As the White Sox senior advisor to pitching, a self-professed lover of hard-throwing left-handers and a man who probably casually uses the word "supinate" five to 10 times per day, Brian Bannister opened a Zoom session with media to assure that he did not lock the doors of the draft room and inform the occupants that no one would see their families again until Hagen Smith was selected.
"You look at our team this year, the thing that stands out is lack of run production," Bannister said. "Bats were a priority but at the end of the day you have to take the best available with the slot we were picking in."
"I’m as big of a proponent of drafting bats," he continued. "You look at the teams that have won World Series over the last decade, and they often started with a position player core. So, getting Hagen, he was the best arm available and the best at our spot, because we wanted to get somebody playing up the middle or a power lefty arm.
"Just being able to get somebody of his caliber fitting into our style we believe will play well in the 81 games we play in our ballpark, I think was huge for us. And knowing we can develop a pitcher like that and help him to reach his ceiling."
Bannister made liberal use of comparisons to Chris Sale and Carlos Rodón when discussing Smith's slider. He specified that it's not a traditional sweeper, but rather a gyro slider that both possesses enough downward drop to miss right-handed bats, and above-average horizontal movement. Smith has already worked on a cutter and a changeup in the past. But because of his breaking-ball talent, Bannister seemed just as intrigued by the possibility of adding a second, slower breaking ball to round out Smith's arsenal; a move that was employed during Rodón's dominant 2022 season in San Francisco.
Traditionally, finding pitchers suited toward the White Sox cozy home environment has just consisted of sorting available arms by ground-ball percentage. In saying that Smith is suited to succeed in Guaranteed Rate Field, Bannister was speaking more specifically to the level of topspin in the left-hander's slider.
"Get into that negative-vert territory that allows it to miss right bats consistently," Bannister said. "They are able to overwhelm lefties with their velocity. It’s a skillset that has a great foundation and I’m generally of the opinion if a pitcher has a good breaking ball, you had a second good breaking ball. You saw [Patrick] Corbin do that with the slower curve. We did that in San Francisco with Rodón. Instead of the changeup, throwing a second lower curve ball just to gain count leverage and steal strikes."
Smith has a notoriously short arm stroke, which Bannister said he's seen often in pitchers with great breaking balls who "almost slap themselves in the chest when they follow through." While a shorter motion has often been credited with aiding Smith's command, Bannister also sees a health risk in it that makes it more of a means to an end than an attribute the Sox would actively encourage.
"It kind of shows their bicep dominance in their arm action," Bannister said. "He is a premium breaking-ball pitcher, and that type of arm action lends itself to that. But we will watch his workload. It probably will put, over the long run, additional stress on his shoulder. But that's something we factored in. You don't want to change a pitcher's natural anatomy. You want to find synergy with it so they're able to move the way their body's put together. I actually like the deception of the shorter arm stroke, the way he can create those premium, flatter approach angles from the top of the zone with the fastball and contrast that with the topspin slider."
The workload comment is a good segue, since Bannister normally comments on the finite number of throws every pitcher has before their body gives out. That would suggest he's not opposed to limits, and Bannister certainly defers to the larger plan of tapering Garrett Crochet's innings down the stretch. At the same time, he was very bullish on Crochet's long-term durability, sounds very opposed to shutting down recent pitching draftees, and politely termed the reduction in pitcher workloads leaguewide as the result of a never-ending spiral of ass-covering.
That's more of my personal paraphrasing work, so check the quote for yourself.
"We’ve turned them from marathon runners into sprinters," Bannister said. "We’ve turned them from pitchers that could throw 150 pitches like my dad did back in the day, to where 105 is a dirty number now. And the human body is pretty amazing at what it can do. It’s really about finding that balance between the intensity of the output and the volume they are throwing. So, I think as an industry as we’ve added more layers, more clients, more people are involved. Any time a pitcher or player gets hurt, there’s perceived job risk and security at stake for people in the industry. What that serves to do is keep pushing pitch counts lower and lower."
Bannister feels shutting pitchers down completely and then asking them to re-start is the most dangerous part of every year in spring, which is part of why the path ultimately fell toward shortening Crochet's outings but keeping him active through all 162. And it certainly makes it sound like seeing Smith at a White Sox affiliate this year is likely.
"Look at the late free-agent signings: the Jordan Montgomerys, I remember Alex Cobb back in the day, Greg Holland, Craig Kimbrel. Pitchers that are signed late often get off to horrible starts, and the reason is they have a big de-load period where they don't want to throw because there's tens of millions of dollars at stake. And because they haven't thrown, they really never get into shape until, often, the second half of the year. And you're trying to avoid scenarios like that. The arm, every time you throw, it breaks down a little bit, it elongates, it stretches out. It's actually safer for the pitcher to throw than to not throw. So I think you have to be careful of completely de-loading pitchers.
