Through his first nine starts with Winston-Salem in 2024, Peyton Pallette was treading water. The 5.05 ERA reflected positive developments negated by rough nights, and even in his more effective outings, the strikeout rate didn't indicate the kind of stuff that generated serious first-round hype at Arkansas before Tommy John surgery caused him to miss his junior season.
Then it all came tumbling down over his last three starts in June. He allowed 15 runs over eight innings with more free bases (seven walks, one HBP) than strikeouts (six), leaving the White Sox with three choices:
- Let him keep trying to pitch through it at Winston-Salem
- Send him down to Kannapolis with an aim toward regrouping
- Shift him to the bullpen with hopes the stuff ticks up
The White Sox chose Door No. 3, and Pallette hasn't given them reason to reconsider. He's allowed just two runs on 14 hits and a six walks over 31⅔ innings, backed by a whopping 46 strikeouts. His OPS allowed (.356) is more than 500 points lower than when he started (.885).
A promotion to Birmingham in late August didn't throw him off. He's up to eight scoreless innings at Double-A, including two zeroes against Chattanooga on Saturday night. It's easy to see the difference, especially when there's a functioning radar gun. His fastball has jumped about three ticks, and besides making his breaking ball even sharper, the power surge allows his changeup to play off of a greater threat.
Pallette's seamless transition to relief reminded me of a story James wrote in July about Michael Soroka, whose stuff similarly jumped once the Sox bumped him to the bullpen. While it looked like a classic case of somebody letting it eat without worrying about having to conserve energy for 75 pitches or two times through the order, Soroka insisted that he'd merely unlocked a mechanical change he could take back to the rotation.
It’s a seller’s market for pitching and an eight-inning scoreless streak featuring 16 strikeouts could prick up some level of interest on its own. But even if the White Sox rotation wasn’t likely to be strip-mined later this month, Soroka’s long-term hope would be to return. The central question is whether this improvement has come via a style of pitching that can’t translate to starting.
“Um, no,” Soroka said. “I think that’s been the best part.”
Except Soroka only pitched in two more games before landing on the injured list with a shoulder injury, which certainly cast his assessment into doubt.
With that in mind, after watching Pallette blank the Lookouts over the seventh and eighth innings on Saturday, I asked Birmingham pitching coach John Ely whether Pallette could reset as a starter, or whether this was a sign that relief was his path forward.
"I think he's really blossomed in that role in the bullpen," Ely said, before stressing that this was all one man's opinion, "and to be honest with you, I kind of see him -- and personally, this is just me personally, if you were to ask me -- I like him out of the bullpen in the big leagues."
Ely bases one man's opinion on a couple elements, which coincidentally don't sound dissimilar from reasons Brian Bannister or farm director Paul Janish have suggested to James. In terms of the quantifiable, he says Pallette's arsenal has responded better to maxing out over a couple innings and doing it again a few days later versus attempting to sustain effectiveness over longer pitch counts.
There's also the intangible.
"The one thing about Peyton is he wants the ball more often than not," Ely said. "He has kind of embraced the role in the bullpen because he gets to throw more than once a week.
"I asked him yesterday, 'Hey Peyton, I know you're available today. I don't know if you're going to get in, but you are available today if the situation [calls for it],' and he's like, 'You know I want the ball.' And that's what you want to hear.
"He's ultra-competitive and honestly, that probably could have hurt him a little bit when he was starting because he wants to go out there and close every inning. Anybody who has that kind of stuff will run out of gas at some point, so I think that the relief role fits him like a glove."
Noah Schultz's new fastball
Noah Schultz started Saturday's game against Chattanooga by striking out seven over four scoreless innings. If you hadn't watched Schultz pitch before, you'd probably notice how comfortable he was throwing his slider to batters on either side of the plate. If you're closer to a connoisseur, the swinging strikes on fastballs at the top of the zone would have you sitting forward in your seat.
Right after Saberseminar last month, Bannister offered a few ideas of how Schultz could get more swings and misses at higher levels, for all of which the left-hander had shown some early aptitude:
“Throwing some four-seamers at the top of the zone to complement the natural two-seamer he throws, leveraging his breaking-ball usage a little bit, maybe having a bridge pitch in there, or we’ve been able to do some seam-effects stuff when we tried it out with him. But we’re not trying to overwhelm him in the short-term"
And at AT&T Field, he was already doing the first part.
"He's a sinkerball pitcher, right? But he's also a freak athlete, man. This kid is really special," Ely said.
We got into a brief sidebar about how he fields his position surprisingly well, and Ely said that it's reflective of an ability to put himself in good positions, which helped with adding a pitch in the middle of a season.
"We just gave him a little four-seam to pair with his two-seam. Now you get guys that you know struggle with the fastball at the top of the zone, and he doesn't have to throw sinkers up there. Now he has a little movement differential with the four-seam and it was pretty impressive. He was able to locate it extremely well."
By the way, when I referenced Schultz being 6'9", Ely said that Schultz is now 6'10". Apparently he grew an inch since spring training. He is just 21 after all.
