White Sox right-hander Sean Burke doesn’t come off as someone who’s easily angered. He looks mild-mannered and sounds soft-spoken.
But after his first two starts of June, Burke was simmering. He lasted no longer than 4 ⅓ innings in either, and he walked five in both.
He had entered the season aiming to pound the strike zone and get ahead of hitters, neither of which he did enough last season. He vowed this year would be different, no matter what.
“If I’m getting hit around the yard for 15 hits, I’m still going to keep making you beat me in the zone,” Burke told the Sun-Times this week. “And those two starts, I really hadn’t been in the zone. I went against my pact to myself.”
His third start that month came in New York against the Yankees, who had just pummeled the Sox 12-2 and 10-5. Burke followed opener Bryan Hudson, entering with two outs in the second inning and a 1-0 lead. He allowed a solo homer in the third, but that was it.
Burke went the rest of the way, giving up five hits and a walk and striking out eight, tying his then-season high, in the Sox’ 5-1 victory.
What changed?
“Honestly, I was just throwing pissed off,” he said. “Just throwing it as hard as I could in the zone, and I was able to get good results. I think [I showed] myself that’s how I need to be all the time. I can’t have those mental lapses of forgetting that.”
And he hasn’t. He’ll face the Yankees again Thursday on quite a run. In his last seven outings, beginning with that game at Yankee Stadium, Burke has a 1.61 ERA in 44 ⅔ innings with 57 strikeouts and only seven walks. He pitched without an opener in the last six — and he probably won’t need one again.
In the short time between last season and now, Burke thinks he has developed into more of a complete pitcher, which has sent his confidence soaring.
“I feel like I have more tools in my toolbox to get people out,” he said. “Last year at times I felt like I was kind of pigeon-holed into throwing a certain pitch in a certain location to certain hitters.
“Now I feel like I [have] the ability to throw pitches to different quadrants, to shape breaking balls differently, to get ahead of guys in different ways and then finish guys in different ways, too. I feel like when I’m out there pitching, I’m able to process it a lot better.”
Burke credited Sox reliever Grant Taylor with helping him keep his delivery consistent. In 2024, they were roommates for a month while rehabbing injuries at the Sox’ complex in Arizona. In that time, they exchanged ideas of how to help the other perform better. The way Burke tells it, Taylor had a profound impact on him.
“Grant gave me a lot of ideas, just talking to him about what he feels in his delivery,” Burke said. “Obviously, you see the product he is now, but a lot of people didn’t see him when he was rehabbing on the back fields, sitting at 101 [mph]. He’s really advanced for his age for how he moves, how he takes care of his body.”
Taylor learned from Wes Johnson, his pitching coach at LSU. Johnson preached using a “water bag” to help stabilize his pitchers’ deliveries. It’s a large tube strapped to a pitcher’s back that rests behind the shoulders. The water inside helps a pitcher with their rotation.
“As you go through your motion, you can hear and feel the water slosh,” Taylor said. “When I was trying to do it, I’m trying to see how loud and how powerful I can feel the water slosh and go from one side to the other.
“That was something that me and [Burke] talked about, and he liked it. You’re transferring more power from the ground up to your shoulders to get the rotation. It’s gotten bigger as the years have gone on.”
Never mind that Taylor was developing as a reliever and Burke as a starter. The goal for all pitchers is to repeat their delivery. The water bag helped Burke do that. But he still needed to learn to command his pitches. This season, it’s all coming together.
“The big thing I’ve seen from him is confidence and coming into his own with his own pitch plan,” Taylor said. “It’s been a lot of fun to watch. When we were rehabbing together, I was like, he’s going to be a really good big-leaguer. I think you saw that toward the end of last year, and then he’s just run away with it this year.”