Carson Fulmer's 2018 debut didn't look anything like the Carson Fulmer from spring training

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Carson Fulmer struggled this spring. And that brought out the doubters.

There's still plenty of mystery about what kind of major league pitcher Carson Fulmer is and what kind of major league pitcher Carson Fulmer will be, which is why people questioning his future in a crowded rotation and the White Sox calling for patience are both valid reactions.

But the 2018 regular season will be all about the White Sox finding out what exactly they have in Fulmer. And they've got to be happy with his first start of the campaign — mostly because it looked nothing like what happened out in the Cactus League.

Fulmer's five spring outings didn't go well at all. He allowed 17 runs, 14 of which were earned, over 10.2 innings. His WHIP was a gigantic 2.91 and his ERA an even more egregious 11.81. Pair those results with that start in the middle of last season — a spot start in a doubleheader with the Minnesota Twins — where he was roughed up for six runs and couldn't make it out of the second inning, and you've got plenty of fodder for pessimism.

But the White Sox remain high on the guy who they selected with the No. 8 pick in the 2015 draft, and that's why Don Cooper and Rick Hahn and Rick Renteria are preaching patience. Wednesday showed what could happen if the patience pays off.

Fulmer allowed three runs on five hits and a walk over his five innings of work, lifted after back-to-back hits to start the sixth. Base runners weren't a rarity, but they weren't plentiful either. He struck out Randal Grichuk to end a two-runner threat in the first, then got back-to-back 1-2-3 innings before his best work of the night, when after back-to-back doubles to start the fourth inning (two balls, by the way, that bounced off the gloves of White Sox outfielders) he got a soft grounder back to the mound from Grichuk, a run-scoring grounder to shortstop and an inning-ending strikeout. He went 1-2-3 in the fifth before those sixth-inning hits forced his exit after only 73 pitches.

That might all seem pretty run of the mill for a big league pitcher, but remember how much there still is to learn about Fulmer. Coming into Wednesday night's game, his major league career consisted of 35 innings, which proves Cooper's point from last week that the sample size is a little too small to make determinations on Fulmer just yet.

He's got a long way to go in this "prove it" season, one where he'll have to show he deserves consideration for a rotation of the future that could include any combination of Michael Kopech, Alec Hansen, Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, Carlos Rodon, Dylan Cease and Dane Dunning. But this was an impressive first step, one that was the complete opposite of what happened all spring long.

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