Pregame Notes: Happy Mother’s Day

The White Sox have been pitching and hitting well enough to be competitive of recent, winning nine of their last 15 games. But as has been discussed around these parts, the vision of an elite baserunning (23rd in FanGraphs’ baserunning metric) and defensive (29th in Statcast’s Outs Above Average) White Sox team lags behind. 

Pedro Grifol sees it as a process that was always going to be gradual over the course of the full season.

“It doesn’t happen in a spring training,” Grifol said. “Spring training guys are out there playing free, nothing is going on the back of their bubble gum card. When the season starts, the pressure starts getting a little higher, the anxiety starts getting a little higher. A lot of it is geared toward ‘What am I doing offensively?’ When you’re locked in offensively, you lose some of the other stuff that’s really important. So we’ve kind of have to bring everything back as a team. It starts off as an individual, but you’ve got to bring it back as a team, which takes a little bit of time.”

– After a rough start to the season and subsequent disappearance from any real leverage opportunities, Tim Hill has quietly strung together good outings of recent. Tanner Banks continues to get used in every role under the sun. But it’s not hard to imagine there still being room for a high-leverage left-hander in the Sox bullpen (especially when they trade a bunch of guys in a few months).

So while Jared Shuster has been starting in the minors, seeing him pitch a scoreless seventh and eighth on Saturday night was intriguing.

“He’s got weapons and when he’s rested, and his velo is up, he’s pretty good,” said Grifol. “He moves the fastball around, east-west, north-south. He’s got a nice little slider. He’s got a changeup to get past that righty or two. He’s a guy. And he can go multiple innings easy and give you some lengths. He’s a valuable piece to this bullpen.”

Grifol didn’t really answer my question on his future usage but I love scouting reports too much to object fully.

– Despite the early success that a 2.20 ERA in mostly high-leverage work would indicate, Jordan Leasure’s arm was lagging behind in his delivery during the opening month. Pitching coach Ethan Katz said that was leading to his fastball sitting in 94-95 mph range during some outings rather than the upper-90s he’s touted in the past, and not getting his fastball high enough in the zone where it plays the best could have contributed to a diminished 16.7 percent strikeout rate.

“We had to do some deep diving looking into his weighted ball routine and had to clean that up a little bit, because he was getting a little sloppy, which led to his arm dragging,” Katz said. “We showed him the numbers from the month of May, his velo has ticked up, his movement on his fastball is better, his arm is getting into a better position. He’s made some good adjustments.”

– Nicky Lopez not only fouled a pitch off in such a way that it bounced up and hit him in the chin Saturday night, but the brim of his batting helmet clipped him in the nose as he recoiled.

He worried that his looks have taken a hit.

“Good thing I have a wife,” Lopez quipped.

FIRST PITCH: WHITE SOX VS. GUARDIANS

TV: NBC Sports Chicago

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