Lance Lynn walked five batters in Toronto on Monday night. All the free passes made for another miserable night on the bump for the White Sox starter, whose ERA climbed to 7.52 after allowing four runs in five innings.
Lynn had held the Blue Jays scoreless through three innings and quickly retired the first two batters he faced in the fourth inning. That is when things began to unravel. Lynn issued a two-out walk to Alejandro Kirk, which led to a single from Brandon Belt, then snowballed into a run-scoring double from Whit Merrifield. That set the table for Cavan Biggio, who was batting just .111 entering the game, to hit a three-run homer and give the Blue Jays a 4-2 lead. That inning turned out to be the difference.
“He got those two quick outs,” White Sox manager Pedro Grifol said after the 5-2 loss on Monday. “Two-out walks, they tend to hurt.”
Lynn went back out for the fifth inning and retired the side in order, but the five walks helped his pitch count rise to 101, which knocked him out of the game.
The White Sox acquired Lynn to be an innings eater. He has thrown over 200 plus innings three times, made 30-plus starts five times, and struck out 150 batters eight times in his career. Thus far, the White Sox have gotten more than they have bargained for.
In 2021 he had the lowest ERA among qualified American League starting pitchers at 2.69, ranked first in opponent OPS at .605, allowed three runs or less in 24 of his 28 starts, and finished third in the AL Cy Young voting. After a slow start to the 2022 season after recovering from knee surgery, Lynn ended the season with nine quality starts in his final 12 games.
This season Lance Lynn has suddenly fallen off a cliff. He has only had one start where he has made it into the sixth inning. Opponents are hitting .309 off of him. So why the sudden change?
Lynn’s velocity hasn’t dipped much from previous years despite having knee surgery in 2022 and pitching for Team USA in the World Baseball Classic before the start of the season. It isn’t his velocity that is hurting him. It is the lack of strikes.
The lack of strikes allows hitters to tee off on Lynn, who relies heavily on his fastball. The 35-year-old throws his four-seam fastball 43.5 percent of the time. When you add his cutter and sinker to the equation, Lynn throws some variety of a fastball 79.8 percent of the time. Having command is critical when you lean on a fastball that much and only average 92 mph.
When Lynn gets behind in the count, that 92 mph fastball looks like a beachball to hitters. The 6-5 right-hander from Indiana only walked 19 batters in 21 starts last season. This season Lynn has already walked 13 batters in his first five outings. His 9.8 percent walk rate is the third highest of his career. Meanwhile, his 62.7 strike rate is his lowest mark since 2018.
“He always competes, that’s never off,” Grifol said before the game at Rogers Centre. “But command of the strike zone, you know, he’s had some walks that are uncharacteristic of his game.”
Lynn needs to get back to pounding the strike zone and fast. On Monday, only 59 of his 101 pitches found the strike zone. The results tell the story.
Part of what made Lynn so great in 2021 was that he was not afraid to attack hitters with his fastball. Mike Trout, the best fastball hitter in baseball, was standing in the box during his first start in a White Sox uniform, and Lynn peppered the zone with fastballs and struck him out. Lynn is not afraid to challenge anyone with a fastball, no matter who is standing 60 feet six inches away.
But White Sox manager Pedro Grifol believes that there is nothing wrong with Lynn’s mentality but rather his mechanics. He told MLB.com that his number two starter has spun out on his delivery early this year and is failing to square up home plate, which allows him to deliver consistent pitches in the zone.
Lynn now ranks in the bottom 42 percentile in the MLB in walks, 38th in average exit velocity, 20th in expected slugging, expected batting average, and 18th in hard-hit percentage. From afar, it would look like Lynn is washed with those numbers. But Lynn has never had overpowering stuff. In reality, he just needs to throw more strikes.
