KANSAS CITY, Mo. — White Sox right-hander Jonathan Cannon watched lefty Martin Perez throw his cutter and changeup in spring training. But it wasn’t until Perez’s first start of the season March 31 — six no-hit innings in a win against the Twins — that Cannon truly took note of how effective the approach was.
“He was just back-door cutter, changeup, cutter, cutter, sinker, and it’s just keeping guys off-balance,” Cannon said. “It’s like, ‘How can I use that to my advantage?’ It’s just been really cool to learn.”
Cannon used a changeup 19% of the time last season. It was up to 24% entering Wednesday — a bigger piece of his arsenal, especially against left-handed hitters, of which the Royals had four in their lineup Wednesday night.
Cannon (2-4) turned in another lengthy start, allowing two runs and nine hits with zero walks in six innings and keeping the Sox (10-27) in it while he was on the mound. But the offense couldn’t come up with much off Royals starter Michael Wacha (2-4), resulting in a 2-1 loss at Kauffman Stadium.
It was Cannon’s third start allowing three runs or fewer. He now has zero walks in back-to-back starts.
Just two of the nine hits he allowed came on his changeup.
“He was attacking the zone, mixing it up,” manager Will Venable said.
As for the offense, things at least got interesting in the ninth when Miguel Vargas doubled off Royals closer Carlos Estevez and Luis Robert Jr. singled Vargas home to make it 2-1. After Matt Thaiss singled, Michael A. Taylor replaced him at first.
Andrew Vaughn struck out, followed by shortstop Bobby Witt Jr. making a tremendous stop on Brooks Baldwin’s grounder up the middle that likely saved the tying run from scoring and got Taylor out at second. Josh Rojas struck out to end the game.
“We were aggressive, and [that was] another closer that we battled with,” Venable said. “We’ve done a great job at the end of games. Just got to find a way to score early.”
Cannon’s only trouble came in the fifth. After allowing a leadoff single by Luke Maile, then inducing back-to-back groundouts, he threw a sinker to Witt that resulted in a two-run homer. In Witt’s previous two at-bats, Cannon had been able to get him out on a sinker and a changeup up and in.
“[In the] third at-bat, he made an adjustment and put a good swing on it,” Cannon said.
Cannon has seemed to find a rhythm after early-season struggles with his command. Entering Wednesday, he had a 3.38 ERA over four appearances since April 16.
From April 16 until Wednesday, he also had walked only 7.8% of batters after walking 13.6% over his first three starts.
Cannon credited catcher Thaiss and the Sox’ defense for his strong outing.
“I thought me and Thaiss did a good job of . . . just [inducing] a lot of weak contact. Gave up some singles,” Cannon said.
“No walks today — that’s always the goal going in. All the makings of the consistency is there. Just got to go out and execute.”