Why the White Sox Are Making a Mistake With Grant Taylor

The Chicago White Sox have officially announced their plans to move right-handed pitcher Grant Taylor from the bullpen to the starting rotation in 2027.

That's long been the question for Taylor, a former second-round pick out of LSU in the 2023 MLB Draft. While he spent most of his time at LSU in the bullpen, the White Sox drafted him to be a starter, and in the early stages of his professional career, he was. But it wasn't until he transitioned to the bullpen that Taylor reached MLB and started to thrive.

Taylor is coming off a 2026 season in which he posted a 2.25 ERA over 60 appearances and 84 innings, establishing himself as one of the very best relief pitchers in the game.

That said, an elite starting pitcher is generally more valuable than an elite relief pitcher. And when you have a pitcher with stuff as good as Taylor's, there's always that temptation to extract as much value out of his arm as possible and see if it could work as a starter.

White Sox fans could pretty easily draw comparisons to left-handers Chris Sale and Garrett Crochet, two MLB aces who came up with the White Sox, started their MLB careers in the bullpen, and eventually transitioned into starting roles where they became household names across baseball.

I'm not sure this is that. I'm not sure those comparisons are fair. And quite frankly, I'm not sure this is a good idea at all.

I understand the general excitement. The White Sox have a clear-cut need in the starting rotation, and they're now using their most talented arm to help solve it. But for a number of different reasons, I believe the White Sox are making the wrong decision.

Let's start a bit more practically. Taylor has never demonstrated an ability to handle a traditional starter's workload at the professional level.

Yes, on occasion, he threw multi-inning outings out of the bullpen. But Taylor threw two or more innings in just 17 of his 60 regular-season appearances in 2026. He threw 30 or more pitches in only 13 of those appearances. That's worlds apart from the 80 to 100 pitches every fifth day that would eventually be asked of him as a member of the starting rotation.

It's not unreasonable to question whether he can safely build toward a workload of 150 or more innings as a starter. There's no telling how that significant increase in workload could impact his health or his effectiveness. Taylor was certainly asked to shoulder a heavy workload during the postseason, and I thought it became clear during the 2026 ALDS that he became less effective as fatigue started to set in.

Pitchers can experience changes in velocity, movement, and overall effectiveness when asked to throw significantly more pitches and innings. The White Sox already know Taylor can dominate in shorter outings. What they don't know is whether that dominance will survive the transition.

White Sox teammate Jordan Hicks is a cautionary tale worth considering here. During the early stages of Hicks' career, he established himself as an overpowering relief pitcher with the St. Louis Cardinals and Toronto Blue Jays. The San Francisco Giants then attempted to stretch Hicks into a starting role, and between 2024 and 2025, he posted a 4.83 ERA over 29 starts with the Giants.

His velocity declined significantly as his workload increased. Hicks was once a high upside reliever whose electric stuff made the possibility of an even more valuable role as a starter enticing. But the transition diminished some of the characteristics that made him special.

That's not to suggest Taylor is destined to follow the same path. Every pitcher is different, and there's no guarantee the results will be similar. 

Even if you don't want to use Hicks as an example, though, there's already evidence of this with Taylor himself. In an April 2026 interview with James Fegan of Sox Machine, White Sox director of pitching Brian Bannister acknowledged that Taylor's fastball velocity increased significantly when the organization moved him from the starting rotation to the bullpen in 2025.

“It will forever be a starter-vs.-reliever debate. We started him out as a starter last year, flipped him to the pen because he was getting sore as a starter. The velo went from mid-90s back up to 100-plus. He really just loves pitching out of the pen, and he’s dominant, and he has as good of stuff as anyone in the world," Bannister said.

That's a pretty significant admission from the White Sox's own director of pitching. Taylor was still effective as a starter in Double-A Birmingham, but that was the minor leagues...and his stuff became noticeably more explosive when he transitioned to relief.

It's reasonable to question whether moving him back into the rotation could have the opposite effect, potentially sacrificing some of the velocity that has made him so dominant against big league hitters.

If transitioning to the rotation requires a pitcher to sacrifice the very characteristics that make Taylor great, is the increased workload actually worth it? Those are questions worth asking.

More importantly, though, are the physical concerns.

Taylor has an especially unique delivery. He generates between 7.2 and 7.4 feet of extension, which ranked in the 96th percentile of MLB pitchers in 2026. That's exceptionally unusual for a guy who stands only 6-foot-3, putting him in the same general territory as significantly taller pitchers like the 6-foot-6 Logan Gilbert, 6-foot-7 Jacob Misiorowski, and 6-foot-10 Paul Gervase.

The extension, the arm angle, the entire delivery is part of what makes Taylor so deceptive and special. By releasing the baseball closer to home plate, he hides the ball well and effectively gives opposing hitters less time to react to his already overpowering stuff. But the mechanics that make Taylor special have also been a concern when it comes to his ability to remain healthy while handling an extended workload.

Those aren't concerns that have come from outside the organization. The White Sox have publicly acknowledged them before.

Bannister once used Leonardo da Vinci's Vitruvian Man to explain the physical demands of Taylor's delivery. He compared operating at the extremes of a joint's natural range of motion to turning a car's steering wheel as far as it can possibly go.

The underlying concern is that repeatedly operating near the limits of the body's natural range of motion, as Taylor does, can create additional physical stress.

