Anthony Kay regained his confidence overseas, White Sox hope he can translate that success to the majors

ORLANDO, Fla. — Anthony Kay knew it was a time limit overseas for him. From the moment he signed his contract to pitch in the Nippon Professional Baseball league he knew that he wanted to return to the states.

Kay, who signed with the White Sox on a two-year, $12 million contract with a mutual option for the 2028 season, had ambitions of reinventing himself. But it wasn’t instantaneous success for Kay.

“I really wanted to pitch like I was in America … get a lot of strikeouts and all that,” Kay said. “I struggled a little bit my first year over there just giving up a lot of free walks. Once I kind of realized to be a little bit more aggressive and attack the zone, I think my second year, I think my second year that showed that’s why I had the year that I had.

“I think going over to Japan and being consistently a starter for a couple of years kind of helped me regain that confidence as a pitcher and kind of helped me develop and be consistent and find myself.”

Kay lowered his ERA from 3.28 to 1.74 last season after adding a sinker which helped him lower the ERA and reign in his control issues that plagued him during his first stint in the majors. He credited his stint in the NPO for helping him find the zone and limit walks.

He’ll take the lessons learned overseas back to what he hopes is a more successful go around in the majors. Kay picked the Sox partly because of the organization's success in recent years transitioning guys who went overseas back to majors (Erick Fedde), and turning relievers into starters (Garrett Crochet)

“I had a Zoom call with a bunch of the pitching guys and coordinators and with Will Venable,” Kay said. “It seemed like a really good fit for me to come back to America andget back into the big leagues. I think we had a pretty similar vision of what I wanted to do, and it was a really good fit.”

40-man flexibility

The Sox have 35 players on the 40-man roster ahead of Wednesday’s Rule 5 draft, which was by design according to general manager Chris Getz.

"I wanted to be flexible,” he said. “When you're going into making a decision whether to protect someone, obviously the player evaluation comes first, but also the probability in which a player is going to be able to stick on a major league club.”

Prospects moving to rotation

The Sox don’t envision moving any of their starting pitching prospects (Tanner McDougal, Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith) to the major-league bullpen.

"At this point we're focused on stretching them out as starters,” Getz said. “I think as the season evolves you become a little bit more open-minded in how you're going to utilize these arms. Most importantly you look at the bulk innings. You look at Mike Vasil last year, a guy that actually took some starts, he had one-inning outings but he also had a lot of three, four-inning outings as well that really helped us.

“There's an opportunity at some point, maybe to have those conversations with some of those guys. But most importantly I want those guys going into spring training fighting for a starting position."