A second steal? Sandlin makes stellar debut in White Sox win

The White Sox already landed the steal of the offseason by signing Japanese free agent Munetaka Murakami, who hit his 20th home run of the season Wednesday.

There might be internal competition for best winter deal, however.

The major-league debut of hard-throwing right-hander David Sandlin was impressive. He gave up a home run to Minnesota's Byron Buxton on his second pitch, then retired the next 18 batters he faced as the White Sox rolled to a 15-2 victory at Rate Field.

“Just incredible,” Sox manager Will Venable said. “He was effective in the zone with all his pitches. There was some swing-and-miss there, he gave up a lot of flyballs. He attacked the zone in every way he wanted to.”

The White Sox acquired Sandlin from Boston on Feb. 1 in what was essentially a salary dump. The White Sox agreed to take on the two years and $25 million left on Jordan Hicks' contract, and they only had to give up pitcher Gage Ziehl to land Sandlin, the Red Sox' No. 9-ranked prospect at the time.

The deal happened just before spring training, but Sandlin said he wasn't shocked by the move.

“I feel like I was expecting a trade all offseason,” he said. “They just have a lot of arms over there. So I knew I might be a part of something to help their team, benefit in some way.

“I started getting comfortable, though, with how close it was to spring training. But as soon as I saw Bres (Red Sox GM Craig Breslow's) name pop up in my truck, as I was driving home from church, I turned to my wife, and said, 'Well, I wonder where we're going?'

He was headed toward an interesting debut on the South Side. Sandlin's first pitch of the game was a called strike that was then overturned by a challenge. Then Buxton parked the second pitch into the center-field seats. Major-league debut, meet early deficit.

“I feel like that kind of took the weight off almost,” Sandlin said. “I was like, ‘Man, it can't get worse than that.’ Let's go now. Welcome to it, I guess.”

The 6-foot-4 Sandlin threw just 61 pitches, so he could have easily come back for the seventh inning, but Venable wanted to keep the tank full for start No. 2.

Sandlin averaged 97.7 mph on his four-seam fastball, peaking at 99.3 in the second inning. He threw mostly fastball and curve, mixing in a cutter, change, sinker and sweeper.

The Owasso, Oklahoma, native throws harder than Sox ace Davis Martin but showed some similarities in being able to throw multiple pitches for strikes. His curve had a 78% strike rate, according to StatCast.

Last year with the Red Sox Triple-A squad, Sandlin posted a 7.61 ERA in 15 outings. He was sharp as soon as he took the mound in Charlotte this spring, so what changed?

“I would say just getting back to being me,” he said. “In the last year, I saw the opportunity to get called up and just pressed a little too hard, doing stuff out of my shoes where I didn't need to.

“I've worked my whole life to get to this position, so just execute and throw strikes, good things happen. And that was evident tonight.”

An offensive barrage made his job easier. Chase Meidroth hit a grand slam in the seventh, then Murakami followed with No. 20 to make it 14-1. The Sox also had a 5-run fifth inning. Every player in the starting lineup had a hit, with Randal Grichuk and Sam Antonacci leading the way with 3 each.

Sandlin was part of a stellar trio of Oklahoma high school pitchers in the Class of 2019. Besides him, there was Cubs righty Cade Horton from Norman and Jake Bennett from Bixby, who made his major-league debut with Boston on May 1. Those three teamed up in college at Oklahoma and led the Sooners to a second-place finish at the 2022 College World Series.

Sandlin said he never pitched against Horton in high school but gave up his first high school home run to Bennett.

“It was one of those iron sharpens iron (situations at Oklahoma),” Sandlin said. “When we started clicking, it made that (World Series) run a lot of fun.”