The White Sox announced today that touted pitching prospect Reynaldo Lopez will make his 2017 debut on Friday. The 23-year-old right-hander will step into the rotation spot of veteran righty Mike Pelfrey, who is being moved to the bullpen.
[Related: Updated Chicago White Sox depth chart]
Chicago acquired Lopez alongside right-handers Lucas Giolito and Dane Dunning in the offseason trade that sent center fielder Adam Eaton and his highly favorable contract to the Nationals. Of the three righties acquired in that swap, Lopez has separated himself from the pack as the most impressive of the bunch thus far.
In 121 innings with Triple-A Charlotte this season, he’s averaged 9.7 K/9 against 3.6 BB/9 with a 36.3 percent ground-ball rate en route to a 3.79 ERA. However, Lopez has been utterly dominant as of late, working to a collective 2.70 ERA with a 63-to-15 K/BB ratio in his past 46 2/3 innings (12.2 K/9, 2.9 BB/9). Both Baseball America and MLB.com listed Lopez as the game’s No. 59 overall prospect on their midseason rankings of baseball’s top 100 prospects.
Friday won’t mark the MLB debut for Lopez, as he first surfaced in the Majors as a 22-year-old with the Nats last season. However, in six starts, he struggled to a 4.91 ERA, issuing 22 walks and reeling off five wild pitches in his 44 innings of work. Lopez picked up 44 days of service time last year, and he’ll have the opportunity to accrue another 52 days of service in 2017 if he sticks on Chicago’s roster. That best-case scenario of 96 days of MLB service will leave him shy of Super Two projection, so Lopez presently would not be eligible for arbitration until after the 2020 season. As it stands now, the earliest he could become a free agent would be upon completion of the 2023 season.
Don’t know if he has been ” the most impressive of the bunch thus far.”. He has pitched at a higher level than Dunning (AAA compared to A), while being a year older. But Dunning has been outstanding at high A Winston-Salem (3.33 ERA with 10 strikeouts per 9 ).
Hopefully both will be in the sox rotation in 2019!
Figured someone might make that point. You can argue it if you want, but my stance is that Dunning is only 11 months younger than Lopez and began the season in Class-A before even moving to Advanced A.
Lopez has comparable numbers against considerably more advanced competition despite a relatively minimal gap in their ages.
Sorry Steve, but I agree on this point. Dunning has improved his stock much more than Lopez or Giolito since the trade.
I disagree. Great stats in A ball are nice and all but until you do it in at least AA who cares
Exactly and Dunning hasn’t even been the most impressive A ball arm anyway, Alec Hansen has.
Therein lies the excitement of opining on who of the promising prospects will be the big picture rotation arms (Lopez, Kopech, Dunning, Hansen, etc)! Hope Fulmer turns the corner.
One can only hope that he takes the spot of Gregory Infante or David Holmberg on the 25 man roster
Why? Both guys help them lose, which is exactly what they need to be doing.
I don’t think the Sox should keep Pelfrey, at least not in the majors. For the most part, he was never anything more than a 4th or 5th starter value. His era is not good at all, Danny Farquhar should be brought up as a replacement.
Excited for Reynaldo! Been a fan since watching him at Single-A Potomac. He was the one guy of the three I hated to see traded but hope he makes big with the White Sox
The future looks bright on the South Side of Chicago with southpaw Carlos Rodon looking spectacular in his last two starts after pitching coach Don Cooper corrected some minor flaws in his delivery. Reynaldo Lopez will get the next crack as a core rotation member and the White Sox will not be short of additional right-handed candidates from the likes of Michael Kopech, Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease, Alec Hansen, Dane Dunning, Carson Fulmer and Spencer Adams who are all ranked among their top-20 prospects in a system generally recognized as the best in MLB.
Outside of recently promoted 2B prospect Yoan Moncada and now Lopez, the next wave of top talent expected to debut at Guaranteed Rate Field prior to 2019 figure to be mostly among the pitchers listed above who are currently in AAA like Giolito and Fulmer or AA such as Kopech and Adams. Closer in waiting Zack Burdi who was already pitching at AAA Charlotte less than one year after being drafted could be another depending on how quickly he recovers from his recent TJ surgery.
The most heralded White Sox position prospects are all at A+ ball or lower. It will probably be May of 2019 before the likes of OF’s Eloy Jimenez, Luis Robert, Blake Rutherford, 3B Jake Burger, 1B Gavin Sheets and C’s Zack Collins and Evan Skoug see a big league field. With Moncada already at 2B and former #1 prospect/draft pick Tim Anderson at SS, the White Sox have the makings of a talented starting lineup come 2019 or 2020. Adding in all of those elite arms to the rotation and bullpen, most of whom feature 65-80 grade heat and breaking balls, could make for a very formidable ball club in the coming years.
Btw-The White Sox will also have an opportunity to add to their prospect stockpile with a top-3 pick in next June’s Draft, consider an elite one by many pundits.
Agreed. Good time to be a White Sox fan looking ahead to the next couple years. The Crosstown series with the Cubs ought to be fun again come 2019.
Glad that Rey will get some more mlb experience. Not holding out hope but it’d be cool if the Sox could see more of these young fellas rise up through the system and contend sooner than expected.
If I were a sox fan I’d be hoping for some patience with them. Tim Anderson was rushed to the bigs without ever learning how to hit or really learning how to play SS and you see how that’s working out.
Too early to make that judgement. Tim Anderson had success at every level and was also a pleasant surprise to most White Sox fans in his MLB debut last season after being promoted from AAA on June 1oth to replace veteran SS Jimmy Rollins who was DFA’d and released.
Anderson has a ton of natural ability. He was a star high school basketball player in Alabama who didn’t play baseball until his junior year. Despite some quick success he only managed to land a single scholarship to a community college in Mississippi. Even after a fine first year at that school he received zero interest from MLB in the 2012 Draft. All that changed with a breakout sophomore season. The White Sox had the #17 overall pick in 2013 and chose Anderson with their first round selection. Almost 3 year later to the day, he was promoted to the White Sox 25-man active roster.
Anderson earned his promotion after a quick ascension through the White Sox minor league system. He is still a work in progress but the White Sox expect him to refine his game at the MLB level. Anderson has tremendous foot and bat speed and has made great strides learning the nuances of being a successful MLB shortstop. He lacks plate patience and is still adjusting to the speed of the game at the big league level. Experience should be his best teacher.
The White Sox had enough faith in his progress and ability to award Anderson a six-year contract worth $25 million, with two additional club options for the 2023 and 2024 seasons. The front office has been extremely prudent in dishing out such deals in recent years and it paid off big for them with the prospect return in their trades of Chris Sale, Jose Quintana and Adam Eaton. The hope now is for Anderson to become a key component of their new rebuild and Yoan Moncada’s middle infield partner for the next decade. They both figure to have a lot of company come 2019, 2020 and beyond.
Agreed. Also people lose the fact that his best friend, whom he considered like a brother, was shot and killed trying to break up a fight earlier this year. Tim has been having a lot of personal issues and the guy is not a robot. He has been getting counseling and it has been paying off as he has been doing a lot better with the bat and glove in recent weeks.
I think at the end of next season the Sox will be seen as having enough forethought to have tied up a good player for cheap (like with Eaton, Sale, and Quintana before him)
Walk rate even of late is higher than you’d like, but I’m glad they’re calling him up. Talk about a low-pressure way to get more experience.