Bryan Shaw has led the league four times in appearances, and now that he's back on a minor-league deal to join a crowded competition for a wide-open White Sox bullpen, 2024 could make it five.
The record shows that Shaw made only 38 appearances for the White Sox last year, but 31 of those appearances occurred over the final two months of the season. A rocky introduction to a bullpen that still included Reynaldo López, Kendall Graveman, Joe Kelly and Keynan Middleton limited him to eight games (and an 8.38 ERA) in July, but he survived long enough to witness the Rapture at the trade deadline. Only then, when the righteous were removed from the landscape and the damned were left to fend for themselves, did Shaw make himself at home, finishing with a respectable 0.6 bWAR despite the late start.
Take that workload over the final two months -- which featured five consecutive hitless, scoreless appearances over the final five games of the season -- and that puts Shaw at 93 appearances and 108 innings. Matt Brash led all of Major League Baseball with just 79 appearances last season, suggesting it's not so easy to extrapolate that kind of usage, but Pedro Grifol did take special advantage of Shaw's low-maintenance countenance.
"Some of those times we used him, you get a little uncomfortable because it’s not everyday you see somebody throw five days in a row," Grifol said on Saturday.
"When he comes into your office and he’s been around the block a few times, he’s approaching 800 appearances and he tells you, 'Skip, I’m ready to go,' you gotta trust him. And I do. And I did. He did a really good job. To be able to add him here to the mix and have him compete for a job, it makes this camp even more interesting."
The White Sox have supplemented the 13 or so relief candidates on the 40-man roster with another baker's dozen of non-roster invitees, including a few late additions -- Shaw, Jesse Chavez, Dominic Leone and Corey Knebel -- that aren't listed on the team's NRI page.
Shaw figures to have a leg up on the competition, not just because he gained Grifol's trust, and not just because he converted all four of his traditional save opportunities for a team that traded away its best candidate for closing games, but because he's an Article XX(B) free agent. He meets the requirements because he has more than six years of MLB service time and finished the season on a major-league roster or injured list, and that gives him the right to opt out of his minor league deal five days before Opening Day if he's not added to the 40-man roster.
That's a non-negligible consideration when so many others are competing for only a few spots. Leone and Chavez also meet these requirements, and when you factor in other constraints like a Rule 5 pick and players lacking minor league options, the White Sox actually have more candidates than vacancies:
- Locks (2): John Brebbia, Tim Hill
- Out of options (3): Deivi García, Jimmy Lambert, Touki Toussaint
- Rule 5 pick (1): Shane Drohan
- Article XX(B) minor league signings (3): Shaw, Leone, Chavez
You could call this the All Things Being Equal Bullpen, where all of the above are somehow healthy and throwing well. Their circumstances require special consideration over guys like Tanner Banks, Jesse Scholtens, Jordan Leasure, who are free to be optioned to Charlotte at least four times over the course of the season, or the other non-roster invitees, who are presumably on standard minor league contracts.
It's unlikely that the White Sox's hand will be forced that thoroughly because they're all part of this particular bullpen picture for a reason. If they were better bets, they'd have received MLB deals, or wouldn't have been placed on waivers for the Sox to claim in the first place. Still, this list of names is worth keeping in your back pocket until pitchers start removing themselves from the running, because their ability to opt out, or the necessity of placing them on waivers, could be an end-of-spring tiebreaker for competitions that can be considered true toss-ups.
