Alongside all the visible turmoil and turnover last season, White Sox pitching development got forced into an adjustment period last June, when pitching coordinator Everett Teaford departed to join the coaching staff of the University of Auburn. The change came just weeks before the MLB draft, during which the pitching coordinator is typically consulted throughout on how potential additions can be developed.
"I would recommend anyone to not try to take over halfway through the season," said new pitching coordinator Matt Zaleski, who stepped up in Teaford's stead and is now entering his ninth season in the organization. "Donnie [Veal] and I were both the assistant [pitching coordinators] so we still were in the loop on a lot of things, but it was a lot to take on right away."
Joining the White Sox in 2018 after spending the previous two seasons scouting for the Astros, Teaford's rise through the White Sox player development ranks was marked by success stories of incorporating pitch data to untap or emphasize latent strengths, or shift pitchers out of ineffective approaches. A good representative tale of this era would be that of Jimmy Lambert, who actually first blossomed with Zaleski as his pitching coach in 2018. Lambert was trending toward org soldier status with poor results as a low-90s sinker-slider type in High-A the previous season, but saw a velocity jump and matured into a big leaguer after re-gearing his arsenal around throwing four-seamers at the top of the strike zone.
With Dylan Cease traded and Michael Kopech moved to the bullpen (and former overslot second round pick Matthew Thompson also shipped out in a small trade), finding products of the White Sox farm system in their major league rotation has grown difficult. Injuries and team needs pushed Lambert to the bullpen. Jonathan Stiever was once a similar four-seam conversion breakthrough whose career has been waylaid by injury. Thompson, along with Andrew Dalquist and Jared Kelley, formed a trio of multi-million draft bonuses doled out to prep arms who have all seen their prospect statuses wilt. Opening Day starter Garrett Crochet had a few months at the alternate site in 2020, but largely the organization needs to find consistency in developing their own rotation contributors to return to contention.
Zaleski is now the permanent coordinator and is touting the benefits of a full spring training to align individual development plans for pitchers across the minor league coaching staff. But the obviously notable infusion is the addition of senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister, whose hands-on work with major leaguers at the start of spring camp does not fully encapsulate his role.
"I start heavy on the major league side early, start to transition to the minor league side, and by the end of camp, I'm working heavily with the minor league side," Bannister said. "That's my typical progression through spring. Major league team is always a priority. That's the golden goose. That's the one that pays the bills for everybody [laughs], so that team's gotta be right. But then as much as possible, I love investing on the minor league side. With a shared campus here, I can really do that. With San Francisco, it was two different campuses, so it's a lot harder to pull that off. But I did that a lot with Boston in Fort Myers back in the day."
Professional pitchers often make enough money to pick up golf as a hobby, so Bannister finds himself using related metaphors a lot. He compared his role to that of a swing coach operating on a driving range, whereas pitching coaches are caddies following the player onto the course, responding to in-game situations and making adjustments in real time. The desired effect is to take some of the workload of large-scale arsenal or mechanical adjustments off the plate of the rest of the coaching staff, which already has to worry about day-to-day items like game-planning, usage, pitch-tipping and generally doing what they can to keep their pitchers from going insane over the course of a season.
"It not only helps here in the big leagues, it also helps in the minor leagues because he has the ability to analyze pitchers and make sure guys are staying on track with their shapes, and maybe add and subtract some things that can really help us throughout the organization," said Ethan Katz. "That’s kind of his sweet spot, and acquiring guys as well, looking at the draft or looking at player acquisition. He’s in the trenches with that and can identify some hidden talent and some gems."
"I've probably asked him about 60,000 questions already," Zaleski said. "Credit to [Teaford] for bringing knowledge to the organization on data and all that type of information, and then we have gone even a step further now adding Bannister to the mix. Just with his knowledge on delivery and all sorts of stuff, he might walk into any pitching room and he's one of the smartest pitching men I've ever been around. It's constantly evolving and it's good to see where we're at."
Katz has gone so far as to say that Bannister is most informed person on pitching he has ever encountered, and if you've gotten this far on a Sox Machine article, all the praise for him probably starts to run together at this point. For what it's worth, building the legend isn't actually something Bannister regards as superfluous. Pinned between an offseason where players are typically throwing with their own coaches, and in the season when installing major changes becomes fraught for multiple reasons, the window to achieve buy-in and make meaningful adjustments is actually quite small. Making players aware of previous success stories that could translate to their own work is purposeful.
"I'm huge on behavioral psychology, building trust with players, the art of 'how do we deliver this so that we get buy-in and they believe,' and then over a period of time you end up building up this track record of credibility that almost makes that process easier every time you do it," Bannister said. "Basically doing a lot of research, collaborating with analytics, collaborating with biomechanics, and figuring out what those inefficiencies are, and then presenting them in very unique ways to the pitchers."
The question is what this actually means in terms of tangible change to the organization. With the development success stories of the early portion of the last White Sox rebuild largely leaning toward converting pitchers into riding four-seam types, the momentum of this year's camp is not pushing pitchers to change their attack plan when it doesn't suit them. And, maybe undoing some cases where a pursuit of specific pitch movement characteristics have thrown their delivery or other elements into disrepair.
"It's very individualistic rather than a 'this is who we've got to be,' approach." Zaleski said. "Because we've got some unique individuals in the organization. It's making sure they stick to what they do and why they're good and not having them get off-kilter trying to do something else."
This can look like an obvious course of action when the organization is presented someone like Noah Schultz, who immediately shows unique sinking action out of a unique slot. A greater challenge is offered by a pitcher whose fastball does not possess standout movement or traits, and understanding what adjustments will or won't serve them well. That's why Kelley's upcoming season, where the Sox are encouraging him to embrace some of his older mechanics on the premise that a delivery more natural to him will produce more consistency, is more interesting than that of the typical control-challenged Double-A reliever.
If there's meat on the bone to be found in some recent White Sox pitching projects that have gone awry, it puts the farm system in a different light.
"One of the most misunderstood genres of pitchers is the high-velocity-but-lower-spin-efficiency fastball, where the fastball doesn't have a lot of movement," Bannister said. "Those guys as a whole had been underserved by the industry for a long time, because they were encouraged either to just throw harder or to chase vertical movement on their fastball or something that their body didn't want to do naturally. And one of the advantages of having the technology we have now is through a lot of work and a lot of research, we've been able to really give those guys solutions to the problems they've been dealing with throughout their career, to take their production to a whole other level -- whether it's using the seams on the baseball or coming up with alternate grips, or unique arsenals or drastically changing their pitch usage. All of a sudden, something else can become the centerpiece of how they pitch."
At the moment it feels like much more of a curse than a blessing, but the White Sox should possess an intimate understanding of how long and arduous the process of building up a farm system can be. If they want to live up to their goals of a quick turnaround, identifying their own arms that have been underserved by their past efforts is a vital way of accelerating the process.
