GLENDALE, Ariz. – You’d need a tally counter for an accurate total of times “excited” is uttered by players, coaches, managers and front office people at spring training, even for a team like the White Sox.
Players are “excited” about fresh starts, new teams, new approaches, new pitches, new equipment and new jobs. Everybody is saying it.
But how excited can we be about a team that could be baseball’s worst for a second consecutive season, a group bracing itself to upstream against the forces of another impending 100-loss season. It will take a 22-win improvement from a 41-121 record for the Sox avoid losing 100 games for the third season in a row.
General manager Chris Getz suggests the Sox are worth watching, though.
“There are going to be plenty of exciting stories,” Getz said the day before spring training opened Wednesday.
Perhaps. Fans might not be as excited about the organization’s latest rebuild as Getz, the one in charge of carrying out chairman Jerry Reinsdorf’s orders, and who can blame them?
Maybe this team will grow on them. Perhaps young pitchers like Sean Burke, who provided three starts and one relief appearance in September, can be someone for fans to get behind. That was a modest but encourage development for the Sox’ future, and there are a slew of other young arms on their pitching staff with pitching prospects such as first-round draft picks Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith likely making debuts at some point this season.
“Everyone is excited to take that next step in their development,” Burke told the Sun-Times Saturday. “The pitching staff is loaded with talent.”
Burke, 25, was ranked as high as No. 5 on MLB Pipeline’s White Sox list. A sore shoulder limited him to nine starts in 2023, and he pitched to a 4.62 ERA with 86 strikeouts in 64 1/3 innings for Triple-A Charlotte last season. But for the Sox in three starts and a relief appearance in September, he posted a glitzy 1.42 ERA with 22 strikeouts over 19 1/3 innings.
His major league sample size is small but it’s something to be, dare we say, excited about.
Burke took the September showing in stride. A confident presence oozed from his 6-5 frame.
“Reflecting back over the season I always believed that I belong here, I can do this,” he said.
Even when he was struggling in the minor leagues, Burke said he always believed he’d be a big leaguer, so last season’s successful, albeit brief, debut did not come as a surprise.
“This year I want to make the team out of camp, I want to be healthy and go from there,” he said. “Just continue the success I had last year.”
And land a spot in the starting rotation. He hopes to present a better two-seam fastball in his five-pitch mix.
“Not trying to dot the pitch but getting it on the inner half and run it into righties to kind of get them off my breaking ball will be really helpful,” Burke said.
It’s spring training and a new calendar year, far removed from 2024, which was worse for some than others. Burke was only there for the last month, and he senses a different vibe now.
“Everybody is more upbeat this year,” he said. “We have some new staff, obviously [first-year manager] Will [Venable] came in. The energy, honestly, is starting to shift. It picked up at the end of last year and carried over to the spring. We have a good group of guys in here, we all like each other and we’re ready to take the challenge.
“Everybody is more excited.”
And there you have it.