Lance Lynn's 16-Strikeout Performance Offers Glimpse Of Potential Turnaround

When Lance returned to the visitor's dugout at T-Mobile Park after striking out his 12th, 13th, and 14th batters of the evening, he was approached by pitching coach Ethan Katz.

“At one point goes, ‘Hey, career-high.’ I was like, ‘Of what?’” Lynn told reporters after the game. 

Lynn blew past his previous career high of 12 strikeouts in a game with a whopping 16 on Sunday afternoon. The 16 K’s tied a White Sox record set by Harshman in 1954. It is a massive achievement considering some of the arms the White Sox have had before him, such as Wilbur Wood, LaMarr Hoyt,  Jack McDowell, Jake Peavy, Chris Sale, and Dylan Cease. 

“My stuff was good today, but we lost,” Lynn said. “It doesn’t matter how many you strike out if you don’t win the game.”

While Lynn may not have been satisfied with the result, it did matter. The White Sox rotation has been the strength of the team this season. The only weak link has been Lynn. 

Before Saturday’s game, Lynn has a 6.75 ERA, the second-highest mark amongst all qualified pitchers. He had also given up at least five runs in each of his last three starts. 

However, his last start against the Dodgers showed a small glimpse that the 36-year-old was turning the corner. He struck out six batters in five innings and his stuff at times looked sharp. The problem was he was inconsistent and when he missed his spots, the Dodgers made him pay.  

Lynn was able to hone in on Sunday, inducing 33 swing-and-misses, the most in the Majors this season and tied for the fourth-best mark since the pitch-tracking era began in 2008. It looked like the Lynn that White Sox fans fell in love with in 2021. Confident, efficient, and on the attack.

“You just want to pitch well, to be honest,” Lynn said. “You don’t really start thinking about records or anything, especially like a single-game situation. I didn’t even know how many I had.

Not only did Lynn make some history, but he also provided some relief for the bullpen. White Sox manager Pedro Grifol rode Lynn for eight innings and 114 pitches. Of those 114 pitches, 71 of them were strikes, a significant number for a pitcher who currently has his highest walk rate (8.7 percent) since 2018 (10.9 percent). 

That is the type of workhorse effort the White Sox got in 2021 when Lynn was in the running for the AL Cy Young. Those types of performances have been few and far between this year. 

“I can’t say enough about Lance today," Grifol said. "I mean, he was the No. 1 today. He was the No. 1 when we needed it. Man, he was good. On the offensive side, we didn’t get anything going. You’ve gotta score runs for him.”

It took Lynn a while to get going last season, but when he did, he was great down the stretch. He produced nine quality starts in his final 12 starts of the season and had a sub-3.00 ERA in the final three months of the season. 

As bad as Lynn has been this season, there are some signs of hope. His strikeout rate ranks in the top 73 percentile in the MLB. Meanwhile, his whiff rate ranks in the top 75th percentile, and his fastball spin ranks in the 89th percentile. 

The big right-hander is going to have to put up a larger sample size of success this season before we can officially declare that he has turned the corner. But Sunday was a step in the right direction.