White Sox prospect Jake Eder is looking to deliver

In winning over the hearts of the White Sox faithful, left-handed pitching prospect Jake Eder has his work cut out for him.

It’s mostly for reasons beyond his control.

Acquired by a front office who exhausted fans’ patience for waiting out prospect development, former Sox executive vice president Ken Williams negotiated Eder’s acquisition and saddled the 25-year-old’s arrival as a product of a jumbled and now-deposed leadership hierarchy. The hope that the Sox had sold high on a strikeout-prone Jake Burger was challenged by their former first-round pick hitting .303/.355/.505 while helping the Marlins to the playoffs.

“I make it a habit to not compare myself to any other player,” Eder said in a recent phone interview. “I’m just comparing myself to my standard of performance for myself.”

But Eder is reticent to compare his current state to his breakout 2021 season, when his stuff blossomed in a lower arm slot but ended in Tommy John surgery that knocked him out for 1½ years. Post-rehab, he’s searching more for feeling and timing than getting hung up on specific mechanical tweaks, or diving into the approach-angle reasons for why his four-seam fastball is best when it’s commanded at the top of the strike zone.

Even while wading through that process in the Arizona Fall League at the tail end of a year when evaluators expected Eder’s command to be rusty coming off a major rehab process, he’ll admit his mechanics were “a little off” on his arrival with the Sox.

The early results certainly didn’t help earn any believers.

In his five outings with Double-A Birmingham after the trade, Eder allowed 22 runs in 17„ innings, walking 15 of 96 batters he faced — approximately the rate of Michael Kopech’s free passes. Sox officials suggested there were a lot of lower-half issues to address in Eder’s delivery when he was acquired at the trade deadline. As his struggles mounted, the club shut down Eder’s regular season early and addressed the problems in bullpens in preparation for six outings in the AFL to close out his year.

“I’ve been working on lower-half stuff, just giving myself enough time so that I’m not rushed on the mound and able to rotate fully,” Eder said. “[It’s] helping me get more on top of the baseball, get more on top of off-speed pitches and be able to command stuff better. It was good to have that time to step back and work on some of those things, and I’m still working on some of those things.”

Eder has a 5.11 ERA and eight walks through 12„ innings in the offense-friendly AFL, and scouts still laud the raw stuff that made some league evaluators initially opine that the Sox had quietly secured good value. But while Burger seemed to evolve in Miami, the Sox won’t secure their end of the bargain until they can rein in Eder’s wayward control.

The dominant 2021 season at Double-A Pensacola that once had Eder ticketed for top-100 prospect lists and described as potentially a “left-handed Spencer Strider” by FanGraphs, came as he embraced a lower release point. But the Sox still see traces of his efforts to raise his arm angle up in college, as Eder’s hips can be uneven and tilted as he strides toward the mound, throwing off his command. In a different view of the same problem, much of Eder’s early delivery work at Double-A was to keep his torso upright for longer before it dipped toward home plate.

Staying upright keeps Eder from rushing and allows him to rotate as he said, but also correlates with him riding longer on his back leg, which has helped his velocity sit comfortably in the mid-90s and produces the best version of his signature slider.

“The stuff is there,” said Danny Farquhar, the Sox’ Double-A pitching coach. “His [slider is] a two-plane [movement pitch] where it’s breaking down and to the right. For me, it’s the late break. It’s got depth. It’s got horizontal [movement]. We almost consider it like a sweeper or slurve because it’s got 17-20 inches of horizontal [movement].”

That pitch alone might be good enough to give Eder a career as a dominant lefty reliever if his command ever shakes out. But the premise of this trade, however, is that the Sox were hoping to secure a high-ceiling starter if they could wait out a year of expected post-Tommy John rust.

Even if many are ready to write off this deal as a bust, Eder still plans on delivering on his end.

“One of the most important things is to still know who you are,” Eder said. “Even if you went out and lost every game of the season, you still have to know how good you are and who you are as a pitcher.”