How Kopech benefited from his time away from Sox originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Michael Kopech is back.
Again.
His time away from the White Sox in 2019 was for one of those standard baseball reasons. He spent the entire season in recovery mode after Tommy John’s surgery.
His time away from the White Sox in 2020 had much less to do with baseball.
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But the end result, one of the benefits of his absence that he described on Saturday, has everything to do with baseball: the game he loves, again.
“I think I learned that I need this game much more than I imagined,” said Kopech on the first weekend of the White Sox camp in Arizona. “It is much easier to talk than to take a step away from something you have done all your life.
“So taking a step back and realizing how big the piece of the puzzle is for me kind of put everything in perspective and made me kind of regain my motivation to go back there, along with some other things that happened in my life.
“I think I found that motivation that I may have lost, not that I lost it completely, because I never want to be known as a guy who didn’t work hard for everything he had to win. But with that time away, I really had the chance to come back and prove to myself, at least, that this is what I want to do. “
There was a lot of instinctive criticism of Kopech when the White Sox announced its decision not to play during the short 2020 season. On Saturday, speaking for the first time since the decision was announced, Kopech said there were several reasons for making that choice. Part of this had to do with the COVID-19 pandemic and the health effects it could have on people close to him. There were personal reasons and the status of his relationship with actress Vanessa Morgan made headlines in the entertainment.
But Kopech was never shy about discussing his mental health and his decision not to play in 2020 had to do with prioritizing that part of his life as well. It is difficult for some to remember that baseball players are also human beings, and Kopech is fortunate to have a job – and an employer – that has enabled it to meet that priority.
Kopech is also a new father, and this offers even more perspective when he returns to work.
“Like any young person, I have lived a very selfish life for the past six, seven years, whatever my career in the secondary league. Now, I have a life I need to take care of that is much more important than being selfish,” he said. “My career no longer dictates only my future, but it dictates my son’s. That is all the motivation I need.”
Needless to say, a lot has changed for Kopech since he last pitched in a major league game. When April and the regular season arrive, it will be 31 months since your last tour. He launched nothing more than a Cactus League action ticket last spring, before the pandemic affected the 2020 season.
It certainly looks like Kopech will have a different role in 2021 than he has been used to throughout his White Sox career. Although the organization still sees it as a long-term part of the initial rotation, it looks like it will be deployed outside the bullpen at least early in the 2021 season, with the intention that it will be at its best by September and October. It may not be a mainstay of a bullpen from start to finish, although the White Soxes promise creativity in how they use it.
But the biggest changes for Kopech came off the field. They had to do it. He hasn’t been in a major league field for two and a half years.
These changes, however, should help him do what White Sox fans always wanted him to do, something he reaffirmed that he wants to do again: play gas and win ball games.
“I think I have a different mental outlook on the game than I did in the past,” he said. “In the past, I put a lot of unnecessary pressure and anxiety on myself and I think that, for the first time in my career, I am comfortable enough with what I am doing when my only focus is internal. It is within the game itself, it is within the competition , is doing blows, is working on my mechanics, is doing all the little things right.
“I think I’m a little more focused now than I was before. Cutting out the distractions has been a big part of that. I’m looking forward to seeing where that focus will take me in my career.”
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