The 2024 White Sox were historically bad.
Their offense scored the fewest runs over a 162-game season since the 1969 Padres, but a leaky defense also ensured that they also allowed the most runs in the American League. Winning five out of six games to end the season made everyone feel a lot better, but it was also marked their first time winning 10 games in a month at any point this year. The frankly unimaginable depths they sank to makes it hard to put much stock into how they finished.
"I think it does carry over," said Drew Thorpe, no longer sporting any wrap from surgery on a bone spur in his pitching elbow. "Especially over the last couple weeks with Sean [Burke] coming up, [the rotation is] all throwing really right now and we have a really good starting group."
Along the northern wall of the home clubhouse, the young starting pitchers of the White Sox spent the final weeks of a nightmare season cloistered together in a steady stream of upbeat dialogue. They would play catch together, share observations, and inevitably try to steal each other's pitch grips and mostly find that their arm actions are too distinct for arsenals to smoothly translate.
"Garrett [Crochet] takes all the pitches I throw and then throws them 8 mph harder," joked Jonathan Cannon.
They take in every game together and talk shop. Clash of Clans is an occasional distraction, but they size each other up and like what they see. Most notably, they find a reason to feel better about their situation than it seems like they have any right to, especially since Crochet's run as their boisterous ringleader feels near the end.
"This rotation could be a really solid point of this team in the next few years, with the amount of team control a lot of us have still," said Davis Martin. "We're going to be here for a while, so we want to create something that we can really be proud of and that Chicago can get behind."
"Everybody is 26 or younger, or 27 or younger," said Sean Burke, who pitched three of the best games of his young life in the final two weeks of the season. "A lot of us don't have a ton of experience here. Hopefully this is the worst you see all of us, and we keep getting better and better."
Chris Flexen, Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, Mike Clevinger, Jake Woodford and Chad Kuhl accounted for over 50 starts in 2024, and might very well account for zero in 2025. But even accounting for that, it's notably hard to see some grand statistical trends in the White Sox rotation work. Any facet of this team not being very last in the league is notable, but they were a bottom-10 unit in terms of ERA and WAR, and losing Crochet and Erick Fedde won't help. They had a top-10 rate for inducing swings-and-misses in the strike zone, which bodes well for a group that largely needs to survive as efficient strike-throwers. But it remains to be seen how that figure will hold up without Crochet pumping 98 mph past people all the time.
Out of Martin (96), Cannon (92), Thorpe (75) and Burke (294), only Burke compiled an above-average ERA+ in major league action this past season, and his career ERA at Triple-A Charlotte still being over 6.00 reflects the battle for consistency amid shoulder soreness that he's fought over the past 18 months. Because neither Martin, Cannon nor Thorpe are overpowering strikeout artists, their peripheral numbers don't predict dominance either, and a significant improvement from a putrid White Sox defense is necessary to get the best versions of them.
That said, their shared optimism is based in something.
Martin is beloved by the coaching staff for his adaptability, and the double-digit walk rate he sported in his first year back from Tommy John surgery--infamous for affecting pitchers' command--has no precedent in his career history. Cannon posted a 4.15 ERA after being recalled from Triple-A in June, when he returned with a revamped arsenal built around seam effects and conversations with Brian Bannister. The Sox senior advisor to pitching believes Cannon was still gaining feel for his new movement profiles and was overly vulnerable to left-handed slugging throughout the second half, but also that the adjustments will eventually help him mature into a Logan Webb-style innings machine.
Thorpe was out-pitching his peripherals until his last two starts spiked his ERA by over two runs, and demonstrated that he cannot in fact thrive in the majors amid bothersome elbow pain. Pitchers needing bone spurs shaved down is never a positive, but a season full of Thorpe never quite feeling fully in sync or hitting max velocity suddenly makes a lot more sense. His changeup is still the one pitch no one can even try to steal.
"That's a unicorn, I don't know how he slows it down so much," Cannon said. "I don't know how you throw 80 mph with that arm speed. I play catch with him and it looks exactly like his fastball. You see why hitters have trouble with it. The spin looks exactly like a fastball coming out of his hand, just 10 mph slower."
Burke is the surprise addition to the starter mix, but also finally looks and sounds like someone who has unlocked the overpowering combination of fastball ride and spin talent that made him an over-slot third round signing out of Maryland in 2021.
"Execution and pitching-wise this is the best I've felt in my life, to be honest," Burke said. "I've made a huge emphasis after that one terrible start with Charlotte out of the break of owning the glove side half of the plate. When I am able to start a bullpen or play catch or pregame stuff and I'm really dialed in getting to down and away with everything, the rest of the zone becomes a lot easier for me to command because my timing is synced up to that spot."
This foursome, alongside however Ky Bush, Nick Nastrini, Jairo Iriarte and Jake Eder are showing by spring, offers more purpose and growth potential than a rotation heavy on veteran reclamation projects that the Sox started last season with. But underscoring their optimism, or why the Sox would be inclined to deal from their rotation with Crochet in the offseason, is that this group does not truly represent the long-awaited calvary.
"There's a lot more still in the pipeline, guys like [Noah] Schultz, Hagen Smith," Cannon said. "All that speaks to the progress this organization has made in the minor leagues."
Give a Sox player development staffer too much of your time and they'll argue that Grant Taylor has the level of stuff to put himself in the same conversation as the pair of first-rounders the Sox have spent on potential top-of-the-rotation arms. But a side benefit of the young Sox rotation proving themselves to be an average-or-better unit next season, beyond just staving off a repeat of the horrors of 2024, is it would represent a true pitching surplus. If the Sox actually wind up having something to bank on going forward, something to draw from to address their many shortcomings elsewhere, it would be this.
"We’ve got a pretty good pitching development process," Chris Getz touted at his end-of-season presser. "Brian Bannister came in here to enhance us even further. When it comes to the more technical parts of pitching we feel like we’re in a really good position at the major league and minor league levels."
That all sounds nice in theory, but the starters already on the White Sox roster simply see the ability to reverse the feeling around their team as soon as they get a full season to demonstrate it.
"I don't think any of us have a doubt that we want to improve this team going forward, and this rotation can be a very solid point of this team for the next few years," Martin said. "We pull ourselves off the mat everyday. We're professional, we work our asses off and try to win the next game. It's going to be the same thing when we're winning."
