Michael Kopech

The White Sox are moving starter Michael Kopech to a bullpen role to begin the 2024 season, general manager Chris Getz announced to reporters on Thursday (X link via Sox Machine’s James Fegan). That’ll further shake up a rotation that suddenly projects to look quite different following last night’s trade sending Dylan Cease to San Diego.

Kopech was once a highly-touted prospect but has struggled to establish himself as a viable big league starter and is now on the cusp of his 28th birthday. Selected by the Red Sox with the 33rd overall pick in 2014, he was a top 100 prospect as he worked his way up the minor league ladder and was a key piece of the 2016 trade that sent Chris Sale to Boston.

The White Sox were surely hoping that Kopech would be a building block of their future rotation and promoted Kopech in August of 2018, but he required Tommy John surgery just about a month later. He missed all of the 2019 season and then sat out the 2020 pandemic season as well. After missing two full years of his development, he pitched primarily in relief in 2021 to build up his workload. He tossed 69 1/3 innings over 44 appearances that year with a solid 3.50 earned run average.

In 2022, he was finally able to secure a rotation gig at the big league level and the results were mixed. On the surface, his 3.54 ERA over 25 starts looked nice, but the numbers under the hood were less encouraging. His 21.3% strikeout rate and 11.5% walk rate were both a bit worse than league average. He seemed to have had some luck keeping runs off the board thanks to a .223 batting average on balls in play and 74.2% strand rate. His 4.50 FIP and 4.73 SIERA suggested that he may not have been as effective as his ERA implied.

Last year, his luck turned for the worse, as he finished the season with a 5.43 ERA. His control took a concerning blow, as he gave out walks to 15.4% of opponents. He was bumped to the bullpen late in the year but seemed like he had a path to continue starting in 2024. The Sox traded Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito at the deadline last year and then saw Mike Clevinger hit free agency coming into this winter. Rumors swirled around Dylan Cease all winter until he was finally traded to the Padres yesterday.

Despite all of those holes in the rotation, it seems the Sox don’t have much faith in Kopech as a starter at the moment and he’ll wind up in the bullpen. For what it’s worth, he’s allowed six earned run in seven innings this spring, giving out six walks in the process while also hitting two batters. He’s now just two years away from becoming a free agent so perhaps the Sox will give rotation opportunities to younger guys during their current teardown, while perhaps Kopech can turn himself into a trade chip if he can serve as an effective reliever.

Kopech doesn’t seem thrilled with his new assignment. “It’s not my first choice where I want to be,” he said to reporters, including Scott Merkin of MLB.com. “I like starting, but I’ve had success in that role. And ultimately we are looking at what’s best for the team this year. If I can help us win games in the back of the game, I’m excited to do that.”

The Sox have brought in various fresh arms to the system this year, having signed Erick Fedde and Chris Flexen while also trading for Michael Soroka, Jared Shuster, Drew Thorpe and Jairo Iriarte. They got Jake Eder from the Marlins in last year’s Jake Burger trade. Garrett Crochet seems poised to move in the opposite direction to Kopech, jumping from a relief role into the rotation.

For now, the rotation projects to include Fedde, Flexen, Crochet and Soroka in four spots. The club was recently linked to free agent Michael Lorenzen and Clevinger as well, so a late signing could fill out the rotation. As the season rolls along, some guys will get hurt or may end up as trade targets at the deadline. Soroka and Flexen are impending free agents while Fedde is on a two-year deal. If Lorenzen or Clevinger sign, they would presumably be for one- or two-year deals.

As rotation spots open, perhaps Kopech could retake one, but the group of Shuster, Thorpe, Iriarte, Eder and others will be jockeying for auditions. With the club clearly focused on the future, they may be more inclined to give opportunities to those young and controllable guys as opposed to a 28-year-old whose club control is running out.

White Sox right-hander Michael Kopech underwent surgery to remove a cyst from his right knee this morning, per a club announcement. The rehab process is expected to take six to eight weeks.

Assuming his recovery progresses as anticipated, Kopech should have a normal offseason. It’s nevertheless a sour conclusion to a disappointing year for the 27-year-old. The Sox surely hoped the one-time top prospect would take a step forward in his second full season as a big league starter. Kopech had pitched to a 3.54 ERA a year ago, and while his peripherals were never that impressive, his performance regressed well beyond expectations.

Kopech’s 2023 campaign concludes with a 5.43 ERA across 129 1/3 frames. His 22.7% strikeout rate was a bit above last year’s mark. Yet his walks spiked from an already worrisome 11.5% rate to a completely untenable 15.4% clip. Kopech also surrendered over two home runs per nine innings. Between the walks and the longballs, he has the highest FIP (6.47) of any pitcher with 100+ frames.

