This story was excerpted from Scott Merkin’s White Sox Beat newsletter. To read the full newsletter, click here. And subscribe to get it regularly in your inbox.
CHICAGO -- Sean Burke had a couple of truly lifelong career moments as a rookie for the 2025 White Sox, even amid the team’s third straight season with 100-plus losses.
The right-hander made his first Opening Day start in impressive fashion against the Angels on March 27 at Rate Field. A little more than three months later, on July 2 at Dodger Stadium, Burke was a solid bulk hurler opposite Clayton Kershaw when the left-hander picked up his 3,000th career strikeout with his last pitch of the night to Vinny Capra, ending the sixth.
They were both part of a season full of learning for the 26-year-old, who enters the upcoming campaign with a great deal of confidence as part of the South Siders’ rotation. He also has a fairly good idea of the mound formula that can fuel his ultimate success.
“When I execute my stuff well, I have really good games. When I don’t execute myself well, it’s when the games get away from me,” Burke told MLB.com. “I don’t think it’s necessarily every one that goes bad, it’s a stuff issue. It’s more, how consistently can I execute my pitches?
“You learn with different caliber of hitters how guys try to handle at-bats or what pitches you can get away with in certain counts, where other times against certain hitters, you might have to pivot and not go back to a pitch you beat them with. You beat them with a pitch in the first at-bat, but instead of going directly back to that, you have to dress that up and make sure you get it in a spot where they are not necessarily expecting it.”
Burke currently is in Nashville, Tenn., where he’s been for much of the last two months, working out at a facility run by the Bledsoe Agency. Colson Montgomery, with whom Burke lives during his time in Nashville, is part of this vast Bledsoe baseball group, as is Caleb Bonemer, the White Sox No. 4 prospect and No. 73 overall, per MLB Pipeline.
Jake Burger, Vinnie Pasquantino, Daniel Lynch, Trevor Larnach and Brandon Lowe also have been part of these sessions at some point. The American League Central flavor leads to a little bit of intradivision trash talk, but it’s also valuable offseason work with other Major Leaguers.
White Sox right-hander Jonathan Cannon, catcher Korey Lee and first baseman Tim Elko live nearby in Nashville. Burke also saw righties Davis Martin, Shane Smith and Drew Thorpe along with Cannon during an offseason "City Slickers: White Sox" weekend at Martin’s family ranch in Texas. It’s all part of that togetherness building within these young players.
“This is the most communication I’ve had with the team, in terms of my teammates, throughout the offseason,” Burke said. “As a group of guys, we are getting a lot closer. All of us are looking forward to getting back and playing again.”
Over 134 1/3 innings, covering 28 games and 22 starts, Burke posted a 4-11 record with a 4.22 ERA in 2025. His 133 strikeouts ranked second on the team, behind Smith, and his innings total ranked third, behind Smith and Martin.
In studying his 2025 efforts, Burke learned hitters from Cleveland will approach him differently than hitters from Houston, as an example. He also spoke of the White Sox starting pitchers making better use of their iPad time and studying reports to really zone in on each hitter.
Burke's rookie campaign wasn’t quite as nationally renowned as Montgomery, who knocked out 21 home runs in 71 games after July 4 and finished fifth in the American League Rookie of the Year voting. But Montgomery wasn’t part of that Opening Day roster when Burke earned his Game 1 honors.
Against the Angels on that chilly Chicago afternoon, Burke hurled six scoreless innings with three strikeouts and three hits allowed during an 8-1 victory. Cannon referred to that effort as the White Sox best individual performance of the season, but Burke was just as good in giving up one run over six innings with five strikeouts before 53,536 at the Dodgers in July.
That one run came via an Andy Pages solo home run on Burke’s very first pitch of the evening, leaving Burke a little humorously miffed at teammate Miguel Vargas.
“Vargas and Pages are friends,” said Burke with a laugh. “After the game, Vargas told me, ‘Yeah, Pages told me he was going to ambush that fastball.’ I was like, ‘You couldn’t have told me that yesterday before the game?’
"That never really rattled me in that moment. First-pitch fastball, he jumped on it. Just kind of got to work from there. It’s nice for your confidence to see you can go toe to toe with one of the best pitchers and the best team in baseball, hold your own and succeed. From that perspective, I thought that was a really big game for me. … Honestly, those were two of my favorite games.”