White Sox sign Anthony Kay to 2Y/12M deal

[Sleepy Harold]

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:00 PM by Sleepy Harold

[EloyJenkins]

 

[Sleepy Harold]

 

Edited Wednesday at 05:01 PM by Sleepy Harold

[Bob Sacamano]

Who

[DirtySox]

Worth a shot. I liked him a lot in the 2016 draft class. Reinvented himself in Japan after adding a 2 seamer. Feels similar to the Fedde situation/signing.

Edited Wednesday at 05:10 PM by DirtySox

[GGajewski18]

It's a fine signing.  Saw he was hitting 96-98 in Japan as well.  Very similar to the Fedde signing. 

Locks up Martin, Smith and Kay in the rotation.  

Burke, Cannon, and Thorpe (when is he coming back) and then all the kids in the minors on the way up

 

[PaleAleSox]

Hope this one is as successful as Fedde. 

[Jake]

He kept the runs from scoring in Japan but frankly the rest didn't look that great. Strikeouts not very high and although the walks certainly weren't high, it wasn't some incredibly low number either. He was only throwing two pitches out of the pen the last time he was in MLB. Not sure what he's been doing in Japan. I suppose the Sox will have him start but they are kind of paying him like a middle reliever, so maybe they see him as having a high floor as lefty reliever.

[WestEddy]

RotoGraphs took a look at Kay and made some comps back in October:

Mining the News (10/29/25) | RotoGraphs Fantasy Baseball

Here are the MLB results for his comps. His 7.6 K/9 with a “high” 2.4 BB/9 limits his upside.

 

Anthony Kay’s MLB Comps

Name	Season	Age	IP	K/9	BB/9	HR/9	ERA	SIERA	WHIP
Nick Martinez	2022	31	106	8.0	3.5	1.3	3.47	4.03	1.29
Hisashi Iwakuma	2012	31	125	7.3	3.1	1.2	3.16	3.85	1.28
Naoyuki Uwasawa	2024	30	4	6.8	4.5	0.0	2.25	4.89	1.00
Luis F. Castillo	2025	30	7	6.4	9.0	0.0	7.71	6.75	2.71
Kodai Senga	2023	30	166	10.9	4.2	0.9	2.98	4.00	1.22
Ryota Igarashi	2010	31	30	7.4	5.3	1.2	7.12	4.50	1.55
Kohei Arihara	2021	28	40	5.3	2.9	2.4	6.64	5.39	1.43
Robbie Erlin	2022	31	2	4.5	4.5	4.5	9.00	5.73	1.50
Shun Yamaguchi	2020	32	25	9.1	6.0	2.1	8.06	5.09	1.75
Yusei Kikuchi	2019	28	161	6.5	2.8	2.0	5.46	5.17	1.52
Kenta Maeda	2016	28	175	9.2	2.6	1.0	3.48	3.69	1.14
Average		30.0	76.6	7.4	4.4	1.5	5.39	4.83	1.49
Median		30.0	40.2	7.3	4.2	1.2	5.46	4.89	1.43

[DirtySox]

 

 

[EloyJenkins]

The one thing I really do like about this is if he performs...they won't necessarily rush Schultz and Smith now...so that alone is worth the low cost and gamble here. 

[CaliSoxFanViaSWside]

Surprised a multiyear contract but with any amount of success he'll be gone at the deadline.But as we saw with Fedde, the market isn't strong for these comeback types. He'll have to be outstanding with better than expected stuff to be in demand. 

[Baron]

Nice. I'd rather take a swing on him than resigning Martin Perez. 

[mac9001]

If he can't find success in the rotation you can hope the stuff plays up in the pen and you're still not paying him a lot. Now we need two more like just like this to have actual depth (even if it's poor depth).

Edited Wednesday at 06:00 PM by mac9001

[Jake]

Per Japanese pitch tracking data, Kay had a 5-pitch mix last year. Four seamer, cutter, slider, sinker, changeup. The cutter and changeup are mainly used against righties, the slider mainly against lefties. Stuff+ really likes the cutter, slider, and sinker. Hitters did not hit them very well either. None of the stuff he throws generates much swing and miss. Pounds the cutter inside to righties, changeups are almost always thrown below the zone and away to righties, slider almost always thrown low and away outside the zone to lefties, sinker almost always in on the hands to lefties. 4 seamer aimed at the top of the zone or trying to snag outside strikes. 

The xERA suggests his good results were mostly deserved although not at a <2.00 ERA level. As you'd expect, he's better against lefties than righties. Very high groundball rate against lefties. Note that the Japanese baseball has more armside run and tends to have better rise. This is due to a mixture of better grip + larger seams, leading to higher spin rates and more seam-shifted wake. Kay doesn't rely on spin rate but he might be affected by lower seams on MLB balls. Of course, every pitcher is relying on at least one of those two things.

4-seam fastball averaged 94.4mph last year, roughly the same as when he was last pitching out of the pen in MLB.

Edited Wednesday at 06:03 PM by Jake

[Bob Sacamano]

13 minutes ago, CaliSoxFanViaSWside said:

Surprised a multiyear contract but with any amount of success he'll be gone at the deadline.But as we saw with Fedde, the market isn't strong for these comeback types. He'll have to be outstanding with better than expected stuff to be in demand. 