"And really what I look to is: What have they been doing up to the draft? Are they progressively ramped up where their arm is in shape? Or do they take the time completely off once the season ended into the draft? That's a big factor. Another factor is the medical assessment and the strength-and-conditioning assessment. Is there shoulder weakness? Is there elbow/forearm weakness? We're trying to put all those factors into play and not be afraid. They are pitchers. We need them to throw. They benefit from throwing. You just don't want to elongate the season too much where their workload is way beyond anything they've done. At least with the minor league season going to the six days on, one day off format, it's a little bit of a transition between the once-a-week in college and the minor leagues and then going to the every-five-days in the major leagues. Looking to have them throw, looking to have them compete, have some intent by year end and not just completely de-load them and take it off."
This has been fun, but it's running long. What does he think of third-round pick Blake Larson?
Larson got around $1.4 million out of high school despite being viewed as a development project with limited consistency nor present feel for a third pitch. Arkansas pitching coach Matt Hobbs already loves Larson. And it's easy to imagine his lower left-handed arm slot intriguing Bannister, but why Blake specifically?
"Another lefty that can pitch in the mid-90s," Bannister said. "We thought there were seam effects on the fastball. The breaking-ball shape is almost a dead ringer for Chris Sale, so we like that aspect. It's really hard to find lefties with premium breaking balls. I'm always looking for that. The combination of the hyper-mobility that he has, the ability to add mass over time, already showing the premium velocity for a lefty and, many scouts said, one of the better breaking balls in the entire draft, it was an exciting package to get. And being kind of a northern, cold-weather kid who switched down to IMG, there's probably more in the tank on the physicality side that I'll look forward to watching him add over the years."
Are the White Sox going to get hard-throwing 11th-rounder Blake Shepardson to throw strikes?
Shepardson has triple-digit velocity and the slider movement to dream about late-inning high-leverage. Like 13th-round pick Pierce George, he was walking around a batter per inning in college. What does teaching a prospect like this to throw strikes consist of?
"Premium spin ability, spin talent," Bannister said. "What I was really curious on is, 'Is he throwing the wrong fastball?' A lot of times when you see very high walk rates, a lot of times it's the wrong grip or it's the wrong fastball shape entirely. He does have the ability to sweep the ball and spin it at an elite level. I'm really curious to get in there and see if another fastball grip or type helps alleviate the strike-throwing, as well as leveraging that spin talent a little more often. A lot of his outings as we watched, he would spray the ball with his fastball but then settle in a little bit. And then what he did in the draft league was really impressive. There's elite tools and like a lot of these pitchers that haven't fully put it all together, sometimes they're just pitching the wrong style or the grips are wrong and you start to clean some of that up and the walk rate tends to come down organically. He's got some nice tools and really pitching well in the draft league is what put it over the top with us as far as making the selection."
Is 17th-rounder Lyle Miller-Green actually going to be a two-way player?
When scouting director Mike Shirley namedropped Bannister even when talking about a 23-year-old fifth-year senior picked in the 17th round, that's when it seemed very obvious that the Sox needed to make their pitching advisor available to explain his process. Thankfully they and Brian obliged, even if at this point in this draft, Bannister's analysis reads as an intellectual version of, "Big man throw hard. Why not?"
"The draft room was abuzz as we were watching him take BP and launch 475-foot homers," Bannister said. "The fact that he throws 94-95 mph on the mound, there's some tools there. I just think the raw athleticism and the fact that he's not really listed at a position but is more pure bat and pure arm strength, just kind of gives us those raw ingredients we like to go out there and employ him in different ways. I'm sure as we get to know him, there's a lot of ways for us to tap into his physicality and really take advantage of it. Because some of the fast twitch that he has in his body, you rarely see. I think [Charlie] Condon was up there and [Giancarlo] Stanton and [Aaron] Judge. His ability to hit homers in those elite exit velo ranges were pretty impressive. It's a physical specimen of a person and looking forward to being around him, watching his BP and seeing him throw off the mound."
Did he happen to say anything intriguing about late-season promotions to the majors?
Wow, were you tipped off in some way?
"I personally am a big believer of getting the minor league starters into the major league bullpen at year end," Bannister said. "It accomplishes a couple things. One, they learn the stadium, their surroundings, their routine, the workflow, the timing of everything that happens at the major league level. Two, they get to face major league hitters with a tick better stuff because they're coming out of the 'pen. So you get a little velo bump, you get a little Stuff+ bump in their pitch quality. It lets them get immediate feedback with not only having a little success, because their stuff's a little bit better, but two, finding out: Do I have platoon splits? Are they seeing a pitch a little better than the minor leaguers are? Am I tipping in any way? Trying to clean that up. It's a nice little way to kind of audit a minor league pitcher and see: Is he ready to be a starter in the big leagues?"
