's so fashionable these days. López's return to the curve makes sense, as long as the new arm path means he still has the feel for it.
The video only features positive reinforcement because it's a White Sox-produced joint, and other standard spring training caveats apply as well. Regardless, unlike López's previous attempts to address his struggles that emphasized focus and mentality, the detectable changes to watch and track are a welcome departure.
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The above analysis on López didn't get into the weeds on tunneling, and Giolito avoided the same rabbit hole when explaining how his changeup worked in a Zoom call with Lost Boyz, a South Shore organization that works with at-risk youths. Giolito does an admirable job of simplifying the concepts to kids over remote video, so much so that it's probably useful for adults, too.
(Photo by Kiyoshi Mio/Icon Sportswire)