The one dude just got 3/$30M yesterday

[Jake]

7 minutes ago, Bob Sacamano said:

The one dude just got 3/$30M yesterday

Ponce is hard to comp too, I think. He was pretty mediocre in Japan, similar peripherals to Kay but worse results (and never pitched a full workload, not sure whether that's due to injury or what). But then he was utterly dominant in Korea, almost doubling his Japanese K rate. Talent is lower in Korea but not really "you get double the strikeouts" lower. Not to mention Japan is having a dead ball era and I don't think Korea is.

[SoxAce]

I like this move. Can't complain about it at all. 

[CWSpalehoseCWS]

I don't mind this at all. Jerry is never going to sign off on the prices FA pitching is getting nowadays, and at least Getz is getting creative. For a backend arm, they could do a lot worse, and now it creates a little competition between the fringe guys. 

[PaleAleSox]

5 minutes ago, SoxAce said:

I like this move. Can't complain about it at all. 

Some will. 

[WhiteSox2023]

Would have expected it to be just a one year deal.  I guess if he breaks out, he’s a good trade chip like Fedde and if he bombs, he’s just an expensive reliever for another year.  The scary thing is that this guy had even less success than Fedde in the majors (as in zero success) prior to his reinvention overseas.

Edited Wednesday at 06:55 PM by WhiteSox2023

[WestEddy]

10 minutes ago, CWSpalehoseCWS said:

I don't mind this at all. Jerry is never going to sign off on the prices FA pitching is getting nowadays, and at least Getz is getting creative. For a backend arm, they could do a lot worse, and now it creates a little competition between the fringe guys. 

The tragedy of Mason Adams' TJS is that he was probably going to supplant Jon Cannon in the rotation to start 2025. Now they have Burke/Cannon/Davitt competing for 2 slots with McDougal/Schultz right behind them, and then Bush/Thorpe/Adams in June/July. 

I could also see a bunch of guys who haven't bought their plane tickets to Korea yet getting mop-up face time in March.

[CWSpalehoseCWS]

14 minutes ago, WestEddy said:

The tragedy of Mason Adams' TJS is that he was probably going to supplant Jon Cannon in the rotation to start 2025. Now they have Burke/Cannon/Davitt competing for 2 slots with McDougal/Schultz right behind them, and then Bush/Thorpe/Adams in June/July. 

I could also see a bunch of guys who haven't bought their plane tickets to Korea yet getting mop-up face time in March.

You can never have enough arms. Signing Kay doesn't hurt anyones chance at contributing next year and only creates competition for the young guys. I'd rather have guys battle it out than award and force guys to stick.

[caulfield12]

https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/47190646/white-sox-lhp-anthony-kay-agree-2-year-deal-sources-say

It’s a familiar page in general manager Chris Getz’s playbook: sign a former first-rounder to a two-year deal on the heels of a strong run pitching in one of the top leagues in Asia.

That strategy worked out reasonably well when Chicago signed Erick Fedde for two years and $15MM in the 2023-24 offseason following a terrific season in the Korea Baseball Organization; Fedde was traded to the Cardinals in a three-team swap in July 2024, netting the White Sox Miguel Vargas and minor league infielders Alexander Albertus and Jeral Perez. Vargas was a league-average bat for the South Siders in 2025 and is controlled another four seasons. Albertus and Perez rank within the top 25 prospects in the Sox’ system.

The Sox will hope for similar results in their similarly priced investment into Kay. The 30-year-old southpaw (31 in March) has pitched 291 2/3 innings since heading to Japan. In that time, he’s logged a 2.53 ERA with a 20.9% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate and 54.5% ground-ball rate in 48 starts out of the BayStars’ rotation.

https://fansided.com/mlb/exclusive-anthony-kay-reinvented-himself-in-japan-to-earn-another-shot-at-mlb

https://www.mlbtraderumors.com/2025/12/white-sox-sign-anthony-kay-two-years.html

Edited Wednesday at 07:00 PM by caulfield12

[caulfield12]

"They have very flat swings over there. Fastballs atop the zone don’t really work too well because they just foul it off and work 10-pitch at-bats every time just to be annoying. They weren’t even trying to put the ball in play. They were just going up there to get the pitch count up. I started working on the two-seam last year and had some success with it. Coming into this year, I was really going to commit to it. Once I started using that as often as my four-seam, that really changed how I pitched and how I attacked some of these hitters.

Even with those guys working up counts, you still managed to throw 155 innings last year.

The two-seamer really changed everything. Every four-seam was getting fouled off, and I just really wasn’t sure what to do at that point. I was watching a lot of these guys flip in some sinkers at 88-90 mph and they were getting ground ball after ground ball. I kept thinking, “I need that.” That changed everything for me."

 

What’s in your arsenal?

Two-seamer, four-seamer, cutter, sweeper and change-up. I’ve been working on a curveball, not the best! But we’ve been working on it a bit just trying to flip it in there one percent of the time. It’s not a pitch I’m totally comfortable with throwing at all times. 

Edited Wednesday at 07:05 PM by caulfield12