Chicago kicked Kopech to the bullpen this month. He finished his season with three relief outings and a “start” as an opener in which he worked one inning. He allowed at least one run in each of those appearances.

New general manager Chris Getz and his front office will have to decide Kopech’s role this offseason. He was effective as a multi-inning reliever two seasons ago, tallying 69 1/3 frames of 3.50 ERA ball with an elite 36.1% strikeout rate and a decent 8.4% walk percentage. Since stretching back out into the rotation to open the ’22 campaign, he’s allowing 4.52 earned runs per nine with a 22% strikeout percentage and 13.6% walk rate.

The Sox have almost no certainty in their starting five. Dylan Cease is locked in as the staff ace, though he’s coming off a relatively disappointing season himself on the heels of last year’s Cy Young runner-up performance. Mike Clevinger is likely to opt for a $4MM buyout over his end of a $12MM mutual option. Jesse Scholtens and Touki Toussaint are better served for depth roles. Garrett Crochet has angled for a starting spot but only logged 10 MLB innings this year because of injury.

That all seems to point to Kopech getting another crack at a rotation spot. He’ll certainly need to perform better than he did this year if he’s to hold that job for a full season. The ’24 campaign will be his second season of arbitration eligibility. Kopech will receive a slight raise on this year’s $2.05MM salary (barring a surprise non-tender) and is on track for free agency after 2025.

It’s been an uneven season for White Sox right-hander Michael Kopech. He opened the season with a brutal first month where he posted a 7.01 ERA in 25 2/3 innings of work, though he was much more effective in May and June, with a combined 2.83 ERA in 60 1/3 innings across 11 starts. Kopech then missed two weeks leading into the All Star break with a bout of shoulder inflammation, and the wheels have completely come off for Kopech in eight starts since then.

The 27-year-old hurler has posted a brutal 7.15 ERA. Looking under the hood at those eight appearances, Kopech has averaged just over four innings a start while allowing more earned runs (27) and walks (31) than strikeouts (25). That translates to a meager 15.1% strikeout rate and an unbelievable 19.1% walk rate over 34 innings since the All Star break.

While Kopech’s brutal second half, uneven first half, and previous success out of the bullpen where he sports a much more palatable career 3.90 ERA all suggest a return to a relief role could benefit the right-hander, James Fegan of the Chicago Sun Times relays that, according to manager Pedro Grifol, a change in role for Kopech isn’t something the club is considering, either for the remainder of the 2023 campaign or for next season.

“Him not being a starter is not anywhere close to what we’re thinking and anywhere close to what he should be thinking,” Grifol told Fegan, “…even the other day, he was able to gain a little bit of confidence as the outing went on, he was up to 98. The potential’s there.” Grifol goes on to argue that the key to Kopech finding success as a starter figures to be on the mental side of the game, saying that “It’s his responsibility and ours to come together to get that mental side right.”

It’s worth noting that the south-siders are lacking in options to replace Kopech for the remainder of 2023 at this point, what with both Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn having been shipped away prior to the trade deadline. With Mike Clevinger, Jesse Scholtens, Touki Toussaint and Dylan Cease all already in the rotation, the club’s options for starting depth on the 40-man roster are limited to the likes of Deivi Garcia and Luis Patino, each of whom were placed on waivers by teams in desperate need of starting depth themselves due to poor performance.

Still, that the Sox don’t seem interested in trying the former first-round pick out of the bullpen even heading into next season is indicative of how the club sees itself headed into the 2024 campaign. With Cease locked into the club’s 2024 rotation barring a trade, Scholtens having made himself an interesting back-end option in his own right, and a deep free agent class of pitchers on the horizon this offseason, it would certainly be possible for the White Sox to construct a rotation that would push Kopech to the bullpen. On the other hand, those types of decisions would presumably fall to the club’s GM, and the Sox have yet to hire a replacement for Rick Hahn and Ken Williams, both of whom were fired last week.

It’s also worth noting that while Grifol indicates Kopech will begin the 2024 season as a member of the club’s starting rotation, internal options from the farm system could make their way to the majors throughout the season and challenge for the right-hander’s rotation spot. Recently-acquired right-handers Nick Nastrini and Jake Eder are both prospects with rotation potential who reached the Double-A level before joining the organization, while oft-injured left-hander Garrett Crochet certainly has the stuff to be an interesting rotation option in the event he can get sufficiently healthy this offseason to stretch out as a starter.