Pregame Notes: Michael Soroka sent to the bullpen

Michael Soroka cut a specific picture of frustration after taking his fifth loss of the season on Sunday, where an efficient 5 ⅓ innings on 71 pitches were undercut by a pair of homers on off-speed pitches, leaving him unable to enjoy the best four-seamers he had thrown all year.

“Beat them all day with the stuff I wanted to be out there throwing,” Soroka said. “The second homer I can stomach a little more because I’m trying to get in the zone with a slider. The first one, the last thing a hitter wants to see after they foul one off their knee is a fastball inside. Threw a changeup right over the plate, and his bat ran into it, so that has to change. Have to make better decisions in the moment.”

While the individual pitch decision burned plenty, the lack of margin for error raised the stakes. Soroka has pitched poorly. His ERA is 6.39 over nine starts, with 24 walks and strikeouts apiece in 43 ⅔ innings. He has not completed six innings since his second outing of the season, and his next opportunity to do so could be a while. The White Sox are moving him into the bullpen, and Brad Keller will take Soroka’s next turn in the rotation.

“I’ve talked to both of them already,” said Pedro Grifol. “We’re excited to do what Keller can do in the rotation. I’ve seen him really good as a starter. We gave him that one start, he did OK. And then Soroka, he’s got some adjustments to make that we feel can really help him. We did the same thing with [Chris] Flexen. He pitched out of the bullpen, he threw a couple times, threw the ball great. Now he’s in the rotation. The same with Soroka. ‘Let’s take a step back, go in the bullpen, pitch with some length over there in the bullpen and see what happens.’ Doesn’t mean he’s going to be there permanently. It just means right now.”

Keller hasn’t reinvented the wheel in one start and three extended bullpen outings, but he’s made a case that he currently provides his team with a better chance. While his low-to-mid 90s heater is about the same after last year’s bout with thoracic outlet syndrome, he’s throwing more changeups than ever and the mish-mash of velocity bands he chucks at hitters have driven an encouraging 56.1 percent ground ball rate through 12 ⅔ innings with a 2.84 ERA.

Past precedent and pedigree hasn’t exactly won the day in the 2024 White Sox rotation, both for better and for worse, but returning Soroka to his past glory was one of the central projects heading into spring. Giving a former top-50 prospect and All-Star a chance to re-establish himself at 26 after years of injuries, was supposed to be a unique opportunity afforded to the Sox by their otherwise unenviable situation.

Grifol said he recently watched Soroka’s dominant 2019 playoff start for the Braves paired alongside Sunday’s loss to the Guardians, and claimed to see the same pitcher in both instances, but with simply far less consistency in the latter version.

“I learned from old-time scouts: if you see it once, it’s there,” Grifol said. “We’ve got to get it out of him. I saw it more than once. I saw a great breaking ball to Ramírez. I saw an uptick in velocity to 95 mph. I saw movement to his two-seamer that mimicked 2019. Now it’s our responsibility, and his responsibility, to try to get that consistently like he had it. And there’s no doubt that I think he can. I believe in the player. I believe in his ability. It’s not like his velocity’s down, it’s not like his spin rate is not good, [or] his breaking ball doesn’t look good.”

Being the sixth starter on a last place team is not a hopeless situation. Keller and Flexen have both been there and quickly wriggled out of it within the season’s first seven weeks. Beyond the constant specter of opportunity created by injury, underperformance is more likely to create a spot, Garrett Crochet is a constant candidate for extra rest, and Flexen, Erick Fedde, and others could easily pitch their out of town by late July. 

But being the sixth starter on a last place team is also not what Michael Soroka had in mind.

“He’s a competitor,” Grifol said. “He wants to continue to pitch. However, he understands that there’s adjustments that he needs to make. He also understands that we believe in him. I truly believe in the player. I saw it, I saw the resemblance of his pitches. He’s actually stronger. He’s more physical now than he was. He’s got more experience. He’s faced some adversity and dealt with it.”

– Justin Anderson is up from Charlotte as the 27th man, where he’s performed fairly well in a hellhole for pitching: 2.84 ERA with 22 strikeouts and four walks in 16 innings. Grifol said he’s disinclined to use a pitcher twice in one day during a doubleheader. 

Then Bruce Levine worked him for a while on the topic and Grifol offered up Tim Hill as a possibility. Drink plenty of water today, Tim.

– Andrew Benintendi sparked some hope with three home runs at the end of April, and told me that he was doing a bit better at combatting some of the drift in his swing to keep his back leg loaded and pull the ball in the air. 

Benintendi has since hit .152/.194/.182 in May. Grifol is batting him fifth in Tuesday’s opener, so his confidence remains.

“I have seen him drive some balls that he’s been a little unlucky,” Grifol said. “The fact that he’s pulling the ball. The fact I’ve seen him with intentions of pulling the ball and the ball kind of run off to the outer half of the plate and still barrel that ball to left-center field. That’s a good sign for me. That’s when I know he’s really close to breaking out on what hasn’t been a great start.”

FIRST PITCH: WHITE SOX VS. Nationals
Game 1

TV: NBC Sports Chicago

Lineups: