Brandon Sproat is likely to be a pretty solid big league pitcher. Especially given how the Milwaukee Brewers organization develops arm talent. Today, however, was not that day, even if a late comeback rescued Sproat from a loss in his first start as a Brewer.
The 24-year-old righthander’s Milwaukee debut registered as something we’re used to out of White Sox prospect debuts: loads of anticipation that gets nipped right in the bud. Nerves may have played a role in the back-to-back walks to Chase Meidroth and Munetaka Murakami to start the game, but the sequence of events that followed was straight out of the White Sox playbook. First, Miguel Vargas blooped a single in to center field that probably would have been caught had the usually excellent Blake Perkins charged in off the bat. When that kind of thing happens to South Side pitching, you just know what’s coming next. Colson Montgomery swung the bat 83 mph and the ball went boom.
Welcome to the midwest, Mr. Sproat!
Similarly, though, lefthander Anthony Kay had some shakiness of his own to work through in his first major league start since 2021, allowing William Contreras to continue his weekend reign of terror with a double down the line before Gary Sánchez tanked one into the left field crowd.
While I was skeptical of whether Kay’s new arsenal would be good enough to play anything close to as well as it did in Japan, it’s hard to blame him for that one. 98 mph about six inches above the zone? That’s virtually impossible to hit unless you’re looking for that exact pitch. Credit to Gary on that one — Kay made a good pitch, and he was just ready for it.
Kay settled down somewhat nicely after that over the subsequent couple innings, utilizing all parts of his arsenal and generating a nice mix of weak contact and whiffs. One can see why the sinker was his meal ticket to success in Japan. Despite poor command, his pitch showed bowling-ball traits, dropping a healthy amount more than the typical sinker coming from his arm slot, and in combination with his four-seamer and sweeper, it’s tough for lefties to square up.
The real building block, though, was the velocity on his four-seamer, which averaged 96 mph and brushed 98 mph on the afternoon, both of which were easily the highest of his career, Spring Training included. All three of the hits he gave up came against the four-seamer, but with an efficient sinker and the low-90s slider, effectively making up the majority of his other pitches to lefties and righties, respectively, it’s going to be very difficult for batters to get the ball in the air when he’s locating everything.
Unfortunately, Kay had less control today, which is why he only made it through 4 2/3 innings before getting the hook. This is not the pitch chart of a guy who had a particularly astute feel for the strike zone.
The clusters of four-seamers at the top of and above the zone is actually pretty solid, but the spread of sinkers and sliders is way too scattered to keep hitters appropriately off-balance, and the four walks on his final line is not want you want to see from your starter. Kay still wound up whiffing five, and encouragingly, four of those five were against righties.
On the offensive side, the Good Guys weren’t even close to done, continuing to make Sproat’s life difficult. This might be a bit of a deep cut, but you may have heard of the newest lefty in the White Sox lineup, a guy named Munetaka Murakami. After Sproat walked Tristan Peters to lead off the second inning, Murakami continued to show that he’s not going to let MLB pitchers get away with too many mistakes, belting his third homer in as many games.
Murakami is now the fourth player ever to homer in the first three games of his major league career, joining Trevor Story, whose 2016 record of four straight games remains standing, as well as Kyle Lewis in 2020 and Cleveland’s Chase DeLauter just this week.
Also joining the homer parade? Everson Pereira, who recovered from a simply brutal first two regular season games in a Sox uniform to bash his first homer as a South Sider, and the third of his big league career.
The analysts I’ve spoken think Pereira’s swing is just a little too long and unorthodox to consistently work at the big league level, but if he learns to purely hunt the pitches his swing can get to, he may yet have a spot on this roster moving forward.
The game was going smoothly, likely just how the Sox would draw it up, until it wasn’t. Jordan Leasure came on to relieve Kay in the 5th inning, working out of the jam left for him but allowing a run to come home in the 6th, courtesy of a pair of knocks from Sal Frelick and Brandon Lockridge.
Grant Taylor was next in line for the South Siders, working for the second straight afternoon and doing so with a bit more effectiveness than his outing yesterday. Milwaukee hitters didn’t have much of a chance as he worked through the top of their order, striking out Brice Turang and Contreras (and touching 102 mph in the process) before a two-on, two-out punch out of Frelick gave him his first hold of 2026.
Once again, the Sox bullpen looked like it was cruising, that is until the wheels started to fall off. Chris Murphy entered the game to work the 7th and only managed to record one out, retiring just one of five hitters and leaving the bases loaded after a Turang single brought the Crew within three.
Bringing back glimpses of Liam Hendriks’ 2021 heroic efforts, Seranthony Domínguez found himself in a similar situation, attempting to work a five-out save. He managed to get the first out before Luis Rengifo brought the Brewers within a run after driving a two-strike base hit up the middle. That brought erstwhile MVP Christian Yelich up to the plate, pinch-hitting with the tying run on third base. I don’t even feel like talking about it. This is what happened:
Plot twist: The score held, and the While Sox ultimately suffered the 9-7 loss. There’s really no way around it — that sucked; and while I’m not going to re-write the majority of this post to reflect the negativity of the outcome, it’s hard to not feel a sense of futile dejá vu.
Nevertheless! The Good Guys have a fresh start and fresh series in Miami tomorrow, with Davis Martin taking the ball for his first outing of the year. Opposing Martin, Chris Paddack will also make his Marlins debut, more than a decade after being drafted by the organization in the 8th round of the 2015 draft. First pitch is at 5:40 p.m. CT, and we will see you there!