DENVER — He’s glad to be back where it all began but that doesn’t mean Tommy Kahnle forgets the ups and downs he experienced with the Colorado Rockies.
A Rule 5 selection by Colorado in 2014, Kahnle has had a stellar 2017 season with the White Sox despite not breaking with the team out of camp. Kahnle, 27, spent two seasons with Colorado before the White Sox acquired him after the 2015 season. The right-hander said he thinks he has much better sense of how to be a big leaguer than he did with the Rockies after enduring a tough 2015 campaign.
“Failure,” Kahnle said. “This is definitely where I experienced (that). You’ve got to work hard. You can’t just show up every day. Here helped me set up for the future because I failed a lot. But I also pitched well my first year. I was basically good the whole year until that last month. It really did help to open my eyes to, ‘Hey, you’ve got to make some changes.’”
Kahnle appears to have taken those lessons to heart.
Heading into Saturday, Kahnle has 56 strikeouts and seven walks in 33 innings to go with a 2.45 ERA. He has walked just 1.9 batters per nine innings this season after issuing 5.50 in the first 129 1/3 innings of his career.
It was his 90 games in Colorado where Kahnle started to realize the importance of getting ahead in the count, something that finally kicked in late in the 2016 season with the White Sox. Last year, Kahnle walked 14 batters and struck out seven in his first 11 1/3 innings with the White Sox. Over his final 16 frames, Kahnle struck out 18 and walked only six.
“Here I was always falling behind hitters,” Kahnle said. “Was never really in the zone. I always had to rely on my changeup. That never really worked because you can’t rely on one pitch in the big leagues. It really taught me a lot. It helped.”
MLB
Kahnle didn’t always struggle with the Rockies. He posted a 2.62 ERA in his first 58 1/3 innings through the end of July. But he also walked 24 batters, which eventually caught up to him, and struggled the rest of the way, finishing the season with a 4.19 ERA. Kahnle didn’t return to the Rockies until part way through the 2015 season and finished that season with a 4.86 ERA. And of course there’s the now highly publicized spat with LaTroy Hawkins.
But overall, Kahnle said he has good memories of his Rockies experience.
“It’s nice to see all the guys I played with, a couple coaches and all the staff,” Kahnle said. “It’s cool. I haven’t seen them in a few years. It was good to see some of my friends.”