Minutes after the Minnesota Twins announced the acquisition of Sonny Gray from the Cincinnati Reds, the White Sox answered with a pitching depth acquisition of their own.
OK, that's overselling it more than a little. Nevertheless, Robert Murray reported that the Sox agreed to a deal with Vince Velasquez.
The terms have yet to be disclosed, and they'll say a lot about the kind of ambition the Sox have for Velasquez. Their position is enviable and ironic, in that their staff is so strong that it's difficult to bolster. They're short on candidates to take starts during the season, but the typical respectable back-end free agent sees no room in the Sox rotation, and the White Sox lack the kind of prospect capital to trade for a starter without worrying about letting a more pressing need go unaddressed.
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A pitcher like Velasquez occupies that awkward middle ground. He's capable of making starts, but he's struggled enough to where he can't be choosy about any job that puts him on an MLB roster.
That's not blurb-quote material, but there's no inherent reason to be excited. Velasquez's career hit a new low in 2021, and the highs have been hard to come by after a fine first full season. In 2016, Velasquez posted a 4.12 ERA with 152 strikeouts over 131 innings, but he's never been able to take the next step.
Part of it's a dodgy injury record: Tommy John surgery to start his career, followed by an assortment of strains, a comebacker off his arm, a blood clot and a blister. The bigger issue is the lack of a reliable secondary pitch to take some of the load off his fastball.
Velasquez has had a very good fastball -- so much so that he made 127 starts over seven seasons despite the lack a plus breaking ball or changeup -- but it's yielded severely diminishing returns over the last two years. He gave up 23 homers over 94⅓ innings in 2021. That was enough for the Phillies to finally cut bait in September, and the Padres saw nothing to like in four September emergency starts.
It's possible that Velasquez has been his biggest enemy. While Velasquez was in between teams that month, FanGraphs' Devan Fink wondered what a pitcher like Velasquez is to do in an era where even guys with good fastballs are throwing them less than ever. Velasquez has felt pressure to find another way to get bad swings, both in words and in pitch selection ...
... but Fink says that if blasting fastballs is his only way back to adequacy, the White Sox might have a role model on the staff.
If Velasquez were to become a carbon copy of Lance Lynn and throw nothing but fastballs, it might not end up making him too predictable; there’s an argument to be made that it could make him better.
Indeed, when using Statcast’s similarity tool, Lynn is one of the five most similar pitchers to Velasquez in terms of velocity and movement. The former throws a fastball more than 90% of the time, offering hitters a four-seamer, sinker, and cutter; the latter only has a four-seamer and a sinker, and he’s reduced his usage of the sinker over the last two seasons. But while there’s not much to be gleaned from a sample smaller than 100 pitches, that sinker has graded out well in terms of run value in each of the last two years and seemingly has at least some seam-shifted wake that could aid in its effectiveness if thrown more often.
Or maybe that's overthinking it, and instead Velasquez is merely the most interesting of a flawed batch of pitchers who wouldn't hesitate to agree to the White Sox's terms. We can project where he might fit in, but we're probably better off waiting for the White Sox to tell us.
In the meantime, it's a good opportunity to remember that insane 15-inning White Sox-Phillies game in 2019, in which Velasquez had to play left field and pulled off one of the damndest performances I've ever seen.
He's not just starting pitching depth, but he might be a defensive replacement for Eloy Jiménez should Adam Engel be unavailable. Rick Hahn likes him some utility, after all.
