Kopech shut down for '23 after having cyst removed from knee

BOSTON -- The 2023 White Sox season continues on for another eight games after a 3-2 loss on Friday night to the Red Sox in the final road series opener before 37,102 at Fenway Park. But Michael Kopech’s campaign has come to a close following successful surgery to remove a cyst from his right knee.

Kopech, 27, underwent the procedure Friday morning, performed at Rush Oak Brook Surgery Center by White Sox lead team doctor Nikhil Verma. His full recovery time is expected to take between 6-8 weeks.

Surgery to repair Kopech’s right meniscus ended the right-hander’s 2022 season prematurely, with his last start coming on Sept. 13. This latest issue closes out his rough second half in 2023, which featured an 8.10 ERA in 14 games (11 starts) with 37 strikeouts and 42 walks over 43 1/3 innings.

Without making excuses, White Sox manager Pedro Grifol mentioned Kopech has been treating that cyst problem the whole year.

“It definitely affected him. To what extent, not real sure,” Grifol said. “Only he knows that. It had been bothering him the whole year.”

After a brief stint in the bullpen, Kopech made his last trip to the mound on Wednesday at the Nationals as an opener. He threw 14 pitches and allowed one unearned run in the first, putting a close to a 5-12 performance with a 5.43 ERA and 134 strikeouts in 129 1/3 innings this season.

When Kopech was on, he could be one of the most dominant starters going. Check out his eight innings of one-hit baseball with 10 strikeouts against the Royals on May 19 and seven shutout innings with nine strikeouts during his ensuing start against the Guardians. Grifol still envisions Kopech in that starting role despite the second-half woes.

“I will always view him as a starter until it’s time to not view him as one,” Grifol said. “I’ve been in the game a long time, and that’s one thing I’ve learned and I’ll never not want to exhaust every opportunity that we possibly can to make a starter or keep a starter.

“Good thing is he’s got value and he can have value in both. I saw one of the best pitchers in baseball for a while and then I saw a guy who was battling through some mechanical stuff and physical stuff and mental stuff, and then I saw him finish OK. Hopefully he can get into the offseason right now and put it all together and come back. We need him. We’re counting on him.”

The White Sox once counted on Chris Sale at the top of their rotation, with the highly competitive southpaw becoming one of the franchise’s top all-time hurlers. Sale was traded by the White Sox to Boston on Dec. 6, 2016, for a four-player return including Kopech and Yoán Moncada to begin a much-ballyhooed rebuild.

Sale struck out seven over five scoreless innings on Friday, with Moncada finishing 1-for-4 on the other side of the diamond. Sale already has a World Series ring on his resume in 2018, with Andrew Benintendi, the current White Sox left fielder, playing left behind Sale on that dominant Red Sox squad.

Benintendi has special memories of that 2018 Boston team, with a special distinction for that championship group.

“We started out 17-2 and rolled all the way through the playoffs,” Benintendi said. “A lot of good dudes. Still keep in contact with a lot of them. It’s one of the better teams I’ve ever been on.

“Everybody understood what their job was. Everybody knew exactly what they had to do to prepare. There were a lot of veterans on that team. Guys who had done it before in other organizations and understood their role. They laid the foundation for us younger guys to come up and show us what to do. It’s always good to have.”