Reynaldo Lopez is #BACK

Aside from Carlos Rodon, Reynaldo Lopez figured to be the one starter who’d flash above average consistency once the White Sox broke camp and headed north to Chicago this spring.  Kopech was shelved with TJS, Giolito was coming off a hilariously bad season and Ivan Nova, Dylan Covey and Manny Banuelos all were just there to eat as many innings as humanly possible.  Didn’t matter if they were good or bad.

But… he stunk.  Stunk to high heavens.  Take out one start earlier in the season against KC where he struck out 14 hitters over 6IP, he threw together this line from 3/30-6/26:

Repugnant.  Vile.  Disgusting.  He was just brutal all the way around.  Not just by missing spots and giving up dinger after dinger to a tune of a 2.14 HR/9 and 15.9% HR/FB rate…

it was bombs away.  But he let his brain wander too.  I wanted to murder him in cold blood on June 26th when he didn’t cover home on a wild pitch:

all of this had the fanbase calling for his head:

Truthfully, he deserved it.  But June 26th might very well might have been his turning point.  I’m sure Coop took his meaty paws and threatened physical violence in the dugout after he pulled that shit.  Nevertheless, whatever Lopez did to fine tune him self from that date, through the All Star break and to now has worked.  He vowed to be better, and he has been:

Those numbers will play all day.  His command of 3 pitches and his tempo have been impeccable.  I said this was the best pitch he’s thrown all year last night:

and I will stand by that statement.  0-2 fastball painted on the black at 98 isn’t getting touched by anyone in baseball.  And instead of the straight, lifeless fastball he’s for whatever reason developed this year, it had nice horizontal action on it to clip the black.  He was doing this with regularity last night:21 swings and misses, with 10 of them coming against his 4 seam fastball:

Sure it was against the hapless Marlins, but that’s whatever though – his stuff was so good last night he would have kept the Sox in the game against any team in baseball.  Command, command, command.  That’s the name of the game with him and he’s been great for the better part of a month now.

And assuming he keeps this up throughout the rest of the season (big assumption) – the White Sox still need to target 2 *NON-INNING EATING* starting pitchers this deadline and winter.  No more Ivan Novas or Dylan Coveys.  It’ll be Kopech, Cease, Giolito to start the season and it will be up to Lopez to force the White Sox hand to keep him in the rotation.  A rotation that will feature new starting pitchers that are… ya know… good.  But as they say, competition breeds success.