The White Sox announced that they have selected the contract of right-hander Jesse Scholtens, while fellow righty José Ruiz has been designated for assignment in a corresponding move.
Ruiz, 28, was claimed off waivers from Padres in December of 2017 and has been with the White Sox since that time. Over his first five years with the club, he posted generally solid numbers, including a 4.17 ERA over 174 appearances. His 11.1% walk rate was a bit high, but his 23% strikeout rate and 40.6% ground ball rate were both close to league average. Unfortunately, he’s been rocked in the early going here in 2023, allowing nine earned runs already through 3 2/3 innings.
The Sox will now have a week to trade Ruiz or pass him through waivers. He passed the three-year service time mark last year, meaning that he qualified for arbitration for the first time. He and the club agreed to a salary of $925K. Since he’s over that three-year mark, if he clears waivers and is outrighted, he will have the right to reject the assignment and elect free agency. However, since he has less than five years of service time, he would have to leave that money on the table in order to hit the open market.
Scholtens, 29, cracks a major league roster for the first time after many years in the minors. He was selected by the Padres in the ninth round of the 2016 draft. He moved his way up the minors with that organization, working primarily as a starter, but never got added to their roster. Last year, he made 17 starts and 22 relief appearances in Triple-A, posting a 4.10 ERA in 83 1/3 innings. He struck out 25.4% of batters faced while walking 8.6% and getting grounders on 37.9% of balls in play. He reached free agency at the end of the season and signed a minor league deal with the White Sox.
The White Sox were roughed up a bit this week, allowing 31 runs in a three-game series against the Giants. Scholtens will give them a fresh arm in the bullpen and could perhaps serve as a multi-inning option, as James Fegan of The Athletic points out that Scholtens was stretched out during Spring Training. The righty already made one Triple-A start, tossing 74 pitchers over four innings on Saturday.
Joke of a team.
Hey Ace, you’ve got some calls holding……. it looks lille the As are on line 1, Pirates on line 2, Nationals on 3, Marlins on 4, Rockies on 5.
-.7 war in just 4 games pitched and only 6 games into the season for his team, yikes
What happened to it’s early don’t panic? Hahn made it a week before he had to DFA somebody. Lazy analysis?
9 runs allowed in 3.2 innings will get most relievers the boot regardless of time of year. Unfortunately for all the people who blamed LaRussa for the White Sox issues Tony’s gone and the team is still bad so Tony wasn’t really the problem. 2021 was an outlier…
Tony was a big part of the problem, no one should be giving him a pass. I believe his hiring really set this team back at least 1 year, if not longer. While he may not specifically had a lot to do with this club failing last season, his hiring I think did far more damage and hope taught Reinsdorf a lesson about his tampering with the team.
One thing the Sox are good at is expressing cliches. Grifol excused Anderson’s ejection as “passion,” called Lynn a “a warrior” after he was rocked for several homers, and said “it’s a long season.” Only Lynn seemed to have it right when he described yesterday’s outing as “piss-poor.”
They can use all the cliches they want, but this isn’t Grammer school. Everyone doesn’t get a medal just for participating. Ruiz is hopefully the first of many bullpen arms who hit the road. The bullpen was bad last year and it’s all the same guys back again this season. Grifol has made some mistakes already, but he got this one right.
Agree, but not sure what arms replace the guys they’re releasing. Quick math. Sox starters average about 5 IP per start. That means the bullpen needs to pick up 4 IP per game. 162 games x 4 = 648 innings for the bullpen over the season. Sox will need at the minimum, 10 relievers to average 64 IP for the season. Name the 10 guys. I’ll start, Jesse Scholtens is 1.
Clearly the White Sox rotation needs to provide more quality innings. Their bullpen should have a couple of significant additions come late May or June with the return of closer Liam Hendriks and southpaw stud Garrett Crochet. Hopefully the team will still be afloat in the AL standings when they return. 🙂
I hate when managers take pitchers out after five innings. Maybe they’re afraid of having a pitcher face a lineup for the third time but come on. It’s time for managers to stop treating pitchers like babies. Let them have the challenge of the third time through. Alcantara can do it. So can Scherzer and Verlander. Starters work on going long innings. It would help if Grifol let them because every time he takes a starter out, the bullpen blows it. And I don’t see much hope on the horizon. Also, Hendriks only pitches one inning and that’s only when the Sox have the lead in the ninth.
Amen… Absolutely have to allow starters starters to go 100+, which should be 6 IP. If they can’t, they’re killing the bullpen.
It’s early. One bad series. People forget that the rotation was brilliant against the Astros. 4 consecutive quality starts
The starting rotation was solid in their first series against the Astros but the only quality start they received was the Dylan Cease performance in the opener when he pitched 6.1 innings allowing just one run. The other SP’s failed to reach the requisite 6 IP’s in order to qualify for a QS.
The fifth game of the season, the White Sox home opener versus the Giants was when the rotation began its run of awful performances. Michael Kopech began that stretch of pitching HR derby to the opposition. Only Dylan Cease pitched decently in the sixth game when he managed to hold the Giants to just one run in his 5 inning outing, that tally being a HR. His command was off that day which accounted for his minimal inning total. He walked 5 Giants in those 5 innings and left the contest tossing 99 pitches, just 52 for strikes.
