📰 NEWS FLASH: Getz calls Taylor “Mason Miller mold”… but the real twist is whether the Sox are wasting an ace by keeping him in the bullpen ⚡.DD

The 2025 Chicago White Sox season wasn’t defined by wins. It was defined by arrivals.

Detroit Tigers v Chicago White Sox | Matt Dirksen/GettyImages

A wave of young talent finally started breaking through — names like Colson Montgomery, Kyle Teel, and Shane Smith grabbing headlines and giving the fanbase something it hasn’t had in a while: a reason to watch closely, even when the standings didn’t cooperate.

But one of the most important developments of the year wasn’t the loudest.

It was Grant Taylor — and it happened fast.

Grant Taylor (@whitesox No. 6) shows off electric stuff in his MLB debut:

⚫️3 up, 3 down
⚪️12 pitches, 10 for strikes
⚫️First pitch at 101.5 mph, 6 fastballs over 100 pic.twitter.com/1P2RpwexAJ

— MLB Pipeline (@MLBPipeline) June 11, 2025

The White Sox brought Taylor straight to the big leagues from Double-A Birmingham in June, and within minutes, it was obvious he wasn’t just another arm filling innings.

He looked like something else entirely: a pitcher with the kind of velocity and movement that makes hitters uncomfortable before the ball even leaves his hand.

This week, White Sox general manager Chris Getz didn’t just praise Taylor — he placed him in a category that changes expectations overnight.

“Grant Taylor, I believe, has a chance to be an elite pitcher in this game,” Getz said while appearing on the Rekap White Sox podcast.

“At this point, he’s a reliever for us. What does that mean in the future? Does he become a starter? Perhaps. Time will tell. But in the meantime, he’s in the bullpen. I think he can be in the Mason Miller mold. I do. I think this guy — he’s got elite stuff.”

The Mason Miller mold.

That’s not a casual comparison. That’s not something you throw out just to fill airtime.

That’s the kind of statement that either becomes a prophecy… or a pressure cooker.

Because Mason Miller isn’t “good.” He’s not “promising.” He’s the blueprint for what baseball looks like when a reliever becomes a nightmare — a late-inning weapon so dominant he changes the entire shape of a game.

And the wild part is: Taylor’s raw ingredients actually support the idea.

If you only look at Taylor’s traditional stats, you might shrug. A 4.91 ERA doesn’t scream “future elite closer.” It screams “needs work.” It screams “inconsistent.” It screams “another guy with a big arm who hasn’t figured it out.”

But that’s the trap with pitchers like Taylor.

Because the deeper you look, the more the story flips.

Taylor’s average fastball velocity sat at 98.7 MPH — a number that ranked in the 97th percentile in all of baseball. He generated swings and misses at an elite rate.

Even when he gave up hard contact, much of it stayed on the ground, supported by a strong 51.1% ground-ball rate.

And the underlying metrics paint an even sharper picture: an xERA of 2.91 and a FIP of 1.42 suggest Taylor wasn’t getting exposed — he was getting unlucky. Let down by defense.

Punished by sequencing. Hit with the kind of “bad breaks” that make a young pitcher’s stat line look worse than the actual performance.

His MLB debut felt like a trailer for what’s possible. Three up, three down. Twelve pitches, ten strikes. First pitch at 101.5 MPH. Six fastballs over 100.

That isn’t normal. That’s a warning label.

The comparison to Mason Miller is bold, but it also makes sense when you understand Miller’s own path. Drafted by the Athletics as a starter, Miller debuted as a starter in 2023 before injury pushed him into the bullpen.

By 2024, he wasn’t just closing games — he was erasing them. He struck out 104 hitters, held opponents to a .160 batting average, then somehow got even better in 2025, allowing a .139 average against.

Miller became so valuable that the A’s traded him to the Padres at the deadline in a deal that included shortstop Leo De Vries, a consensus top-five prospect in baseball.

That’s what “Mason Miller mold” really means.

It means franchise-altering leverage.

And now the White Sox are openly suggesting Grant Taylor could be that kind of weapon.

But here’s the twist nobody can ignore: Taylor might be more than a reliever.

He started in college. He has the stuff to be stretched into a starter. And in a system that doesn’t exactly overflow with ace-level upside, the idea of keeping him in the bullpen forever feels… safe.

Too safe.

Of course, there are concerns. Injury history matters. Workload matters. And the White Sox may decide the smarter route is maximizing his impact in shorter bursts, where the velocity plays even louder and the risk feels lower.

If his floor is “good late-inning reliever,” that’s already valuable.

But if his ceiling is “Mason Miller-level terror,” then the White Sox might have stumbled into the rarest kind of rebuild asset: one that can flip games, flip seasons, and flip the way the league looks at them.

With additions like Seranthony Dominguez and the emergence of Jordan Leasure and Mike Vasil, Taylor won’t have to carry the bullpen alone in 2026.

And that matters, because the White Sox lost the most one-run games in baseball last season — the exact kind of pain that elite relief pitching can erase.

Now it comes down to one question that feels heavier the longer you sit with it:

Was Getz just hyping up his guy… or did the White Sox quietly find the one arm that can change everything? ⚡