CHICAGO – Hey there,
In the White Sox clubhouse at Guaranteed Rate Field, the corner locker near the entrance belongs to Kevin Pillar.
The guy next to him: Nicky Lopez.
And the name a couple lockers over from Lopez: Michael Soroka.
Three over from Soroka: Braden Shewmake.
The 2024 White Sox are full of former Braves.
“We’ve definitely talked about it,” Lopez told me. “It’s cool to have familiar faces around you –especially guys with the makeup that they have, too. A bunch of good guys. To be able to come here and kind of try to teach guys here what we learned in Atlanta, and try to get people on board there, and then people that were here teaching us stuff that they learned here. It’s a good mix of people.”
But here is what I did not know: It seems the White Sox – who have had pretty public culture issues in recent seasons – might see value in the former Braves because of the environment from which they came.
That’s something Soroka told me.
“It’s something that we’ve actually talked about as a team, is that we’ve brought some guys into this clubhouse who have been on winning teams,” Soroka said. “Obviously, some of us weren’t all that active during the World Series, (but) nevertheless being a part of a winning culture, understand how that is, I think that’s something that (general manager) Chris Getz has made a point to do.”
The White Sox received Soroka, Lopez, Shewmake, Jared Shuster (in the minors right now) and minor-league pitcher Riley Gowens when they traded Aaron Bummer to the Braves. And they added Pillar in the offseason.
This winter, the White Sox also added veteran catcher Martín Maldonado, who won a World Series with Houston in 2022. They have a couple former Dodgers prospects.
Will it all translate to winning?
Tough to tell.
But the White Sox believed they needed to fill the room with winning players.
“I think that’s kind of how he wanted to make this year, was understand that, although we’re in a transition, it’s still time to change this dynamic, just a little bit, into driving the best out of everybody,” Soroka said. “...We have the talent. It’s just about kind of extracting it, getting it playing every day. That’s one thing Atlanta always does well – they play up to their standards and their expectations, and they let their talent play. I think that’s just something that we need to find a way to do.”
The Braves were once an up-and-coming team. When Soroka debuted, they were looking to take the next step. They overachieved in 2018 and, in 2019, proved they were there to stay.
Soroka was injured when the Braves won the World Series. Lopez only spent half a season with Atlanta. Shewmake only had a brief major-league stint with the Braves. Shuster made a batch of starts for the Braves. Pillar was only in Atlanta for one season.
But the Braves are at the point where teams will try to use them as a model – not only for building and keeping a core, but for creating a positive culture. Atlanta’s clubhouse environment is one of its strengths.
The White Sox want to foster a winning environment.
“I think it’s just the expectation that you trust that you guys are good enough and you belong at the top of the league, you belong winning games, and you kind of just expect it,” Soroka said. “It’s not necessarily that easy to go out there and just say, ‘I expect to win.’ It’s just kind of that inner belief with a team that if one guy has a down day, the other two or three are gonna pick him up.”
Soon, Soroka added: “That’s just kind of how it starts. I’d like to be the start of something new here.”
If the White Sox turn it around at some point, perhaps the former Braves will have played a part in it all.
Extra Innings
-I wouldn’t be too concerned about Orlando Arcia, who received a day off on Wednesday. Luis Guillorme was in the lineup instead.
Arcia felt tender on his side after a swing he took on Tuesday. On Tuesday night, he said he could play in the series finale. And on Wednesday morning, he said he felt 100%.
This seemed like more of a precautionary off day. There’s no reason to take any chances this early in the season.
-On the day before his wedding, Nicky Lopez received a call.
It was from Braves president of baseball operations Alex Anthopoulos.
“When he called me (to inform him of the trade), he knew I was getting married and he made it a point to tell me that first,” Lopez said with a smile. “He’s like, ‘I know you’re getting married and you don’t want to worry about this stuff.’ What he said to me was very cool. He reiterated that, ‘It’s a business, but maybe we’ll see you down the road.’”
Lopez laughs about the fact that it happened a day before his wedding. He appreciated the call and the transparency.
Did he know he might not return?
“I knew there was a possibility, just going into it, only because arbitration – the deeper you go into arbitration, the more times something can happen,” Lopez said. “So, I kind of knew that something could happen, but it was just a matter of if it would happen or what. AA called me the day before my wedding and was super transparent with me, just told me straight up that (the Braves) were going after a couple guys, a couple pitchers, and had to make a move. But he was awesome to me. I loved my time there.”
-This spring, our Gabriel Burns went to Arizona to chat with Soroka about the end to his Braves tenure and his new career.
Something that struck me in Gabe’s piece: Soroka talked about how this fresh start might help in that, he said, “You get here, some people don’t know what you’ve been through, which can be a blessing because you’re not answering questions about it all day. It gets to a point you want people to stop asking, ‘How’s your ankle?’ ‘How’s your shoulder?’ It almost puts you in a frame of mind that you’re thinking maybe it isn’t OK, and all this kind of stuff, that you have reasons to have doubt.”
So, I asked Soroka if this fresh start had indeed helped him leave the past behind.
“Yeah, for sure,” he said. “It’s a clean slate. A chance for new impressions. Yeah, everything. It’s new minds, new a lot of things. And sometimes that’s just what you need is just a little bit of a switch up. Yeah, I think turning a page on that and just stop answering questions about why I’m not chasing to be exactly what I was when I was 20 and why I think that there’s actually more in there than there was back then and how I kind of was hitting a ceiling. Yeah, it’s just kind of being able to move on, take the path that I want for my career.”
-At 40 years old, Jesse Chavez is still on a major-league roster – and not only that, but he’s employed by arguably baseball’s best team.
Luis Guillorme, a former Met, has faced Chavez before. I asked him if he remembers it.
“I think there’s two things with Jesse,” Gullorme told me. “One is, he’s got, like, 37 different pitches that he throws. And besides that, he spots really well. He’s a guy that really knows how to pitch and he knows how to attack you.”
Guillorme, by the way, is 1-for-2 against Chavez with a double and an RBI. Now they’re teammates.
-It’s a small sample, but here are the Braves starters’ numbers on the first turn through the rotation: Eight earned runs over 22-2/3 innings. As the Braves prepared for their sixth game of the season, their starters’ 3.18 ERA – again, a miniscule sample – ranked ninth in baseball.
Surprisingly, the worst start came from Max Fried, who didn’t make it out of the first inning. He recorded only two outs as he logged the shortest start of his career.
A pleasant occurrence: Charlie Morton and Reynaldo López turned in terrific outings, albeit against the White Sox. They combined for 11-2/3 innings of one-run baseball.
It appears Atlanta will have a strong rotation this season.
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