A year has made quite a difference for White Sox pitcher Adrian Houser.
Last season was turbulent. The Mets demoted Houser to the bullpen before designating him for assignment in July, sending him off with a 5.84 ERA in 23 appearances. He signed a minor-league contract with the Cubs in early August but was released less than a month later after four appearances at Triple-A Iowa and finished the season with the Orioles’ Triple-A affiliate, posting a 9.18 ERA in three starts.
He often sat alone in hotel rooms, ruminating over his poor performance. At 31, he didn’t believe he was near the end of his career, and it gnawed at him that he couldn’t showcase the talent he thought he still had — talent that had made him a reliable mid-rotation starter for the Brewers for seven seasons.
Searching for answers, he remembered his friend Jacob Evans, who worked at PitchingWRX, a data-driven pitching facility in Oklahoma, where Houser is from. He decided to give it a try.
“I needed to change something up and make the commitment,” Houser said.
Working at PitchingWRX helped him increase his velocity, leading to his current success with the Sox, who signed him to a one-year deal in mid-May. His average fastball has jumped from 93.6 mph last season to 95.0 this season, which has allowed his secondary pitches to play more.
The results reflect the improvements: He’s 5-2 with a 1.56 ERA in nine starts.
And after being undesirable a year ago, Houser is now a potential option for playoff-bound teams looking for pitching at the trade deadline July 31.
What changed? It started when Houser threw a bullpen session for Alex Marney, PitchingWRX’s founder and head coach, and general manager Lane Ramsey, a former Sox minor-league pitcher who’s now in the Marlins organization. First they had him move his hands farther from his body, which allowed him to balance himself better on the mound. The next step was for Houser to engage his backside more, using his glutes more than his knee to help increase his velocity.
“He had essentially just become a little bit compressed,” Marney said. “He needed to have a little bit more space to work. I know it sounds simple, but he just needed to feel freedom.”
The results were immediate, Marney said: Houser’s fastball velocity ticked up on Day 1.
He has thrown at least six innings in eight of his nine starts with the Sox, providing length to a young rotation that’s desperate for it. Although he’s now throwing the best he has in his career, Marney thinks there’s even more they can adjust.
“After every outing, one of the things he says is, ‘I still feel like there’s more in my back leg,’ ” Marney said. “And this is after sitting 94 to 95 mph and shoving for seven innings. He’s aware of it. He knows what it feels like.”
In addition to his work with PitchingWRX, Houser started a carnivore diet in the offseason to lose fat and uses a cold tub daily to aid in his recovery between outings.
“It really comes down to the athlete taking ownership of his career, and Adrian does that extremely well,” Ramsey said. “There’s still more in there that can make him more effective.”
Houser probably can’t maintain a 1.56 ERA — his FIP is 3.12 and his strikeout rate is in the 16th percentile in the majors (17.3%). But he’s back to being a dependable innings eater — meaning all his work has paid off.
“[This offseason] was about how we could make small adjustments and let Adrian be Adrian, which we’re seeing right now,” Ramsey said.
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“There were a lot of high-fives,” Crow-Armstrong said. “High-fives were fun.”
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