White Sox seek starters because swingmen swung toward relief

On the heels of Dylan Cease's surprisingly muted runner-up finish in the American League Cy Young race, Ethan Katz spoke to media. While he offered praise for his star pupil, he also spun the conversation forward with some updates on other pitchers, as well as a prescription for what the front office needs to supply over the winter.

“Obviously, we need another starter,” Katz said. “That right now is our biggest need from the pitching standpoint. We’re having dialogue. We’ll see how things play out, but we do need another starter.”

That need became more apparent after he outlined 2023 plans for three pitchers who are or might've been under consideration to make starts.

Michael Kopech

When Michael Kopech soldiered through the final few months of the season without his most powerful stuff due to a knee problem that seemed capable of putting him on the shelf, I didn't know how to evaluate his final body of work. Did the White Sox take an unnecessary risk by pushing him toward 119 innings, or was it worth conditioning Kopech for such a grind due to all the time he'd missed?

I leaned toward the latter in a vacuum because a pitcher has to pitch, and Kopech's spent a lot of time not pitching. Yet it's also foolish to isolate his season from all the other injuries the White Sox mishandled. The only thing separating Kopech's knee from Luis Robert's wrist or Leury García's back was a playable amount of effectiveness. That's not nothing, but he wasn't dynamic enough to make it a good idea on its own.

It definitely wasn't a good idea to have him pitch as long as he did if recovery from postseason surgery interferes with the White Sox's plans for 2023, and this update introduces a reason for skepticism.

This might be nothing, but the contexts -- Kopech's and the team-wide health issues -- warrant regarding it as something until he's on a regular schedule at Camelback Ranch.

Garrett Crochet

Katz shot down the idea of having Crochet sop up some starts over the course of the 2023 season.

Tommy John surgery slammed shut the only sensible window to try to stretch out Crochet into starting, which merits a shrug if you were skeptical about Crochet's ability to hang as a starter in the first place.

I always treated his 11th-overall selection during the pandemic-ridden 2020 draft as a quest for the safest pick in highly uncertain times. Crochet needed no formal minor-league experience to give the Sox a useful medium-leverage left-handed reliever, and with the college and amateur seasons halted while the entire minor-league baseball slate was wiped out, there was no clear picture of what the immediate player-development timetable might look like. Maybe the White Sox floated Crochet as a rotation piece when they drafted him, but they also said Nick Madrigal might be able to play shortstop and Zack Collins could really catch.

There are a few players in the next 10 picks (Garrett Mitchell, Jordan Walker) who look poised to surpass Crochet in terms of impact, but there are some swings and misses in that group as well. The White Sox sought a median outcome, and a median outcome they'll receive.

Reynaldo López

It also appears as though the door has closed on López starting, because after a few years of wandering, López finally found a role that worked for him on a reliable basis.

Although López's slider has improved, it still isn't a great pitch. It just stopped being a liability, and probably because his fastball has returned to being an true asset.

Back when López started, his effectiveness hinged on his fastball's power, and then his ability to locate it when it lost some steam over the course of five innings and beyond. Relieving simplifies his checklist, because now his best pitch is available to him three times as often.

Fastballs 97+

The run values on his slider, whether you trust FanGraphs' version (-1.3) or Statcast's (0), still suggest that it's not a standalone pitch, but it's better than it used to be, and perfectly complementary for a fastball that's back to a true plus offering.

The 2019 and 2021 seasons gave the White Sox plenty of experience in pushing López well into the land of diminishing returns, and they resisted the urge to fall into the same trap in 2022 (López's brief back issue may have helped limit the load).

Katz instead floated the idea of López as a possible closer, and that the only time I had the urge to differ. It's hard to look at the pedestrian strikeout (24.8 percent) and ground-ball rates (39.3) and see somebody who won't be at the mercy of contact. I wouldn't count on him limiting the opposition to one homer over 65⅓ innings, because Statcast said he should've allowed two or three, and if the ball regains any of his previous life, you're potentially looking at two or three more beyond simple regression.

In López's favor, the meh K rate is buoyed by an above-average pop-up rate, which is the safest kind of contact to allow. If he's a decent bet to generate that kind of fly ball, then sure, give him a shot in the ninth inning if and when Liam Hendriks isn't around. I'd just want to have a Plan B/C I'm just as enthusiastic about.