A Tale of Two Pitchers

This is a tale of two 25-year old starters for the White Sox, Reynaldo Lopez and Lucas Giolito.  They both had three-run leads going into the bottom of the third inning against the Twins this week.  Gioltio held his, Lopez didn’t.

Lopez is where Giolito was last year, a pitcher both talented and oftentimes lost.  Giolito spent the offseason reinventing himself, in part with the help of something called “neural training.”  Call it the southern California approach to major-league pitching.  Only everyone isn’t from southern California.  So, how does Lopez get to where Giolito is, if he can?

The answer has to include a Spanish-speaking pitching coach.  Sorry, but Welington Castillo doesn’t count.  A pitcher needs to talk mechanics and psyche with his coach.  A good catcher knows what his pitcher has working and not, but he doesn’t know why, and he can’t advise him on grips and other subtleties of the craft.

With the White Sox, it’s pitching coach Don Cooper or the highway.  Good luck with that moving forward in the rebuild, guys.