The Chicago White Sox are changing things up for their home opener. <\/p>\n
One day after pushing the game against the Toronto Blue Jays back<\/a> a day due to inclement weather, the team announced a starting pitching change … sort of. In a rather unconventional fashion, the White Sox have decided to go with an “opener” for their first game at The Rate. Sean Burke was initially slated to start the game on the mound, but the plan will now be for Grant Taylor to throw the first pitch, per James Fagen<\/a>. <\/p>\n Taylor will be expected to throw only the first inning before Burke enters to handle as much as he can. Burke has one start under his belt thus far, taking the mound against the Milwaukee Brewers on March 28. Like his fellow rotation members, he struggled to find an early rhythm and gave up seven hits and three earned runs over 4.0 innings pitched. Burke did at least limit his walks to just one and struck out five batters. Milwaukee would go on to win 6-1. <\/p>\n All things considered, Burke’s starting role was anything but certain coming into 2026. He had an up-and-down 2025 campaign that led to a demotion in mid-August. The Sox eventually called him back to the bigs a few weeks later, but he failed to look significantly better. <\/p>\n To be sure, he has a fascinating arsenal that features a solid four-seamer and some deceptive movement pitches. But consistency is key. The Sox are clearly still skeptical of his ability to settle into games, and we need to look no further than this home-opening tweak to see just that. <\/p>\n \t\t\t\t\t\t\t\tA Big Opportunity for Grant Taylor<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The Chicago White Sox are changing things up for their home opener. One day after pushing the game…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":660441,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":"","_share_on_mastodon":"0"},"categories":[2379],"tags":[5,138,49,2561,4,396,2562],"class_list":{"0":"post-660440","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-chicago-white-sox","8":"tag-baseball","9":"tag-chicago","10":"tag-chicago-white-sox","11":"tag-chicagowhitesox","12":"tag-mlb","13":"tag-white-sox","14":"tag-whitesox"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/channels.im\/@mlb\/116339493453909256","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660440","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=660440"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/660440\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/660441"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=660440"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=660440"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.rawchili.com\/mlb\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=660440"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}