Christian Oppor will turn 20 this weekend, spending his first full professional season roasting in the Arizona sun.
If he had his way, the Wisconsin native would have gotten here sooner.
“I didn’t like school, hated it,” Oppor offers readily. “Just getting in the system I heard helps a lot, getting around professional coaches versus people that maybe have less experience. So I feel like getting in here early benefits me a lot more.”
A year before the White Sox signed him for a $550,000 bonus out of the fifth round, the A’s took the slender left-hander in the 11th round of the 2022 draft. Oppor feels he “got screwed over” in the process that led to him not signing and spending a year in junior college instead. But his year at Gulf Coast State College acclimated him to the temperatures he happily toils in at the ACL.
Optimism that Oppor will unseat former hitting coach Frank Menechino as the most notable GCSC product in White Sox history is rooted in the professional coaching that the left-hander is so eager for.
“Ever since I picked up a baseball, my fastball has always been the sinker grip,” Oppor said. “Didn't know it until college. So when I finally got here, they finally went over all the analytics. And it's the first time I've ever seen metrics and stuff on my fastball, changeup, slider, everything.”
The information has spurred a lot of experimentation and adjustments, to which Oppor largely attributes the spike in walks that has dogged his 2024 statistical line. Yielding 14 walks in 24⅔ innings is disappointing, but makes more sense in the context that Oppor has been learning how his pitches move in real time.
What small sample of ACL baseball I’ve seen scans as super-charged spring training, where young and developing players are constantly incorporating new tweaks and adjustments with discordant initial results, even if there are long-term benefits to the changes.
Oppor threw a slurve coming out of JUCO, and while that’s not the inherent insult the label used to be, he quickly began exploring new shapes with the White Sox. A pursuit of a curveball has given way to what Oppor feels is a sharper slider that will eventually pair well with his sinker when he gains more of a feel for it. What he’s currently geeked about is how his confidence in his changeup has vaulted above its previous standing.
“My change was my worst pitch in my whole arsenal, my whole life, and I got here and have been really focusing on my changeup – like a whole bunch – and it ended up becoming my second-best pitch,” Oppor said. “I pronate when I throw, so it’s pretty easy to throw my changeup. When I throw it, I throw it pretty much just how I throw my fastball; get it out in front and it plays how it is.”
This sort of easy understanding of how and why his pitches work, and what he needs to do to execute them, is newly acquired. And Oppor doesn’t even see understanding it as his role in the operation. His job is just to go out and do it.
“I’m not too focused on it. They are. They can keep up with that. I’m just going to try to throw strikes with what I’ve got.”
ACL Padres 4, ACL White Sox 3 (7 innings)
- Abraham Nunez and Stiven Flores both were 0-for-3 with a strikeout.
- Adrian Gil, 0-for-2 with a walk.
- Angelo Hernandez was 0-for-3 with two strikeouts.
- Javier Mogollon was 1-for-3 with a double and a strikeout.
- Matt Foster: 1 IP, 1 H, 0 R, 0 BB, 0 K
DSL Nationals 2, DSL White Sox 1
- Christian Gonzalez went 0-for-3 with a walk and a stolen base.
- Eduardo Herrera went 1-for-3 with a walk and a strikeout, and was picked off.
- Jesus Premoli, 1-for-4 with two strikeouts.
- Jehancarlos Mendez went 1-for-3.
- Yhoiker Fajardo: 5 IP, 4 H, 1 R, 1 ER, 0 BB, 8 K
