The Six-ish Man Rotation

As announced on April 28th, Brad Keller has been called up, with Jonathan Cannon returning to the minors. This leaves the rotation at Garrett Crochet, Erick Fedde, Michael Soroka, Chris Flexen, and Brad Keller (according to Merk).

There are 2 things of note here: Mike Clevinger will also be added soon and there will likely be a need for additional innings eaters. Over the past three years, the only guy who has exceeded 140 MLB innings pitched is Chris Flexen. And he’s one of the most likely to be headed to the bullpen when Clevinger arrives.

On the Au Jus, KenWo talked about Crochet’s innings. I think they’ll want to limit him the most in the coming weeks/months.

So how do the White Sox do this? Days off in May are helpful as there are three of them: May 2nd, 16th, and 30th. But on the weeks without days off, they may need an additional arm in there.

Hybrid Role

Some combination of Tanner Banks, Chris Flexen, and/or Brad Keller could be used in a dual role. Sometimes they’re handling the first time through the order as an opener, sometimes they’re going long relief, and sometimes they’re stacked to take a game on their own.

For example, there is an upcoming 4 game series against the Guardians, after the White Sox have played six straight. If you want to get an extra day of rest for the staff, you could give a spot start to Tanner Banks against the heavily left handed lineup. You’d expect him to act as an opener, but whoever gets bumped from the rotation (Flexen or Keller) could be next in the game. This won’t preclude any of them from relief work later in the week.

The Rookies

Another option is rotating spot starts for Nick Nastrini, Jonathan Cannon, and Jared Shuster as they’re all on the 40-man roster. The tricky part is the roster moves as once you option them to the minors, you can’t bring them back up for 15 days. And, there is a limit of 5 times being optioned to the minors. So this will need to be a well thought out rotation on top of the rotation we were already talking about.

That said, it would be a good way to get a look at the young arms at the major league level, while limiting the innings on a staff that is not known for its ability to eat innings.

-Chorizy-E