During a June 2025 appearance on 670 The Score, Bannister compared Taylor's mechanics to those of pitchers like Kenley Jansen and Tyler Glasnow, acknowledging the durability concerns associated with pitchers who operate in similar ways.

“They tend to be very injury-prone, and we’ve already gone through that with Grant a little bit,” Bannister said. And Taylor's injury history makes those concerns particularly difficult to dismiss.

In 2023, Taylor underwent Tommy John surgery, which contributed to him falling to the White Sox in the second round of the MLB Draft. In 2024, he suffered a right lat strain that limited him to just 19.1 minor league innings. While he began the 2025 season as a starter at Double-A Birmingham, Taylor experienced soreness following starts, prompting the organization to move him to the bullpen.

Bannister is also on record connecting that previous lat injury to the unusual extension in Taylor's delivery.

Now, it's entirely possible the White Sox have developed a plan to address those concerns. Perhaps that involves mechanical adjustments, dialing back his extension, or carefully managing his workload as he prepares for a change in role. I would certainly hope for that to be the case.

But that just brings me back to the point I made earlier. If a pitcher loses velocity on his fastball, changes his delivery, or alters the characteristics that make him special, there's no guarantee he'll have the same level of success or be as effective in the starting rotation as he was in the bullpen.

What's changed between May 2025, when the White Sox moved Taylor to the bullpen because of physical concerns, and November 2026, when they're committing to making him a starter again?

That's a question only someone like Chris Getz or Brian Bannister can fully answer. Perhaps Taylor's successful 2026 season has given the organization greater confidence in his durability. Perhaps the decision has as much to do with Taylor's own aspirations as it does with Chicago's desperate need for starting pitching.

There may be perfectly reasonable explanations for the change in direction, though that doesn't automatically make it the right call.

Taylor has already established himself as one of the best high-leverage relievers in the sport. While he recorded only 10 saves during the 2026 regular season, he became Will Venable's most trusted arm down the stretch, routinely being used in the highest-leverage situations during both the regular season and the playoffs.

Taylor also has the unique ability, for a late-inning relief pitcher, to throw multiple innings when necessary. His versatility gives the White Sox something even more valuable than a traditional one-inning closer, and he was beginning to insert himself into the conversation as one of the most impactful relief pitchers in all of baseball.

To me, the comparison was always that of Mason Miller.

Miller was selected by the Athletics in the third round of the 2021 MLB Draft, developed as a starting pitcher in the minor leagues, and even debuted in 2023, making 10 appearances and six starts at the big league level.

In 2024, when Miller transitioned to the bullpen, he quickly became the closer for the Athletics and earned an American League All-Star selection. Since then, he's only gotten better and has established himself as arguably the most dominant relief pitcher in the sport.

In 2026, with the San Diego Padres, Miller recorded 38 saves and a 1.67 ERA while striking out 16.6 batters per nine innings.

Miller doesn't need to be a starting pitcher to be one of baseball's most valuable arms. He's such a game-changer that the Padres were willing to trade a package headlined by the No. 3 prospect in all of baseball to acquire him.

Keeping Miller in relief has allowed him to maximize his overpowering stuff, and his ability to lock down the late innings has become an invaluable part of San Diego's pitching staff.

That's the kind of role I envisioned for Taylor in Chicago.

I understand the counterargument. A starting pitcher who can deliver 160 or 180 elite innings is generally going to provide more value over the course of a season than even an elite closer.

If Taylor can become a legitimate frontline starter, the White Sox could ultimately benefit tremendously from this decision. But that's a significant assumption to make about a pitcher who has already experienced physical difficulties in a starting role and has never approached that kind of workload in professional baseball.

The White Sox are robbing Peter to pay Paul.

Chicago already has internal starting pitching options, and there's an entire free-agent class and offseason trade market available for the organization to make the necessary additions.

Why not spend some money? Sign a Freddy Peralta and Tyler Mahle, revamp your starting rotation, and maintain a lights-out closer to anchor the bullpen and finish games for you.

Instead, the White Sox are taking a gamble on Taylor. They're moving him to the starting rotation, which comes with a laundry list of risks that I've already laid out. And in the process, they're creating a significant hole at the back end of their bullpen.

As Getz acknowledged during his interview with MLB Network Radio on SiriusXM, Taylor moving to the rotation doesn't eliminate Chicago's need for additional starting pitching. The White Sox are still planning to be aggressive in that market, even with Taylor penciled into the rotation.

But now they'll also have to figure out how to replace their most trusted late-inning reliever. Whether that comes through an internal promotion, a trade, or free agency, it's another problem for the front office to solve.

Finding a proven closer on the open market won't necessarily come cheap.

It's certainly understandable why White Sox fans find this news exciting. It offers a potential answer to the team's greatest roster need, and there's no denying Taylor possesses the talent to become an outstanding starting pitcher.

Perhaps I'll look back on this and look foolish for raising questions. If Taylor makes a seamless transition to the rotation and flourishes like Chris Sale and Garrett Crochet did for the White Sox in the past, I'll be the one in the wrong. And I'd be more than happy to admit it.

But there's a difference between recognizing a pitcher's potential and believing the risks associated with pursuing that potential are justified.

The White Sox already had something special in Grant Taylor. They knew exactly how valuable he could be in the bullpen, and they had a role in which his extraordinary abilities were producing extraordinary results.

Now they're asking him to become something different, hoping the upside will outweigh the risks.

From where I stand today, I don't believe the White Sox made the right call.