If Drew Thorpe was the sure thing in the Dylan Cease trade package, the clearest path to finding a regular contributor with a fresh batch of team control, Venezuelan right-hander Jairo Iriarte was the big swing for ceiling. The final month of a grueling 2024 season will give the first look of how close he is to it, as he's set to be added to the White Sox active roster today as one of their two September call-ups.
Right after the trade went down, general manager Chris Getz said a White Sox scout described Iriarte as an "Edwin Díaz-type with a chance to start," which is the sort of compliment that makes plenty of sense from a scouting/physical comparison standpoint that has functionally zero chance of being rationally processed by the viewing public. Scouts deploy comps to provide visual references to how someone looks and operates, whereas the viewing public might prepare for "What if an All-Star closer threw six innings every time?"
From afar, the 22-year-old has instead been more of yeoman contributor to the Double-A Birmingham rotation, piling up a 3.71 ERA in a professional career-high 126 innings. With that innings load in mind, Iriarte is slated to work out of the bullpen to close the season, beginning in single-inning increments.
His 22.8 percent strikeout rate is fifth among qualified starters in the Southern League, but truly exceptional strikeout artists are usually rewarded by not staying in the Southern League long enough to be qualified. His 10.7 percent walk rate is the second-highest, behind former Twins first rounder Chase Petty.
Iriarte's mobility -- or hyper-mobility, as it's often described -- and athleticism are hoped to project to unique approach angles in his delivery, well above-average extension and, eventually, command that's passable for sticking in the starting rotation. But a burst of back-to-back double-digit strikeout outings in mid-May that have not been replicated again, and the blips of total control outages suggest a young pitcher who is only sporadically finding his most optimal settings.
When Birmingham pitching coach John Ely described Iriarte's mound demeanor as "an ax murderer," it was a double-sided compliment that praised his competitiveness while also acknowledging his biggest issues come from overcooking pitches to the point of falling out of his mechanics.
Perhaps the most exciting thing about Iriarte's season is that he's overcome all these inefficiencies to still be a plus performer against older competition in the Southern League. Or the most exciting thing could be that as much as Iriarte was sold as an exciting lump of clay to be molded, senior advisor to pitching Brian Bannister has made of point of saying that he remains largely untouched in that regard. Iriarte's season to date reflects what the present version has been able to accomplish on his own merits and Ely's guidance, without truly transformative changes to his approach and arsenal.
But now that Iriarte is in Chicago to get a long foreshadowed end-of-season look in the majors, which Bannister has said he finds useful for young starting pitching prospects, maybe that is about to change.
"I think we're starting to get to that point; we know him a lot better," Bannister said. "He's integrated into the system, doing the things that are going to polish him up from here to the major league level. There's different guys, like Noah Schultz, that I've been more passive with just to get to know them and let them pitch in our system for a little bit. But then when they do need to get up to the big leagues in the near future, you want them to prioritize certain steps in their development."
While the traditional view of Iriarte is that his power stuff just needs to be harnessed within the strike zone, Bannister warns that such a narrow view of what success looks like for Iriarte will keep him from reaching his potential. If you acquire a freak athlete, you should let his freak flag fly ... so to speak.
"I think he's been encouraged both with the Padres and outside influences to throw more strikes and a lot of times that comes with a sacrifice to your athleticism," Bannister said. "You see the posture a little more upright, the extension a little less, the slot a tick lower, the fastball shape a tick more horizontal just because he's prioritizing throwing strikes.
"The underlying theme is he's an extreme athlete, he's hyper-mobile, he's smooth, he's just really fun to watch move. I don't want him to sacrifice all that to throw more strikes. I'd rather let him be him. And if it's a higher-strikeout-rate, higher-walk-rate profile, I'm OK with that. I've had a lot of pitchers like that. Over time as they get to know the league and their surroundings, the walks organically come down sometimes. You don't want to lose the top-end K-rate because it's not necessarily a good trade-off."
It's an unsurprising answer from Bannister, someone who preaches the importance of outlier qualities in a game where hitters become very practiced at hitting what looks typical, or average. Bannister believes emphasizing what maximizes the stuff in Iriarte's arsenal will give him a larger margin of error to work with in terms of locations. Tamping down some of unique elements of Iriarte's delivery might make him easier to fit in a defined role, but less interesting for a franchise that's trying to find future building blocks, rather than No. 4 starters.
That said, part of such a mentality means that the role Iriarte might prove to be the most dynamic in will come in relief. Maybe even a successful September stint means that Iriarte flashes the potential for immediate impact out of the White Sox bullpen that makes it hard to pry him out of there come next spring. The truly dismal state of the Sox major league team is such that there's no rush to make a choice with Iriarte, but part of chasing outlier pitching profiles is making peace with those types of outcomes.
"With the way the game is constructed nowadays, you want pitchers to be elite contributors and that can come in any form," Bannister said. "It doesn't matter how you break into the league. It matters that you have success, you feel dominant, you let your athleticism and stuff shine and then you eventually settle in the role you're meant to be in."
Which is to say that in contrast to the prior rebuild where top Sox prospects were brought up to assume the role for which they were always cast, and held there even as struggles and issues piled up, Iriarte arrives in Chicago in a different way. His talent and performance at the highest level will give a view to the next step of his development.
