Jace Fry (RP, CWS) - Week 19 Waiver Wire Pickups

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ANALYSIS: After the Chicago White Sox shipped closer Joakim Soria to the Milwaukee Brewers on July 26th, a big window of high-leverage opportunity opened up in the South Side's bullpen. This has created a volatile closer situation between pitchers like Juan Minaya, Luis Avilan, and despite his recent struggles, Jace Fry. How severely has Fry struggled? After a sterling start to the season with a 1.82 ERA and 0.89 WHIP in 24 2/3 IP through May and June, Fry has been plagued by disastrous outings to the tune of a 12.46 ERA and 1.38 WHIP in the 8 2/3 IP since the beginning of July. The good news about Fry's recent outings is that there is very little difference between what produced them, and what produced his fantastic results earlier in the season.

Fry has been very consistent in the strikeout department, producing a K/9 north of ten in each month of the season for a season total of 11.6. Also, his BB/9 figures have steadily decreased through each month of the season, going from 3.75 in May to 2.16 in July while not yet having allowed a free trip to first so far in limited August work. He has yet to even allow a hard contact rate higher than 29.6% for a complete month all season, though in July his soft contact rate allowed dropped all the way to 4.2% and translated into an increase in medium contact to 66.7%. Even still, opposing batters only managed a .424 slugging percentage against Fry during July while he has only allowed two HR all season. Though Fry has seen a decrease in his average fastball velocity from 93.6 mph to 92.5 mph from last season to this one that prompted a nearly 10% decrease in the frequency with which he throws it and has also seen his velocity fall in his curveball and changeup, he has increased his slider's speed from 85.3 mph in 2017 to 87.7 mph in 2018, which has caused him to go from throwing it 7.8% of the time to 26.8%. Though it would be a huge assist if Jace Fry started forcing more soft contact, the combination of his performance peripherals with his ground ball proclivity demonstrated by a 1.35 GB/FB ratio off of 45.5% grounders seems to point towards the idea that this recent ugly stretch for Jace Fry should end soon.

While Fry has been relegated to more holds situations lately, if he turns his performance around soon, he could very easily start seeing the bulk of Chicago's save opportunities (when they happen to come around) in a White Sox bullpen that ranks 24th in the MLB with a 2018 ERA of 4.65.