Michael Kopech was signing autographs recently at Camelback Ranch when a White Sox fan told him: “Next year can’t come soon enough.”
Kopech looked at the fan and grinned, ever so slightly.
Kopech will not record a strikeout in 2019. His top challenge won’t come from facing Mike Trout or Mookie Betts. His primarily battle, as Sox general manager Rick Hahn put it, will be with boredom.
That’s life for a pitcher rehabbing from Tommy John surgery, one with a semicircular scar on his right elbow.