Bryan Hudson’s 18-game scoreless streak has been fueled by a revamped pitch mix and improved sinker, making him an unsung hero of the 2026 White Sox thus far.
There's nothing more volatile in professional baseball than relief pitching. It's a complicated investment for every team to make, and yet it's so paramount to overall team success over the course of a 162-game season.
Season to season, sometimes even week-to-week or day-to-day, the success of a bullpen arm can fluctuate. Even when a team acquires a relief pitcher coming off a productive year, it may as well be a coin flip as to whether or not that production repeats itself.
It can be something as simple as spin rates, pitch usage, or sequencing. Small tweaks can have drastic effects on a reliever's performance. The best organizations have a knack for both identifying and developing this talent.
Chicago White Sox left-handed pitcher Bryan Hudson is a perfect example of this. While his career has been an overall success, the last few years have still been a roller coaster with a lot of varience. But in 2026, Hudson appears to have made the right adjustments to put together a dominant stretch out of the White Sox bullpen.
Back in 2024, Hudson nearly made the NL All-Star team as a member of the Milwaukee Brewers. At the end of June, he had a 0.82 ERA over 44 innings pitched. Hudson had allowed just four earned runs, 19 hits, and eight walks in those 44 innings, which also gave him a WHIP of 0.61.
While he had a few hiccups in July, Hudson still finished the 2024 season with a 1.73 ERA, a 6-1 record, and a 0.72 WHIP over 62.1 innings. He was the most effective and productive relief pitcher for a Brewers team that won 93 games and captured the NL Central.
Then in 2025, he looked like a completely different pitcher. Hudson had a 4.35 ERA over his first 12 appearances with the Brewers before getting sent down to the minor leagues. Milwaukee eventually designated him for assignment on July 31, and Hudson was brought in by the White Sox at the start of August. He only pitched in four games for the White Sox last season but had a 5.79 ERA, bringing his season ERA to 4.80 in 16 games and 15 innings pitched.
While it was a somewhat small sample size, there were noticeable differences between Hudson's pitch mix in 2025 and what he deployed in 2024. During the 2024 season, Hudson used his four-seam fastball 52% of the time while throwing a cutter and sweeper right around 25% of the time.
In 2025, Hudson removed the cutter from his arsenal almost entirely. Instead, he threw 66% four-seam fastballs with similar usage on his sweeper, but far less variety in the pitches he threw.
In 2026, Hudson has still been throwing his four-seam fastball about 60% of the time and his sweeper about 25% of the time, but the big difference is the inclusion of a sinker that is much improved from the version he has toyed with in the past. Hudson threw 24 sinkers during the 2025 season. He has already thrown 42 of them this year, making up 12% of his pitches. And the spin rate on the 2026 iteration has increased by 120 RPM.
After allowing an earned run in each of his first two appearances this season, Hudson has now settled into a stretch with 18 consecutive scoreless appearances out of the White Sox bullpen. He has thrown 16.2 scoreless innings and recorded 19 strikeouts. The last run he gave up was against the Miami Marlins on March 31.
Combining that with newly signed closer Seranthony Dominguez, Sean Newcomb, who has been as advertised as a solid lefty bullpen option, and a homegrown stud like Grant Taylor, the White Sox have actually started to build themselves a really good bullpen. It's a big reason why the team is outperforming expectations with a 19-21 record and has shown the ability to win more close games this year.
Bryan Hudson is one of the unsung heroes of the 2026 White Sox, and the best part of it all is that he still has a ton of club control. With less than two years of MLB service time under his belt, Hudson could be a long-term weapon for Chicago.