After his first three starts of the season, Reynaldo Lopez had a 12.15 ERA.
Who was that guy?
He certainly didn't look anything like the guy who had a dominant finish to the 2018 season, showing a ton of promise by ending that campaign with a 1.38 ERA over his final seven starts. Where was that guy?
Well, the White Sox are happy to see that that guy has shown up. Lopez has been excellent over his last three starts, with just three earned runs allowed over his last 18 innings. And perhaps he's never been better than he was Sunday, when he struck out 14 hitters in six innings, allowing just two hits, three walks and one unearned run in the 4-1 win on the South Side. He did the bulk of the striking out as White Sox pitchers set a new franchise record (and matched a major league record) by putting up 20 strikeouts in nine innings against the visiting Detroit Tigers.
"Today's outing was one of the best of my career, definitely," Lopez said through team interpreter Billy Russo. "I think you can compare this with one or two from last year. But for me, it was one of the best of my career. Everything worked perfectly and I felt good."
It's hard to argue with that assessment after Lopez set a new career high in Ks. He completely silenced the Tigers, and when he departed after his six innings of work, it was somewhat shocking to realize that it had been a one-run game the whole time. Lopez made this one seem like a blowout.
White Sox fans were happy to have a day to cheer the work of a starting pitcher after each of the previous four games featured a South Side starter failing to pitch five innings. Entering Sunday's game, no starting staff in the bigs had thrown fewer innings than the White Sox, which was averaging fewer than five innings a start with just 118 innings of work through the season's first 24 games.
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But Lopez played stopper Sunday, showing that he is still the same guy we saw so often in 2018, when he was the team's best starting pitcher. Whether he'll end this season with that same title or not remains to be seen, but he's certainly settled into a more familiar amount of success following a rocky start.
"That’s how I think about him all the times that he takes the mound. I think he’s going to go and he’s going to shut the game down, the other offense," catcher Welington Castillo said. "He has a lot of abilities. A really good arm, a really good fastball, a really good breaking ball. He just needs to stay focused and give everything he’s got every time."
"I just regained my rhythm," Lopez said. "My mechanics, rhythm was off the first few outings, and the last three I regained it. I've been able to perform at the level that I know that I can do it, and the results have been there."
This season remains a very important one for Lopez, Carlos Rodon and Lucas Giolito, three pitchers who could play starring roles in the rotations of the future once the White Sox make their transition from rebuilding to contending. They've all had their ups and downs so far this season, perhaps disappointing some who were looking for consistency right out of the gates. Rodon's been mostly reliable, though he lasted just three innings Friday. Giolito had a couple nice starts against the Kansas City Royals but remains on the injured list at the moment. Lopez's first three starts were not good before he's turned things around of late.
The questions about those three haven't been answered yet and might not get answered until the book is closed on the 2019 season. But Lopez flashed ace potential at times in 2018, and he did it again Sunday. It might not be fair to do what Castillo does and expect this kind of performance out of Lopez every time out. Let's not forget that the Tigers are one of the worst offensive teams in baseball. But the White Sox would like to see outings closer to this on a regular basis far more than they would what Lopez showed at the beginning of the year.
In other words, this is more like it.
"He's a young man who's still maturing, who's still learning, who's still learning himself," manager Rick Renteria said. "I think trust continues to be an issue that all of them continue to chip away at, trusting their stuff. But I think in the end, it's no secret, when they command a pitch, they have a chance to keep you in the ballgame and he did that today very well."
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