We are now a few weeks into Spring Training for the White Sox, officially transitioning to the 2025 season. It will signal the end of the dreadful 2024 season, allowing the players who still remain on the roster to purge the historically bad season from their minds.
The Opening Day roster will look very different than it did last year, and as the year progresses, some of the White Sox top prospects will join the roster as they earn promotions to Chicago. There are many variables to how a player will perform in a given season, but certain baseball reference websites try to give their best evaluation on how a player will perform for the upcoming season.
Each year, FanGraphs releases their Steamer projections on how they believe each player will perform in the upcoming year. We will be taking a look at each player’s 2025 projections as we approach Spring Training.
The next player we will take a look at is Sean Burke, one of the many pitchers competing for a rotation spot.
FanGraphs is a bit low on Burke, as they project him to pitch to a 4.67 ERA over 118 innings, striking out 21% of batters. While that wouldn't be bad out of your fourth or fifth starter as a rookie, I thought Burke looked much better than that in his small sample size last season.
In 19 innings last season, Burke had 22 strikeouts and had a minuscule 1.42 ERA and a phenomenal 1 WHIP. While obviously that isn't sustainable over a full season, I think he can keep his ERA around 3.75-4, rather than in the mid 4s.
If Burke can get 30 starts in for the White Sox, I wouldn't be surprised if he can strikeout near 200 batters, as he has some devastating off-speed pitches. Those were on display in Spring Training already, as he had a nice two innings for the White Sox the other day.
His curveball looked absolutely filthy as you can see from the clip below:
Sean Burke gets Jackson Merrill on a filthy curve 😮💨 pic.twitter.com/iWEOOPCh9i
— White Sox on CHSN (@CHSN_WhiteSox) February 26, 2025
I think Burke will have a great season and will look to cement himself a rotation spot for the foreseeable future.
