Despite Don Cooper’s warning on Opening Day, a convincing caution that a player’s future cannot be determined by just a handful of games, White Sox fans seem ready to make up their minds about Carson Fulmer. And it’s difficult to blame them.
Fulmer has not had a good go of things here in 2018, and Friday featured his worst start of the season, a start that came after his previous worst start of the season. The visiting Texas Rangers are also a last-place team, but Fulmer had them populating the bases at a rapid rate. He recorded just six outs, walked five batters, hit two more, gave up three hits and had eight runs charged to his name.
And so after his ERA leaped up to 8.07, the White Sox made the decision to send him to Triple-A Charlotte.
“Got to go work on some stuff,” Fulmer said after the game. “It definitely hasn’t (played) out the way I wanted it to. It’s tough to handle, but I think that I have to take responsibility for my actions and my performance and continue to work like I always have. Continue to battle and move on to the next one and accomplish as much as I can.
“Just really keeping my head up. That’s the most important thing right now and getting back up here as soon as I can.”
Cooper’s original message remains valid. Fulmer’s made just 13 major league starts, nowhere near enough to make a determination on how his career will end up. But he’s been consistently getting crushed out there. Take a look at his last three starts: five runs allowed on seven hits and two walks in 3.2 innings against the Minnesota Twins, five runs allowed on three hits and four walks in 1.2 innings against the Cubs, eight runs allowed on three hits and five walks in two innings against the Rangers.
There was plenty of discussion among fans and observers about what the White Sox would do with the No. 8 pick in the 2015 draft. This is a developmental season, after all, and allowing Fulmer to work through his issues at the major league level wasn’t going to be the difference in a pennant race or anything like that.
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There’s a question, too, about whether Fulmer will end up being a starting pitcher or a bullpen arm. There figures to be a crowded battle for spots in this team’s rotation of the future, and even prior to this season’s struggles, Fulmer’s expectations weren’t as high as those for Michael Kopech, Alec Hansen, Dane Dunning or even fellow struggling big leaguer Lucas Giolito.
But Fulmer’s too young and had too much upside to throw him aside as a guy who won’t be part of this organization’s bright future. Manager Rick Renteria said after Friday's decision that Fulmer will still work as a starter, that this trip to Triple-A wouldn’t be used to convert him to a bullpen arm.
“Right now, he’s still a starter, absolutely,” Renteria said. “He’s going to go down to continue to be a starter. Developing relievers, most of them, if not all, end up being starters first. But at this point, we’re not even looking at them in the secondary phase. We’re looking at them to primarily get himself ready to start and see if we can get enough strikes and command of the stuff that he does have to be effective.”
Rick Hahn offered Thursday that things like this are what this season is about: development, growing pains and figuring out what the White Sox have in many of their rebuilding pieces. It’s not easy to stomach, but that’s why he’s called this the “hardest part of the rebuild.”
Hahn’s not ready to make any final declaration on any player yet, nor should he be.
“I think to make an assessment about ‘this guy is going to help us win a championship in X number of years from now’ based simply on five weeks of a season would be reckless,” the general manager said Thursday. “I think part of what we tried to do at the start of this process — and we’re going to continue to try to do through next month’s draft and if anything happens via trade over the next few months — is to continue to build up enough depth and critical mass of impact talent that none of this is on the success or failure of one individual player, that we have waves of talent that are able to fill in when, inevitably, a player gets hurt or doesn’t quite live up to his own or our expectations of him.
“But the assessment of ‘this guy is not going to be part of it’ based upon what he’s done in the first five weeks of 2018 would be premature. Again, we’re taking a longer-term view. You’ve heard me say, going back to the end of last season, about how this season at the big league level was still going to be about player development. And it was going to be about giving young players an opportunity, some of whom are going to seize it, some of whom are going to stagnate and some who might fall by the wayside over the course of the season. That still may happen, but it’s not going to be based upon five weeks or six weeks, whatever it’s been.”
So what can Fulmer accomplish in the minors that he couldn’t accomplish in the majors? Can he iron out these issues? After Friday, his career ERA in 25 major league games is 6.68. Will he be able to get this big league opportunity again once Carlos Rodon and Kopech take their assumed places in this rotation as the summer moves along?
Unfortunately, there are far more questions about Fulmer’s future than are answers right at this second. The White Sox are hoping a stay in Triple-A will provide some answers as the pressure comes off Fulmer for a bit.
“At every level, you’re always trying to win,” Renteria said. “But I know that they put extra pressure on themselves because this is the highest you can get. And our expectations still don’t drop. I know our record is what it is, but your expectations of trying to produce guys that know how to win doesn’t cease.
“It’s going to allow him maybe a little freedom to know that he’s got some room to be able to work and do what he needs to do where it doesn’t affect you so much at the major league level, where everything is scrutinized 24/7, every single thing that goes on. And it maybe gives him a little bit of time to take a step back, take a breath. Maybe he’s putting a little more pressure on himself.
“The one thing in talking to him, the last thing I worry about with Carson is his confidence. He’s always going to be confident. But I think we have to remove him a little bit from what’s going on right now so he can just breathe a little bit and see if he can refocus and reset. He’s not the first one it’s ever happened to, and he won’t be the last.
“You’ll see Carson Fulmer again.”