The Wild, Woolly, and Wacky White Sox
From an outsider’s perspective—meaning not a Chicagoan—the White Sox have always taken a backseat to the Cubs in my baseball consciousness. Historically, the Cubs had “Tinkers to Evers to Chance” and Hack Wilson’s 191 RBI and Charlie Root (allegedly) allowing Babe Ruth’s “called shot” and the “Billy Goat Curse” and the “College of Coaches” and Rick Sutcliffe going 16-1 in 1984 and Andre Dawson’s 1987 MVP season and Alex Gonzalez’ error in Game 6 of the 2003 NLCS and, of course, Wrigley Field. Oh, and the end of their 108-year World Series drought in 2016.
By contrast, the White Sox had the “Black Sox Scandal,” baseball shorts with big collars in the 1970s, and a stadium currently named after a residential mortgage company that was previously named after a mobile network operator.
This year, though, it’s the White Sox who are THE story in Chicago. They lead the AL Central and have the best run-differential in the American League. The team expected to be their biggest division rivals this year, the Minnesota Twins, are 9.5 games back. The excitement-meter surged in one of their games against the Twins last week, when DH Yermín Mercedes, hit a 429-foot bomb off cult hero Willians Astudillo after the Sox were already ahead 15-4 in the top of the ninth inning. Willians Astudillo is a position player who has now pitched twice in the last month. According to FanGraphs, his “fastball” averages about 55 mph.
This caused some uproar, which you likely read about all over the internet, perhaps even here at Off the Bench in Daniel R. Epstein’s piece. I agree with Epstein that La Russa was in the wrong on this issue. It’s not at all surprising, either. La Russa’s hiring in the off-season was bewildering. It seemed to boil down to one old white guy (Jerry Reinsdorf) hiring another old white guy (Tony La Russa) simply because he could and not because it was the right thing to do for this particular collection of players.
The Yermin versus Willians incident led to a terrific tweet from Bill James, at least for those old enough to know who Bob Dylan is:
Come Managers and Coaches
Throughout the Land
And don’t criticize what you can’t understand
Oh your shortstops and catchers
Are beyond your command
The battle that’s outside ragin’
Will soon shake your clubhouse and rattle your walls
For the times, they are a’changin’
James’ tweet inspired an additional verse by a commenter:
The baseline it is drawn
The curse (of the Bambino) has been cast
The slow catcher now
Will later be fast
As the present now
Will later be past
The lineup order is rapidly fadin’
And the lead-off hitter now
Will later hit last
Oh the times
They are a’changin’
The La Russa/Mercedes saga is just one current reason the White Sox are more interesting to watch these days than they have been in the past. The team also has the exciting comeback story of pitcher Carlos Rodon, the Big Boy Brilliance of Lance Lynn, and the improvement of Dylan Cease.
Carlos Rodon, with a 1.27 ERA and 0.80 WHIP, is pitching better than he ever has in his career, which includes a no-hitter against Cleveland on April 14. He pitched just 42 1/3 innings combined in 2019 and 2020, with a 5.74 ERA and 1.46 WHIP.
Lance Lynn famously throws fastballs. According to FanGraphs, only Adrian Houser has thrown a higher percentage of fastballs than Lynn (minimum of 40 innings pitched). This is fascinating because it’s not like Lynn has the fastest of fastballs. Among the 100 pitchers with 40 or more innings in 2021, his fastball velocity ranks 50th.
Dylan Cease looked superficially competent last season, when he had a 4.01 ERA. A closer look revealed a 6.36 FIP, 5.87 xFIP, and 5.86 SIERA. That’s bad. He also had a below-average 17.3 percent strikeout rate and walked 13.3 percent of the batters he faced. Both of those things are bad. This year, Cease’s 3.18 ERA is about the same as his FIP (3.26), but a bit lower than his xFIP (4.17) and SIERA (4.12). He still has issues with walks, but his strikeout rate has shot up to 29 percent. That’s good.
On offense, the aforementioned Yermín Mercedes is hitting .347/.400/.531 through the first 41 games of his career (160 plate appearances). He’s exceeded all expectations, mainly because there were no expectations for Yermín Mercedes coming into this season.
Then there’s Yasmani Grandal. What is happening with Yasmani Grandal? His batting average is .141, which is terrible, even in a season in which batting average is down across the board. Of course, batting average is by far the least important of the three triple-slash metrics. Grandal may not be hitting for average, but his .395 OBP is well above average and his .376 SLG isn’t far from the MLB mark of .396. Despite his .141 batting average, Grandal has a 130 wRC+, which means he’s been 30 percent BETTER than average on offense when league and ballpark adjustments are made.
As crazy as it will seem to traditional baseball fans, Grandal and his .141/.395/.376 batting line is worth more runs on offense than teammate Tim Anderson’s .297/.333/.432 batting line (115 wRC+). I’m sure there are people out there who can’t possibly believe a guy with a .141 batting average is better offensively than a guy with a .297 batting average, but it’s true. Getting on base/avoiding outs is very valuable and Grandal is significantly better than Anderson at doing this. His advantage in on-base percentage outweighs Anderson’s advantage in slugging percentage.
Grandal and Anderson make a very interesting comparison. Among the 206 MLB hitters with 120 or more plate appearances, Anderson’s .380 Batting Average on Balls In Play (BABIP) ranks 15th. Grandal’s .122 BABIP is 206th.
After putting up a .289 BABIP in 2018, Anderson has three straight years with BABIPs above .380 (.392 BABIP since the start of the 2019 season). Anderson is still young and fast and full of passion, so he may well continue to hit for high BABIPs for some time, but even the fastest and most passionate eventually succumb to BABIP regression. Anderson has a career .350 BABIP, which ranks 12th all-time for players with 2500 or more plate appearances (1920-present). Mike Trout is right behind him, at .348.
The legendary Ichiro Suzuki was once like Tim Anderson. Ichiro slapped and dashed his way to a .357 BABIP through the first 10 seasons of his career. For the most part, this ability slipped away from Ichiro starting with his age-38 season. Over the last eight years of his career, he BABIP’d .298.
Let’s get back to Grandal. With 30 percent of the season behind us, Grandal has 12 hits and 37 walks (six of those hits have been dingers). He’s projected by the FanGraphs Depth Charts to collect 67 more hits and walk another 63 times. Should he do so, he will finish the year with 79 hits and 100 walks in 502 plate appearances. That’s a 21-walk advantage, if you’re scoring at home.
Since 1920, there have been 12,969 seasons in which a player had 450 or more plate appearances. In just 43 of those seasons has a player walked more times than he struck out. Should Grandal reach his projections, he would tie Barry Bonds for 10th all-time, with 21 more walks than hits. Bonds owns four of the top 10 spots, but with an asterisk. In all four of those seasons, Bonds’ intentional walks more than made up the difference between his total walks and hits. Remove intentional walks from the equation and Bonds drops off the list altogether and our hypothetical Yasmani Grandal would move up to 5th all-time. That would be weird and wacky, like the 2021 White Sox.
