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.
On Tuesday night, with the Sox guarding a slim lead in the AL Central, the first seven Pirates hitters Burke faced all reached base. The first five balls put 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.
After issuing eight walks 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 after walking the bases loaded in the second to a mix of jeers and supportive applause befitting a breakout star whose brilliance has helped make White Sox games in September relevant, and whose suddenly erratic performance made it distressing.
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 season’s finish line, Venable could go that route again soon.
“That’s a good indication of what it could look like,” said Venable, who indicated his pitcher usage might have the all-hands-on-deck flavor of a playoff series down the stretch. “We’ve got some pretty special arms [in the bullpen] that can obviously get swing and miss, get some outs. But they can do it over multiple innings.”
Burke has rejected the notion that fatigue is a factor in his recent mechanical inconsistency, even with his prior professional career-high in innings in the rearview mirror. Sox pitching coaches indicated that Burke’s emergence this year has been helped by dropping his arm slot, reducing the frequency with which his breaking balls pop up out of his hand on release and reveal themselves to opposing hitters.
To even further simplify the cue to something that lines up with his best command, Burke informs that when his shoulders remain level with each other throughout his delivery, his pitches are more consistent. When it’s awry, as it has been recently, he can spiral.
“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 made the correction quickly enough to salvage a great outing. On Tuesday, things spiraled for Burke too quickly for any mid-game adjustment, and far too swiftly for a Sox offense that didn’t manage a baserunner off Pirates starter Bubba Chandler until the fifth inning.
With the Cleveland Guardians on their heels, the Sox need to restore a better version of Burke over the season’s final 2½ weeks, as he’s 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.”