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?
No comments:
Post a Comment