Sean Burke shelled as White Sox need quick answers for their flagging starting rotation
Beginning with 7⅓ innings of one-run ball on June 18, Sean Burke put together a seven-outing run of a 1.42 ERA over 50⅔ innings, establishing the right-hander as the stabilizing force in a White Sox starting rotation that sorely needed one.
In Tuesday night’s 9-3 loss, the Sox were quickly knocked off-kilter as the first seven Pirates hitters Burke faced all reached base. The first five balls in play off the 26-year-old all sizzled off the bat at 99.5 mph or harder, and the score was lopsided before the clock hit 7 p.m.
“They hit some pitches on the fat part of the plate, they hit some pitches that were decent,” Burke said postgame “Everything I threw, they were hitting.”
After walking eight in his outing before last, which he called “the worst athletic performance of my life,” Burke yielded a career-high seven runs on eight hits in a career-low 1⅓ innings against the Pirates, departing to a mix of jeers and supportive applause befitting a breakout star whose brilliance has helped make a White Sox game in September relevant, and whose suddenly erratic performance made it distressing.
“This was a step back,” manager Will Venable said. “Just middle-middle pitches, different types of pitches right down the middle.”
Despite the carnage, Burke’s 3.58 ERA and 156 innings both still pace the Sox rotation. That’s in spite of him not recording a quality start in his last five outings, though his 5⅔ scoreless innings in Houston last week came as close as possible.
But that reflects the shaky state of a White Sox rotation already at the bottom of the league in total innings. Davis Martin made a strong return from the injured list last week, but Anthony Kay has failed to complete five innings in his last three outings, Luis Castillo has a 7.25 ERA since being acquired last month, and manager Will Venable used a bullpen game to seize a rubber match victory from the Twins on Sunday.
With the way Sox starters are stumbling near the finish line, Venable could go that route again soon.
“That’s a good indication of what it could look like,” said Venable, who said his pitcher usage might have the all-hands-on-deck flavor of a playoff series down the stretch.
Burke and the Sox have downplayed fatigue as a factor in his recent mechanical inconsistency, even as he has set a professional career-high in innings.
“It’s a long season and these guys are always feeling it, but that can’t be the reason why we don’t go out and execute,” Venable said postgame.
Yet poor command like what Burke showed Tuesday can be a downstream effect of fatigue, and his success this year has often been keyed by keeping his shoulders square in his delivery, to maintain consistent action — and thus, location — on his pitches. When it slips, forcing things isn’t a fix.
“Getting a little bit out of slot, I have a bad habit when you can’t command the ball well, of trying to get the ball there,” Burke told the Sun-Times last week. “That just makes it worse, because you’re diving your body forward and your arm can be later again.”
Last week in Houston, Burke showed the ability to recognize his arm slot drifting and correct it in time to salvage his outing. On Tuesday, Burke lacked a postgame explanation, and his offense lacked for an answer, or a baserunner against Pirates starter Bubba Chandler until the fifth inning.
“I’ll take a look at the video tomorrow and walk through it with a fresher mind than I have now,” said a downbeat Burke. “Throwing away a game like that today down the stretch is frustrating.”
With the Guardians just two games back in the AL Central race after a win in Baltimore, the Sox need to restore a better version of Burke over the season’s final 2½ weeks, as he has spent most of 2026 looking like the closest thing they have to a rotation anchor.
“There’s this extra gear that he’s shown flashes of,” said pitching coach Zach Bove. “He can do that at a high level for many more years to come.”