Because the traditional pitching line doesn't count hit by pitches, and most spring training lines don't include pitch counts, Michael Kopech's 2024 spring debut looks nearly impossible to top: 2 IP, 0 H, 0 R, 1 BB, 5 K.
When you fill in the blank spaces with the relevant information, you can see areas for improvement without feeling unreasonable.
In terms of efficiency, Kopech's 2024 Cactus League debut could best be described as fishing with dynamite. It does the job if you only have to assert dominance and lay waste, but 45 pitches over two scoreless innings leaves a lot to clean up.
Kopech started his outing by tickling Nick Madrigal's nose with an up-and-in fastball, then walked Seiya Suzuki to immediately trigger flashbacks of the outings that led the White Sox to shut him down in September. Then he retired the last six he faced on five strikeouts and a weak groundout.
The slider -- or actually, a cutter -- turned out to be big for him, because he could locate it for strikes and strike-looking balls while he struggled to wrestle his fastball into the zone.
That kind of key was missing during last season, when he walked 28 batters (and plunked two more) over his final 27 innings. After his start,. Kopech said he liked the results of the initial trial:
Kopech sat at 95-96 mph and touched 98 on the scoreboard gun. He said he threw eight cutters and a lot fewer sliders than normal, a new wrinkle in an arsenal that still features the curveball and changeup.
"It’s going to be an important pitch for me," Kopech said. "It comes out a little bit more firm than my slider does and it plays off my fastball pretty well."
When Kopech has clicked in the past, a cutter seems like an unnecessary diversion, because his fastball possessive premium explosive qualities that hitters seldom conquer, and putting any other sort of spin on it might be doing them a favor.
Two years of diminishing returns for his established repertoire suggests changes are necessary, and Brian Bannister talked about Kopech's pursuit of perfect fastball spin taking him out of his natural mechanics, particularly the way he finishes pitches. It stands to reason that the spin and break of the cutter could give him permission to rotate fully through his pitches and correct his delivery.
As an added benefit, it'd be nice to see Kopech have a non-fastball he could trust against lefties. His slider hasn't been doing the job for him, and while he got away with walking too many lefties in 2022, the dam burst last season:
| Year | BB% vs. RHB | BB% vs. LHB |
|---|---|---|
| 2022 | 9.6 | 14.0 |
| 2023 | 13.7 | 17.2 |
Knowing this, what jumped out to me were the two backwards Ks he recorded against Cubs lefties, which you can see in the video above. He probably should've had three, but Korey Lee couldn't get this 2-2 pitch against Owen Caissie.
Then again, the one that froze Pete Crow-Armstrong was probably high, so it all evens out.
Like any other new pitch, it remains to be seen if this will be more than a spring fling, but it was nice to see the immediate reason for the experiment. Kopech needs a pitch that can be thrown for strikes when his fastball isn't that pitch for him, and even though the cutter just got here, such is the state of his game that the new offering stands as good a chance as anything else.
Touki Toussaint relapsed
He didn't mean to, but Touki Toussaint inadvertently served as a realistic simulation for the version of Kopech that never finds his control. Toussaint only retired one of the eight batters he faced, even though he had the opportunity to start two separate innings.
Like Kopech, he started his afternoon by putting the first two batters on (two walks). It just never got better. A wild pitch put both runners into scoring position; Yan Gomes scored one with a single, and Miles Mastrobuoni brought home the other one with a sac fly.
That turned out to be Toussaint's only out. He walked Matt Shaw, and Pedro Grifol took the ball from him for the first time. When the sixth inning rolled around, Grifol used the lax spring rules to let Toussaint start the sixth, the reset button offered no relief. Madrigal greeted him with a single, and two more walks later, Toussaint's day was done. For real, this time.
Toussaint's final line: 0.1 IP, 2 H, 6 R, 4 ER, 5 BB, 0 K. That's good for a 108 ERA, and #108ing is better left to the fans in the stands. Given Toussaint's satisfactory performance last year and his lack of options, he should get opportunities to dig himself out of this hole, but his spot isn't so secure that he can so freely remind people why the White Sox were able to claim him on waivers in the first place.
Pedro Grifol relapsed
While Pedro Grifol gave me plenty of material for my "Year in Quotes" series, I didn't even use half of the lines in the arsenal before the exercise felt like belaboring the point.
Basically, Grifol talked himself into a lot of corners, and when it came time to correct course, he was limited to 1) immediately contradicting himself and hoping nobody would notice, or 2) never correcting course. By the second half of the season, it took less and less time to detect which proclamations would become regrettable in short order.
It's a new year, and still, Grifol is doing himself no favors:
Yoán Moncada is batting .400 in spring training.
He's expressed to Pedro Grifol that he'd like to bat second this season. Pedro said he told Moncada this:
"That's a selfless spot in the order. You have to give yourself up. Not a lot, but some. You have to take pitches, move guys over. You might have to bunt, hit and run and he's all-in on that.
"With your main guys, I don't like interrupting the rhythm of the lineup. So what does that mean? You've got to play. You've got to give us games. He knows it. He wants it. He just has to go take it. I'm not going to hand it to him."
Two fun facts about Pedro Grifol's No. 2 hitters last season:
- The White Sox had the least productive second spot in baseball last year.
- The White Sox did not have one sac bunt from the second spot last year.
To be clear, the second point isn't a complaint about Grifol's tactics. It just makes it harder to understand what he's on about. Grifol is neither describing a job as it's performed in Major League Baseball in 2024, nor even the job he asked No. 2 hitters to perform for the White Sox. In fact, he didn't seem to give the position any thought last year, instead using it as a place for MLB's least productive regular to lay his head.
The most charitable interpretation is that Grifol was feeling around for a fair, credible rebuttal to Moncada's request, because he actually found one after a few sentences. If Moncada wants dibs on a valued spot in the lineup, he actually has to stay healthy and dynamic enough to be good for it. That's bulletproof reasoning.
Grifol just didn't earn any such benefit of the doubt because random applications of inconsistent standards were an early trademark, and when you combine it with his penchant for over-flattering his bosses, you see an approach that's entirely designed around self-preservation. Early last spring training, Grifol repeatedly stressed focus on the next 7 to 10 days. There's value in emphasizing the task at hand, but words, and the messages, visions and philosophies they represent, are supposed to be shelf-stable for a lot longer than that.
