The White Sox will officially call up right-handed pitching prospect Jairo Iriarte on Sunday when rosters expand to 28 players, according to the Tiburones Report and Daniel Alvarez-Montes of El ExtraBase (both links to X). The 22-year-old Iriarte will skip Triple-A Charlotte entirely in making the leap from Double-A right to the verge of his Major League debut. Iriarte is already on the 40-man roster, so the White Sox won’t need to make any other corresponding moves.
MLB Pipeline ranks Iriarte fifth among Chicago’s prospects, while Baseball America isn’t far behind with a seventh-place ranking. The righty was an international signing for the Padres out of his native Venezuela in 2018, and he was sent to the White Sox this past March as part of the trade package San Diego gave up to land Dylan Cease.
Over 126 innings with Birmingham, Iriarte has a 3.71 ERA, 10.7% walk rate, and 22.8% strikeout rate. The latter metric is well below the K-rates Iriarte posted in his previous three seasons, but his grounder rate has continued to move upwards, now up to a 46.7% rate. He has also continued to do a good job at keeping the ball in the park, with seven homers allowed over his 126 frames.
The scouting reports indicate Iriarte has a mid-90s fastball and a mid-to-low 80s slider as his primary two pitches, with a decent changeup that is still something of a work in progress. Both Pipeline and BA aren’t certain he’ll necessarily stick as a starting pitcher, but the White Sox will surely first see what he can do as a starter before considering a future move to the bullpen. Iriarte would seem to have a relief-friendly arsenal already, and he could potentially become a closer if a career as a starter isn’t in the cards.
Moving Iriarte straight to the majors from Double-A is a little unusual, as it wasn’t like the right-hander was so dominant in Birmingham that he was kicking down the door for a call-up. With the White Sox in full rebuild mode as they try to avoid a record-setting season of losing, there may not be much harm in evaluating any promising prospects they have, even if Iriarte just gets a couple of outings to get his feet wet against MLB hitters.
Good luck in the Show, Jairo!
Looking forward to seeing Jairo with the big squad. He has a chance to stick in our “real” future rotation. Noah Schulz and Hagen Smith are both top of the rotation studs. Drew Thorpe looks like a guy who will stick in the rotation. If Jairo is a fit for a rotation slot …. The future looks very nice in short order. Grant Taylor and Mason Adams also both look to have promise in terms of pitching on the farm as well. Especially Taylor.
Hopefully Cease helps your Friars bring some hardware to San Diego! Both Chicago teams aren’t going for it so I’ve resorted to rooting for the Padres in the NL and the Yankees in AL lol
He will need it. With this club, if he gives up one run he has a good chance to lose the game.
Hope he helps the Sox.
If he’s the man to avoid 120 L then he’ll be a hero.
Watched him come up thru Pads system and thought he was a guy that will make it. Cringed when included in the trade more so than Thorpe (accepted that Thorpe had to go).
Excited to see how he develops even if not for SD.
Nice cup of coffee with a team environment with no pressure to win. Just come in do your thing, and ignore the losing. All that should matter to Jairo is seeing MLB hitters and adjusting to them.
Hope he does well. It will be difficult with a Sox team that can’t hit.
If Jairo can avoid the 120 or 121 L mark he’ll be viewed as a hero.
Another player rushed to the majors, although the Sox can’t develop talent in the minors so it probably doesn’t matter either way…
They’ve actually done a nice job with pitching talent. It’s position players they can’t develop to save their lives. Schultz is now the top LHP prospect in the game. In some lists, Smith is 2nd, though they haven’t really worked with him yet.
This^.
Not a Mets fan but I don’t want the Wsox to break the L record. Tying the record and breaking it is two different scenarios.
It makes absolutely No sense for him to be up here , or skip AAA but that’s them
Getz is trying really hard to justify his trades by bringing these guys up now, but them getting their brains beaten out with a club who cannot hit the broadside of a barn (why does Thames still have his job, by the way?) is one good way to further demoralize this team and its players.
The problem is that the guy he traded got a no hitter this season. The center price for the trade for the Sox is on the IL (and so far does not look nearly like the guy he traded), and the other guy is coming up, I guess to try to get him hurt as well (as Katz has no clue what he is doing). and spare me talk about extension ‘this’ or ‘window’ that, in the south side of Chicago its all due to the miser that refuses to pay top talent, and then blames his current (and free to him) stadium or the fans for it and is too busy wetting his pants over trying to get a sweetheart deal on a new stadium to reap the real estate profits around it..
Unfortunately, until an ownership change and accountability is shown in this org, players will either have come here with best intentions and then let apathy set in enough to phone it in every day (like the offense appears to do), or those who just come here to half ass it just to get their pay and not worry about being bad.
Amazing. It is a much more complicated game than the fans realize, but some of these moves just look senseless. The dude cannot get past a 4.1 BB9, and skips AAA? At age only 22?
sox are no fun