White Sox' Drew Thorpe adjusts, adapts in first big-league experience

MIAMI — It’s early – very early -- but right-hander Drew Thorpe’s first five major league starts are suggesting the White Sox’ trade of Dylan Cease has a chance to be a good one.

The Minor League Pitcher of the Year in 2023 who was traded for Juan Soto before Cease, Thorpe’s 6 1/3 innings of one-run ball against the Marlins Friday lowered his ERA to 3.71. He’s had one bad start – eight runs (seven earned) at the Diamondbacks in his second outing after being called up from Double-A Birmingham where he pitched to a 1.35 ERA in 11 starts – and four good ones with one, zero, two and one earned runs allowed.

“The kid is mature beyond his years,” pitching coach Ethan Katz told the Sun-Times Saturday. “Everything that has come his way he’s taken to and worked on.”

After his callup, Katz said Thorpe was losing deception in his delivery.

“His front side was getting too low,” Katz said. “He’s done a good job fixing that in the last three starts after we brought the information to him. And then his breaking balls were blending – they were the same – but he’s doing a good job now of separating the cutter and slider speed differential.”

With a four-seam fastball averaging 91 mph, Thorpe is not a flamethrower but his changeup is a premium pitch and it needs to play it off his cutter and slider. And he has to locate the fastball for maximum effectiveness.

Early on, “he was opening up too soon, pulling balls down, and he wasn’t getting the ball to the top of the zone, which is the ideal location for his fastball,” Katz said.

He’s also getting his front side higher now, which hiked his velocity a notch.

“He has the great changeup,” Katz said. “That’s why he has to have the other stuff, too, to protect that pitch. Guys can’t sit on that. Get the fastball to the top, getting in on guys, making sure the secondary spin is not the same.”

Thorpe took a shutout into the seventh inning of Friday's win. His 6.1 strikeouts per nine innings rank 11th on the Sox but a 1.125 WHIP is second only to Garrett Crochet.

"Thorpe was good. We couldn't get to the changeup," Marlins manager Skip Schumaker said. "Even when we sat on it, we couldn't hit it. It was just a really effective pitch tonight against really righties and lefties. A lot of soft contact, not a ton of punchouts [five] but just a lot of weak contact."

The Sox also got reliever Steven Wilson, pitching prospect Jairo Iriarte and outfielder Samuel Zavala in the Cease trade. Zavala, 19, is batting .203/.357/.342 with six homers in 70 games for High-A Winston-Salem. He’s the Sox’ No. 6 prospect per MLB Pipeline. Iriarte, ranked No. 9, is 3-6 with a 4.34 ERA at Double-A Birmingham, and Wilson has a 3.46 ERA in 30 relief appearances for the Sox.

Crochet, Thorpe, Jonathan Cannon and prospects such as Noah Schultz, Ky Bush, Nick Nastrini and Iriarte have shown enough to create some optimism for the vital pitching component of the Sox' rebuild.

For fans, trades of stars like Cease and talk of trading Crochet can be cringeworthy. Time will tell, but early on, anyway, Thorpe is doing his part to make the trades of proven commodities for prospects feel acceptable, at least for now. A 1.47 ERA over 18 1/3 innings in his last three starts has helped Sox starters post a 3.28 ERA since June 7 for a 26-64 team.

General manager Chris Getz would like to add more future pieces before the deadline.

Cease, meanwhile, is 7-7 with a 4.24 ERA and a 3.27 FIP (fielding independent pitching) for the Padres. He has pitched to an 8.05 ERA over his last four starts.