Pregame notes: Another reason to watch the White Sox sidelined

Tommy John surgery is a significant career setback for pitchers, but the blow is not only lessened by their ubiquitousness, turning it into a rite of passage of sorts. It's also often the culmination of weeks of not feeling right. The final damning MRI reading is disappointing, but can carry with it affirmation that what they have been sensing in their own body is real, that maybe their pain isn't weakness leaving the body.

Then there's Davis Martin, who struck out 11 in six scoreless innings at Triple-A Charlotte in his final game of the 2023 season. By his own description, he was pitching the game of his life, throwing all four pitches for strikes and dominating, when something started feeling weird against the final hitter of the sixth. And thus began a 14-month stay on the minor league injured list, where he accrued no major league service time.

And so Drew Thorpe's placement on the 15-day IL with a flexor strain in his throwing arm is disquieting on a number of levels; it strips an already unwatchable team of one of its rejoinders for why you should occasionally tune in, it carries none of the finality of TJ but some of its ominousness because it can be a precursor. For Thorpe personally, however, this setback hits with less purely tragic timing.

First, major league service time does not grow on trees. Second, the move comes on the heels of two duds -- an emphatic first-inning shelling of such brutality that it gets shrugged off, and the more generally dispiriting effort against the Royals on Wednesday, where he just flatly lacked the tools to navigate a clean innings. Despite the celebrated five-outing streak of quality starts, Thorpe has been giving quotes that betrayed a frustration to emulate the mechanics of last season for a while now, as symptoms like his slider and cutter blending, uncharacteristically poor fastball command, and being unable to rev it up past 91 mph popped up at different intervals.

"I've been working on mechanics and stuff and trying to get myself back to where I was last year, just where the velo was," Thorpe said in July. "It's been good progress but we're still continuing to work on it."

His comments to reporters in Minneapolis seemed to confirm the progression from 'not quite right' to 'this is actually bad.'

The White Sox claimed 27-year-old right-hander Gus Varland off of waivers from the Dodgers on Friday, optioning him to Triple-A. If his younger brother Louie had stuck in the Minnesota rotation like it looked he might at times, I would say this was an inspired bit of opposition research from an organization that has a franchise-record losing streak going and three open 40-man roster spots after the trade deadline.

Varland sits 95 mph with a high-80s slider, and has found a home where his struggles to command either shouldn't be disqualifying. But he had a 7.99 ERA at the Dodgers' Triple-A affiliate, so it's equally possible this becomes a fun fact in his origin story, like Brewers starter Tobias Myers' fun-filled stint as a Charlotte Knight (look it up, srsly). Back when Varland slotted in at 33rd on FanGraphs' 2022 Dodgers top prospect list, Miguel Vargas was ranked 10th and was listed as a third baseman.

Some see coincidence in this, some see providence.

First pitch: White Sox at Twins

TV: NBCSCH, MLBN

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