{"id":42721,"date":"2026-06-17T22:38:53","date_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:38:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/42721\/"},"modified":"2026-06-17T22:38:53","modified_gmt":"2026-06-17T22:38:53","slug":"former-uconn-star-has-helped-spur-dramatic-mlb-turnaround","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/42721\/","title":{"rendered":"Former UConn star has helped spur dramatic MLB turnaround"},"content":{"rendered":"

NEW YORK \u2014 In his third start of the season, his third start in the major leagues after two years of self-imposed exile in Japan, Anthony Kay shut the Royals down into the sixth inning. As a calling card, you might say, Kay clipped Jac Caglianone\u2019s elbow with a fastball,<\/a> his final pitch of the night.<\/p>\n

Caglianone stared, said something as he walked to first base. Kay stared back. \u201cThose guys like to chirp a little bit, it seems like,\u201d Kay told reporters following that April 9 game.<\/a> \u201cI don\u2019t think we\u2019re going to take that anymore. We\u2019re going to go right at them.\u201d<\/p>\n

There was a message there, for certain, the kind of message teams send about when they are no longer resigned to losing; will no longer allow hitters to dig in, crowd the plate, swing from the heels with impunity. The White Sox, one of the worst teams in baseball history in 2024,<\/a> finishing 41-121, started to turn a corner late last season, but still finished 60-102.<\/p>\n

Now, they were going to be a different team, with a different culture, different attitude in 2026. They were 38-33 and tied for first place with in the AL Central with Cleveland after Tuesday\u2019s series-opening 12-2 loss to the Yankees. Despite the blip, Kay (6-1), the lefthander from UConn who starts Wednesday night\u2019s game for Chicago, has been one of the reasons behind the dramatic resurgence. How dramatic? In 2024, while Kay was pitching for Yokohama, the White Sox had already lost 120 games before getting win No. 38.<\/p>\n

Dom Amore: After eye injury, this CT baseball standout is changing Lane to pursue dreams at UConn<\/a><\/p>\n

The plunk-and-staredown with Caglianone was not an isolated incident. Kay has hit 12 betters,<\/a> most in the majors, in his first 66 1\/3 innings. \u201cI pitch inside a lot,\u201d Kay said Tuesday, in the visiting clubhouse at Yankee Stadium. \u201cSome of them are breaking balls, I hit the guy\u2019s foot. Some of that is sort of unlucky, in a way, that\u2019s kind of how it is.\u201d<\/p>\n

It has a familiar ring back in Storrs, where he was the Huskies\u2019 ace and set a tone for bulldogged-ness.<\/p>\n

\u201cWhen he gets on the mound, you know, he\u2019s out there to compete, he\u2019s not out there to make friends,\u201d UConn pitching coach Josh MacDonald said, \u201cHe\u2019s not out there to fool around.\u201d<\/p>\n

Anthony Kay has been through too much since he left UConn in 2016, as a late first-round draft pick by the Mets,<\/a> to fool around. He needed Tommy John surgery before he began his pro career, and as he began to rise in the Mets system, he was traded to Toronto. The Jays used him mostly as a reliever, and he bounced up and down from the minor leagues, to the Cubs and the Mets, before packing up and moving 7,000 miles from his Long Island home to Japan, where he was allowed to start, allowed to figure things out. In his second year with Yokohama, he was 9-6 with a 1.74 ERA<\/a>. enough to earn a fresh look from MLB. He signed a two-year, $12 million contract to pitch<\/a> on Chicago\u2019s South Side.<\/p>\n

\u201cI wanted to start again, I had a great opportunity to go over there and do my thing,\u201d Kay said. \u201cI got comfortable over there, learned the sinker over there, and it\u2019s helped me a lot. I regained a lot of confidence in myself, everything, really, is totally different mentally and physically than I was when I was over here before.\u201d<\/p>\n

