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How Kopech benefited from his absence from the Sox originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Michael Kopech is back.
Again.
His time away from the White Sox in 2019 was for one of those standard baseball reasons. He spent the entire season in recovery mode after Tommy John’s surgery.
His time away from the White Sox in 2020 had a lot less to do with baseball.
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But the end result, one of the blessings of his absence that he described on Saturday, has everything to do with baseball: the game he loves, once again.
“I think I learned that I needed this game a lot more than I thought I would,” Kopech said on the White Sox’s opening weekend in Arizona. “It’s a lot easier said than done to walk away from something you’ve been doing all of your life.
“So taking a step back from that and realizing how important he is to this whole puzzle for me kind of put it all into perspective, and it kind of gave me the motivation to come back there – low, along with some other things that have happened in my life.
“I think I found that motivation that I maybe lost, not that I completely lost it because I never want to be known as a guy who didn’t work very hard for everything. he had to win. But with that far away, I was really lucky to come back and at least prove to myself that’s what I want to do. “
There was a lot of instinctive criticism of Kopech when the White Sox announced his decision not to play during the shortened 2020 season. On Saturday, speaking for the first time since the move was announced, Kopech said there were several reasons he made the choice. Part of this was linked to the COVID-19 pandemic and the health effects it could have had on loved ones. There were personal reasons and the status of her relationship with actress Vanessa Morgan made the headlines in entertainment.
But Kopech never shied away from discussing his mental health, and his decision not to play in 2020 was also tied to prioritizing that part of his life. It’s hard for some to remember that baseball players are human beings too, and Kopech is fortunate to have a job – and an employer – that has enabled him to meet this priority.
Kopech is also a new father, which gave him even more perspective on his return to work.
“Like any youngster, I’ve lived a pretty selfish life for the past six, seven years regardless of my minor league career. Now I have a life that I have to take care of that’s a lot more. important than being selfish, “he says.” My career doesn’t just dictate my future anymore, it dictates my son’s. That’s kind of all the motivation I need. “
It goes without saying that so much has changed for Kopech since the last time he pitched in a major league game. When April and the regular season roll in, it will be 31 months since his last outing. It kicked off nothing more than a round of Cactus League action last spring, before the pandemic threw a wrench into the 2020 season.
It looks like Kopech will have a different role in 2021 than he’s been used to throughout his White Sox career. While the organization still sees him as a long-term part of the starting rotation, it looks like he’ll be deployed out of the reliever box at least early in the 2021 season, with the intention being that he be at its best. come September and October. He may not be a mainstay of the bullpen from start to finish, however, with the White Sox promising some creativity in how they use him.
But the biggest changes for Kopech have come off the pitch. They had to do it. He hasn’t been in a big league for two and a half years.
These changes, however, should help him do what White Sox fans always wanted him to do, which he reaffirmed he wanted to do again: throw gas and win ball games.
“I think my mental outlook on the game is different from what I had in the past,” he said. “In the past I’ve put a lot of unnecessary pressure and anxiety on myself, and I think for one of the first times in my career I’m pretty comfortable with what I’m doing where my only focus is internal. It’s in the game itself, it’s in the competition, it’s throwing strikes, it works on my mechanics, it does all the little things right.
“I think I’m a little more focused right now than I have been in the past. Reducing distractions has been a big part of that. I can’t wait to see where this takes me in my career.”
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