Stiever settles down, shows promise in first start for White Sox
When he was in high school, Jonathan Stiever was a football star first.
Baseball and basketball came second, and he initially planned to stay close to home and keep the helmet on in college at Wisconsin.
The rough spring weather in Cedarburg, a northern suburb of Milwaukee, can put a damper on playing prep baseball, but Stiever started showing great promise as a pitcher his junior year.
Football and basketball soon took a back seat, and Stiever was drafted by the White Sox in 2018 (sixth round) after three collegiate seasons at Indiana.
Even though the 6-foot-2, 215-pounder pitched well last year, he split the season with low Class A Kannapolis and high A Winston-Salem.
Stiever was ticketed for Double-A Birmingham this year, but COVID-19 wiped out the minor-league season.
Doing his best to continue developing at the White Sox's training facility in Schaumburg this summer, the 23-year-old righty got the call to make his first major-league start Sunday afternoon at Guaranteed Rate Field.
"I wasn't super surprised because I (got) word maybe a week ago that hey, the way the rotation is shaping up right now there's a chance for you to make a start this weekend," Stiever said after the Sox kept rolling with a 5-2 win over the Tigers.
Shaking off a wobbly first inning in his first real game in over a year, Stiever was generally satisfied after allowing 1 run on 2 hits and 2 walks in 3⅔ innings.
"In the first (inning), there wasn't much there to be honest," Stiever said. "Just trying to settle back in and find my mechanics. Really the second, third and fourth, just getting ahead with the fastball, that was obvious for me.
"I wasn't able to get ahead. Once I was able to do that, in disadvantaged counts to hitters, I was able to work off of that. That's how I pitch, it just took me a while to find that rhythm and location."
Stiever threw 73 pitches in his debut, and 36 came in the first inning.
Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease and Dane Dunning currently occupy spots in the White Sox's starting rotation, and Dallas Keuchel (back) is expected to come off the injured list and pitch Thursday against the Twins.
That leaves Stiever and Reynaldo Lopez in the mix for the final slot over the last two weeks of the regular season.
"Not bad. Not bad," manager Rick Renteria said of Stiever's debut. "I know he was probably a little nervous the first inning. He was able to recover. He gave us what he was able to give us. He kept us in the game. Got out of a first inning traffic, kept his composure and did what he needed to do."
Best in the AL
The Sox have the best record (30-16) in the American League and they've won 20 of their last 25.
The Twins arrive at Guaranteed Rate Field Monday night for a big four-game series with a 30-18 record, one game behind the first-place White Sox.
"The next few series are important, we know that," third baseman Yoan Moncada said after going 3-for-4 with 1 RBI Sunday. "But we have to keep doing what we have been doing so far. That's the stuff that we can control, just to go out there and try to play the best that we can and try to do our best."