This staff had the same issue last season. Kopech averaged 4.2 per start. Cueto not only pitched well, but he ate a ton of innings and saved the bullpen going 6.2 per start.
What’s Grammer school? Homespun wisdom in the midst of the postal and fat guy while Woody wipes down glasses?
You are indeed accurate- they did fall short of the 6. Just sayin 1 solid and 1 bad for the big hoss and the now svelter Gio. At least the lineup is hitting. Livelier ball? Effects of shift? And good pt about Dylan-that’s a worrisome sign- the bad Dylan that labours through 100 in 5
Yeah, if I hear Grifol express how a guy had good stuff when getting rocked for 5 or more runs, I just have to laugh.
Just ran into Ruiz at Taco Bell. We shared a nachos bell grande with extra beef. He said he made millions compliments of horrible ownership on the south side of chicago. He also informed me that the royals and angels are in the running to sign him. Stay tuned
Next time you’re at Taco Bell, order the White Sox a Jhonny Brito.
I see what you did there
Huh he’s been solid
Maybe one day this team will learn they should have piggyback starters in their bullpen ready to go in the 4-5th innings instead of the reclamation projects relievers. Call up Davis, Stiever and use Lambert…
They have Jimmy Lambert for that role. Martin Davis needs to pitch regularly in the AAA Charlotte rotation in case of an injury to a current starter. Unfortunately, he’s their top depth piece at this point in time.
Jonathan Stiever is still building up his arm strength at AAA Charlotte. He spent most of 2022 on the White Sox’s 60-day injured list while recovering from August 2021 lat surgery. As we post, he’s only pitched 2 innings thus far at Charlotte in 2023 after pitching minimally there last September.
As the article suggests, Jesse Scholtens will now join Jimmy Lambert in the role of a White Sox long reliever. He’s been primarily a career minor league SP and had already made one such appearance at AAA Charlotte this season.
The White Sox also signed former closer Alex Colomé per their transaction page: mlb.com/whitesox/roster/transactions.
5.76 ERA for Twins last year. Was with Washington this spring. 7 runs over 9 IP. Rearranging deck chairs.
Just reporting something that occurred ‘quietly’ yesterday. Don’t shoot the messenger!
Colome was great with the Sox. He rarely blew a save. But they decided they needed someone who threw 100+ mph in the closer role and let him go. He hasn’t done well with the Twins and the Nats. I won’t say the Sox are righting a wrong by signing him because he may never return to his previous form with them, but I think he deserves a shot especially since the FO has shown time and again that they won’t go out and get some proven arms for this so-called “contender”. You can’t keep telling us you’re trying by signing a bunch of minor leaguers and dfa’s.
That someone was Liam Hendriks. Few White Sox fans will gripe about that swap of closers.
You don’t think the Sox should have two closers in their bullpen? What ever could go wrong with that?
LOL, although two closers are better than the ZERO they currently feature. That said, I still believe Reynaldo Lopez could handle the role adequately until Liam returns.
Hahn getting the band back together!! Caution. Combustible, keep fire away.
Jackie’s his usual self though. So that’s good. Sorry for my racism, btw. I’m gonna go ahead and suspend myself for a game.
Since when is a 4.17 ERA “generally solid”? Then they replace Ruiz with a guy who had a 4.10 ERA in AAA. That’s the kind of depth that will get them past the Guardians and Twins.
Ethan Katz must have forgotten to have “spin rate” translated into Spanish.
Giants ran all over Ruiz which probably led to this decision.
Say what you will about the pitching, but they have still struggled mightily in situational hitting. Runner at 3rd with 1 out or no outs, it’s almost a guarantee that they won’t score.
RISP was deadly last season, meaning it pretty much killed the team from winning. They still have trouble with that, but at least they have two players capable of remedying that: Moncada and Jimenez, whenever they decide they’re healthy enough to take the field.
Yeah and lack of hitting with RISP was happening again in that Houston series.. based loaded twice in the game with no runs coming across the plate (with 0 outs no less). I believe the Sox won, should have been a laugh-er but was fairly close all game IIRC.
Gio’s line: 4 innings pitched, 7 runs, all earned, Nice to see him in mid season form
Sure, but only on 12 hits….at some point someone in the dugout should have said, “hey Skip, doesn’t seem like he has it today.”
That’s been Grifol’s biggest flaw so far. He doesn’t get a reliever up fast enough. Kopech gave up four hr’s in an inning against the Giants and no one was up in the bullpen. He sent Katz out to talk to Kopech, but the relievers were still sitting. Kopech continued throwing bombs. That’s when Grifol got the bullpen going. He did that again Thursday, leaving Giolito in too long. Hopefully Grifol will learn, and soon.
The problem is the bullpen is not much better. I mean I have little faith in Grifol as LaRussa was not the only issue with this club, but Im sure Grifol is struggling with what he has, especially when Lynn starts looking like a BP pitcher. Im not impressed with Katz either for that matter.
Detroit will give you Cisenero straight up !
Good to see a guy who preserved in the minors make his MLB debut (last night)!