In Japan\u2019s major leagues, Kay was in a world where the premium was not on strikeouts, though he had 130 in 155 innings last year, but on inducing soft contact and getting outs earlier in the counts and working deeper into games. He had one of the best ground-ball to fly-ball ratios in Japan, and with good health and mechanics he ticked his fastball up to 95 MPH.<\/p>\n

This former UConn baseball star has gotten his call to the major leagues<\/a><\/p>\n

\u201cOver there, they want you to throw 100-120 pitches,\u201d Kay said. \u201cThey want you going into the seventh, eighth inning. Guys around the league, they all threw multiple fastballs, four-seam, two-seam, cutter. I feel (the two-seamer) was the one pitch I was missing. One day, I gripped it and threw it and the metrics were really good on it. My first year, the playoffs came around and I leaned on it a little more, and that led to the massive ground ball ratio my second year and the success I had.\u201d<\/p>\n

In his first 14 starts, Kay has kept the White Sox in every game but two, rough outings against the Phillies and Diamondbacks inflated his ERA to 4.34 going into his start against the Yankees, when he expected to have at least 25 friends and relatives from Long Island, and his old college pitching coach, in the stands. Take out those two starts, and Kay\u2019s ERA in all the other games is 2.76.<\/p>\n

\u201cKay is awesome,\u201d White Sox manager Will Venable said. \u201cHe\u2019s very competitive, he\u2019s finding different ways to be successful. He\u2019s gone through some real challenges, and I think even within each game there have been challenges. He\u2019s a very resilient guy. He is one of the guys on our pitching staff, he, Davis Martin, are setting a tone of going out there and being fearless, going out there and attacking, and it may not always be pretty, may not always be what they set out to do, but they\u2019re getting it done.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"BeforeBefore starting his pro career, lefty Anthony Kay parlayed his time at UConn into becoming a first-round draft pick. (Stephen Slade\/UConn)<\/p>\n

Kay, 31, may have relatively little major league experience, but the road he has traveled has made him one of the veterans on a young, exuberant team. Many of his teammates, in fact, rib him about being drafted in 2016, when many of them were in middle school, or younger. In the next locker in New York was another baseball graybeard, lefty reliever Sean Newcomb, 33,<\/a> a first-round draft pick in 2014 out of UHart, who had a 2.14 ERA going into the series..<\/p>\n

\u201c(Kay) has been throwing the ball real well,\u201d Newcomb said. \u201cHe\u2019s really found his fastball, how to use his fastball. It\u2019s gained some velocity, and having the cutter off that, another hard offering, pitching in, all around the zone, just dominating with his fastball.\u201d<\/p>\n

Kay had to go to Japan to be allowed to do his thing, start and pitch without the threat of being demoted to the minors or released after any bad performance. It proved to be a valuable exile, and when he was ready to come back he chose a team which could also allow him to \u201cdo his thing.\u201d The White Sox had little to lose, they appear to have acquired the tools it takes to win. And Anthony Kay is one of them.<\/p>\n

\u201cI knew the stuff was there, it was a matter of trusting it, being in the strike zone attacking,\u201d Kay said. \u201c\u2026 We saw the talent we had. Everyone knew we were talented, we just had to put it together on the field and come together as a team and do what we\u2019ve been doing. To see the results that we\u2019ve had so far, it\u2019s been fun to be part of. \u201c<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NEW YORK \u2014 In his third start of the season, his third start in the major leagues after…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":42722,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[29429,28111,7058,30456,30453,13505,8,2164,30457,30451,851,33,30455,30448,30449,30454,30450,10111,30452],"class_list":["post-42721","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-japan","tag-anthony-kay","tag-blue-jays","tag-connecticut","tag-ctnews","tag-cubs","tag-hartford-courant","tag-japan","tag-local-news","tag-max-image-preview","tag-mets","tag-mlb","tag-nihon","tag-sean-newcomb","tag-uconn","tag-uconn-baseball","tag-uhart","tag-white-sox","tag-will-venable","tag-yankees"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42721","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=42721"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/42721\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/42722"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=42721"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=42721"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/japan\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=42721"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}