Service journalism time: I asked White Sox senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister about cloning himself.
More specifically, I asked if a hitting-focused version of his role is realistic. Bannister wound up speaking to the broad efforts of the organization, since that is more likely to be the solution than Chris Getz finding a hitting guru in a distant, hidden dojo.
"A lot of what we’ve been doing behind the scenes is talking about how can we get better in every area, both resource-wise, data capture-wise, communication-wise," Bannister said. "I think we are actively addressing all of those things right now in order to achieve upside surprises with players.
That’s the beauty of player development nowadays. You can literally impact a player’s career with one modification. Trying to project players is so difficult nowadays. It’s why I always talk about finding the right ingredients. If you have things to work with on the PD side, all it takes is one good conversation or one adjustment and all of a sudden they go from below average player to league average or above average. You want to see those things happening in all aspects of players’ games, whether it’s on the pitching side, the defensive side, the hitting side. So, we have been talking about what it takes for us to get to the point where that’s happening with all our players in all areas. I think those conversations have been really productive and healthy.
It's kind of turning a new page for the organization. And I know, I’m a pitching advisor. But I try to just bring a lot of experiences from my previous organizations in here and give some outside perspective and I think we are going to be doing some really cool stuff in the short term that will be very good for the White Sox."
But stories like Davis Martin learning a new changeup the day before his start, Garrett Crochet developing a wipeout cutter in spring training; similar tales are more of a slow-build on the hitting side. Bryan Ramos making his leg load more efficient had a more gradual effect, and even that breakthrough was more on the level of getting a hitting prospect that was already thought to be pretty good back to normal production.
White Sox hitting coordinator Alan Zinter played a big role with Ramos' recent upturn, but generally a hitting rover is hard-pressed to make the same kind of impact.
"It’s definitely easier on the pitching side," Bannister said. "I always say we set the table and the hitters have to eat off the table. It’s easier and quicker to do on the pitching side. Hitters are more reactionary. There’s a lot of bat path things, there’s a lot of approach things, zone discipline and swing decision things.
"So a lot of it is what is your macro approach to hitting? Are you able to locate parts of the zone where a pitcher is vulnerable and have the discipline on the hitting side to not chase elsewhere and really lock in? I know that was a big part of our approach on the 2021 Giants team.
"We had great success on the pinch-hitting side. We had a lot of upside surprises offensively and we were able to simplify hitting, which is so difficult to begin with and pitchers are getting nastier by the year with all the technology we have. You have to find ways to simplify hitting so that there are more upside surprises at the minor league and major league level."
Front office members have made reference to using some of Bannister's connections in the industry as they search for candidates for who could fill a larger hitting role in the organization. But in addressing the larger positional failings of the organization, Bannister had a concrete way of how he can help: develop pitching that can be traded for bats.
"From an offensive perspective and this is not a criticism but, everybody knows we need more production there. We've had to subtract from the pitching side in order to game plan for the future on the hitting side as well as identify things that we can do to bring more production up here.
"I've been impressed with the arms we started out with and they've continued to go and pitch well for other teams as well. But I think regardless of if you've pitched well, you have to score runs, you have to play defense and we've been behind in those areas.
"We'll keep developing pitching, whether it's Davis Martin throwing a new changeup or Jonathan Cannon working with a seam effects arsenal and starting to figure that out. He's got to address some slug against lefties, but those are all things that rookie pitchers have to figure out. I thought they've done a good job of coming up and being basically league average pitchers in their first season, which is a hat tip to them.
"I'm confident that we're going to keep developing pitchers, even if we have to subtract from the pitching side to bolster other areas too."
This is where the scrutiny swings back around to Chris Getz and company, who have acquired Samuel Zavala, Miguel Vargas, Jeral Perez, Alexander Albertus and William Bergolla to their positional crop in trades, to decidedly mixed reviews and results so far. When the industry isn't all that jazzed about the talent the White Sox are bringing in, it makes it harder to gauge what their development staff should be capable of delivering.
