{"id":323126,"date":"2025-12-03T17:46:07","date_gmt":"2025-12-03T17:46:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323126\/"},"modified":"2025-12-03T17:46:07","modified_gmt":"2025-12-03T17:46:07","slug":"white-sox-anthony-kay-agree-to-two-year-deal","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/323126\/","title":{"rendered":"White Sox, Anthony Kay Agree To Two-Year Deal"},"content":{"rendered":"

11:15am: Kay will be paid $5MM in each of the next two seasons and has a $2MM buyout on a $10MM mutual option for the 2028 season, Will Sammon<\/a> of The Athletic reports<\/a>. He can tack on another $1.5MM via incentives.<\/p>\n

11:04am: The White Sox and left-hander Anthony Kay<\/a> are in agreement on a two-year, $12MM contract, reports Robert Murray of Fansided<\/a>. The former first-round pick and top prospect, who\u2019s represented by CAA, has spent the past two seasons pitching well for the Yokohama DeNA BayStars of Japan\u2019s Nippon Professional Baseball.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s a familiar page in general manager Chris Getz<\/a>\u2019s playbook: sign a former first-rounder to a two-year deal on the heels of a strong run pitching in one of the top leagues in Asia. That worked out reasonably well when Chicago signed Erick Fedde<\/a> for two years and $15MM in the 2023-24 offseason; Fedde was traded to the Cardinals in a three-team swap in July 2024, netting the White Sox Miguel Vargas<\/a> and minor league infielders Alexander Albertus<\/a> and Jeral Perez<\/a>. Vargas was a league-average bat for the South Siders in 2025 and is controlled another four seasons. Albertus and Perez rank within the top 25 prospects in the Sox\u2019 system.<\/p>\n

The Sox will hope for similar results in their similarly priced investment into Kay. The 30-year-old southpaw (31 in March) has pitched 291 2\/3 innings since heading to Japan. In that time, he\u2019s logged a 2.53 ERA with a 20.9% strikeout rate, 7.9% walk rate and 54.5% ground-ball rate in 48 starts out of the BayStars\u2019 rotation.<\/p>\n

Kay has changed his pitch repertoire since moving to NPB. He sat 94.1 mph with a four-seamer, 87.9 mph with a cutter and 86.2 mph with a slider during his limited big league work from 2019-23. He\u2019s added about three miles per hour to that cutter and also begun throwing a sinker that he didn\u2019t have during his last run in North America, which he credits with generating more soft contact. He\u2019s still throwing a sweeper and occasional changeup, and the lefty has also dabbled with a curveball. (He spoke about those changes and more in an October chat with Murray<\/a>.)<\/p>\n

From 2019-23, Kay pitched 85 1\/3 innings between the Blue Jays, Cubs and Mets. It was the Mets who originally selected him 31st overall back in 2016, though they were actually the third team for whom he pitched in the majors. New York traded Kay and Simeon Woods Richardson<\/a> to the Blue Jays in exchange for Marcus Stroman<\/a> back in 2019, and Kay made his MLB debut not long after the swap.<\/p>\n

Things never clicked for Kay in the majors. He\u2019s been tagged for a 5.59 ERA with a solid 22.4% strikeout rate but an ugly 12% walk rate. Opponents averaged 1.27 homers per nine innings against him. He didn\u2019t fare much better in terms of run prevention in parts of four Triple-A seasons, logging a 5.40 earned run average in 148 1\/3 innings pitched.<\/p>\n

As we saw with Fedde and with yesterday\u2019s three-year, $30MM deal between the Blue Jays and Cody Ponce<\/a>, what Kay did in his prior MLB work holds virtually no bearing on his newfound payday. He\u2019s a different pitcher now than he was at any point in 2019-23, and the White Sox are paying him based on the their belief that the changes he\u2019s implemented while pitching in Yokohama will beget better results back in Major League Baseball.<\/p>\n

There\u2019s inherent risk, but at this price point, it\u2019s also hard to fault a White Sox club that\u2019s still in the midst of a rebuilding effort. Kay will either pitch well, at which point he\u2019d emerge as a nice trade chip, or he\u2019ll continue to struggle and the Sox will be out a relatively modest $5MM per season. The overall scope of this commitment is less than the $15MM paydays we saw for aging veterans in their late 30s\/early 40s last year (e.g. Charlie Morton<\/a>, Max Scherzer<\/a>, Justin Verlander<\/a>, Alex Cobb<\/a>). It\u2019s a life-changing deal for Kay but a small-scale gamble for the team.<\/p>\n

More to come.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"11:15am: Kay will be paid $5MM in each of the next two seasons and has a $2MM buyout…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323127,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[110644,49,48,82],"class_list":{"0":"post-323126","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-anthony-kay","9":"tag-ca","10":"tag-canada","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323126","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323126"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323126\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323127"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323126"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323126"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/ca\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323126"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}