Moving Forward

This is how the White Sox mark progress: last spring, they had a pitcher who could explain away each and every bad outing.  Now they have pitchers who can tell you exactly where things went wrong.

 Back in March of 2016, when the Sox thought they were a player or two away from contending, Jacob Turner talked about how good his stuff was and those pesky ground balls that found a way into the outfield.  Turner is long gone (how I miss the happy talk and that 6.57 ERA), replaced by the likes of Lucas Giolito and Michael Kopech.  Call them the Sad Truth Twins.

Giolito gave up a run over two innings in his Cactus League debut against the Cubs.  The newly acquired righty said, “I’m just going to continue to work on that, throwing a curveball for a strike, [and] commanding a fastball down and away to righties.” Wait, there’s more self-analysis:  “My biggest things are throwing a curveball for a strike, being able to differentiate throwing it for a strike and throwing a good one down for a put-away pitch, and then commanding fastballs on both sides of the plate.” 

At least Giolitio did better than the flame-throwing Kopech, who coughed up four earned runs in one inning during his first appearance of the spring.  Kopech, too, knows what went wrong.  “The name of the game is executing pitches, and I didn’t do that.  For the most part I was able to put stuff in the zone.  It was just that when I did miss small, I would get myself behind in counts, and when I get behind in counts, that’s when you need to be able to execute your stuff.”  He may also want to work on his pronoun use.

So, both pitchers knew what they did wrong.  Is it too much to hope there’ll come a day when they can go into as much detail on what went right in their starts?