PHOENIX -- Erick Fedde's signing the day before pitchers and catchers were due to report was the move actually intended to round out the White Sox rotation. Jordan Hicks could quickly become part of the team's late-inning mix, and even if you factor in the money sent over by the deeper-pocketed Red Sox, is the fourth-highest paid player on the team.
But the last big move of the White Sox active offseason was taking on Hicks' salary to effectively buy prospect right-hander David Sandlin.
"We feel like he's got weapons for both sides," said assistant general manager Josh Barfield. "It's a big fastball, big velocity, he can shape multiple breaking balls, and we just see a starter package in there. We're gonna give him every opportunity to do that."
Tall (6'4") and lean with velocity that touched 100 mph last year and multiple breaking balls, Sandlin entered the offseason thinking there was a good chance he would be dealt from a contention-minded Red Sox team that had shifted him to the Triple-A bullpen late last year and not seen immediate results (7.61 ERA with 21 K, 13 BB, in 23⅔ IP). And maybe there's a previous 2010s version of the White Sox that would have pointed to Sandlin's breakout stretch as a starter in Double-A (3.61 ERA with 86 K, 27 BB, in 82⅓ IP), and tasked the soon-to-be 25-year-old with filling out a rotation and chasing a puncher's chance to contend. It's easy to catch a glimpse and think he looks the part.
"He's one of the few that I just walk in and just kind of shake my head after their bullpen and be like, 'Oh God, I hope I don't have to go after him today,'" said Davis Martin, who spends part of his offseason throwing at the same facility, Pitching WRX in Oklahoma City, where former White Sox reliever Lane Ramsey is the chief operating officer; or "the pitch design guy," as Martin terms it.
But despite the impressive raw stuff, Sandlin's a true longshot to break camp with a White Sox club casting too wide a net for innings to rush someone they've touted as having mid-rotation potential. That projection is more bullish than the public prospect view of Sandlin, though staying healthy and holding his velocity for 106 innings last year answered some lingering questions about durability. He still holds relief risk because like a lot of pitchers who show a lot of skill for spinning breaking balls, Sandlin has struggled in a way that should sound familiar around these parts for anyone who has followed the journeys of Martin or Shane Smith.
"As somebody who can make the ball move left well, it's been difficult to make the ball move right," Sandlin said.
Sandlin added a new cutter to his game last year to help him work inside on opposite-handed hitters, but he's a supination-oriented pitcher who is likely to have a significant platoon split -- lefties had a .772 OPS against Sandlin last year, righties had just a .649 -- until he can develop a reliable pitch that can move arm side, and traditional changeups and even splitters have been a battle for him.
"Thankfully we think we got a grip this offseason with the new kick change craze that everyone seems to be throwing," Sandlin said. "Originally we were set on a splitter, that's always what I've thrown. I was good at killing the vert on it, but at the same time it was almost turning into another cutter. So we just needed something that had more horizontal and less downward break, and that's where we came in with the kick and I would say we really started making strides with it at the facility down in Oklahoma about a month ago."
There's a very recent White Sox feel to this solution that lends a sense that Sandlin has found the right home to try it out, as Grant Taylor will be trying to establish his kick change this spring (as well as a new two-seamer) and Martin just wrapped up 142⅔ innings of slightly-better-than-league-average work after being a very early adopter of the pitch in 2024. It's just that the true credit might lie in how quickly the pitch has reverberated around the league as an option for similar pitchers, such that instructors like Ramsey have quickly sought out insight on how to teach it to others.
"[Ramsey] and I have talked at length about how I throw my kick change, my thought process and so forth, and so he's taken a lot of that information to guys that need that arm side run," Martin said. "Between Sandlin, between [Mets prospect Ryan Lambert], those guys all have that beautiful cut-ride heater and everything goes [glove side] and they need something that goes [arm side] and they've started adapting it. Yeah, there's been some competitions about changeup depth at PitchingWRX on bullpen days."
Regardless of who first showed the pitch to Sandlin, he fits the mold of a profile the White Sox feel they have had success with: a near-ready starter who risks moving to the bullpen until they can find an alternative changeup. That they were willing to take on $16 million of Hicks' salary to secure him, speaks to the level of confidence they've developed in making pitchers like Sandlin more valuable than they initially appear to be.
"[Director of acquisitions] Matt Grabowski and [research and development] have done an awesome job," said director of pitching Brian Bannister. "They [scan the market] actively but they also know our capabilities on the coaching side of things, and we've done a ton of back and forth on what attributes we prioritize, what attributes we feel like are out there on the market that we can take advantage of, that are undervalued by the market, or priced where we can acquire more of it where our current payroll is at."
The payroll element is a critical part, as the Sox clubhouse is very light on service time and guaranteed salaries for the third straight spring, and full of players trying to establish or re-establish themselves in the majors. And with all the trades the White Sox have made with the Red Sox in recent years, Sandlin is rejoining with a host of former minor league teammates, including Wikelman González, Chase Meidroth and his first Double-A catcher in Kyle Teel. But even more broadly than a fit with the interpersonal dynamics of the clubhouse, Sandlin feels like part of an established plan.
"It's easy to just say, 'Oh, this guy's got good stuff, put him in the bullpen, he could help us right now,'" Barfield said. "But looking big picture, I think he could be a pivotal piece in a rotation going forward."
