Nine Games Left, and the White Sox Are Running Grant Taylor Into the Ground

The closer's usage tells you everything the standings won't. Grant Taylor has pitched to a 2.78 ERA across 64 appearances this season, the kind of number that makes a manager reach for the phone in the seventh inning when the game tightens. The problem is that over the last five games, the White Sox have been reaching for that phone more than ever — Taylor's workload has jumped roughly 30% above his seasonal norm in that span, a spike that isn't a blip but a structural confession. When a team overworks its best reliever this late in September, it's not managing a bullpen. It's mortgaging one.

What makes this particularly alarming is the context established in my September 18 piece: the rotation's failure to eat innings forced this bullpen into a pressure-valve role it was never built to sustain. That dynamic hasn't changed. It's accelerated. With eight pitchers on the 60-day IL and the depth chart effectively stripped to its studs, Taylor has become the answer to questions that shouldn't require a closer. The result is a man who has already thrown 87-plus innings in 64 games now being asked to carry more weight with nine games remaining and a magic number of 20.

The broader picture compounds the concern. The White Sox are allowing 5.1 runs per game over their last ten games — nearly a full run more than the prior twenty-game window — which means Taylor isn't entering clean situations. He's entering fires. Sean Newcomb has logged 98 innings across 62 appearances and carries a 3.86 ERA, solid enough but not elite; Sean Burke has been used as both a reliever and a rotation piece all season. The backend of this bullpen is not deep enough to absorb the workload that a collapsing rotation and a leaky defense are generating nightly.

Here is the uncomfortable arithmetic: the White Sox are 3-7 over their last ten games with a run differential of -1.2 per game, a number that has deteriorated sharply from the season pace. They scored eight runs against Detroit on September 18 and still lost by three. That game encapsulates the dual collapse — offense that can flare without winning, and a pitching staff that cannot hold leads or limit damage consistently. Munetaka Murakami and Miguel Vargas, both All-Stars, are in the lineup every night. Randal Grichuk has been as productive as any hitter in the organization over his last 35 games. The offense is not the sole villain here. The inability to bridge the gap between the rotation and Taylor without burning Taylor is the structural failure.

My read is that the White Sox are now in a position where protecting their closer for a potential playoff run and winning enough games to reach that playoff run are in direct conflict. Every extra inning Taylor throws in a September loss is an inning he doesn't have in October. The organization built this team to reach the postseason; the question is whether the final nine games leave Taylor with enough left to matter once they get there — assuming they do. The standings still say first place. The usage chart says something closer to desperation.