A Slug-ish Start for Andrew Benintendi

The homers have yet to arrive for Andrew Benintendi.

My great, big, bold prediction for FanGraphs this year was that Benintendi would hit 30 home runs. It’s now the second week of June, and he has six. If he keeps this pace, he’ll finish with 15. Somehow, I think that means I’m off by 100%.

My reasoning at the time was flawless, of course. Benintendi the last two seasons had quietly reinvented himself. He’d always hit the ball in the air, but rarely with oomf, and almost always to left or center field. He averaged just 12 home runs per 600 plate appearances over the first eight years of his career, with sometimes good, sometimes not-so-good results.

But he clubbed exactly 20 homers in each the last two seasons. How? He simply took his existing contact-in-the-air profile and changed its direction to the pull side. He wasn’t hitting the ball farther; he was simply aiming shallower. This is the thing to do in baseball right now, unless you’re the Rays.

As Benintendi told James Fegan at Sox Machine last year, the shift was intentional, even if he wasn’t so enthusiastic about making it.

“I don’t think it’s a secret: I’m trying to hit it to right field in the air,” Benintendi said. “The game now is different and I feel like batting average has gone out the window. … It’s all OPS. That’s about the only thing I feel people pay attention to anymore is OPS. Regardless of how you get a high OPS, I think that’s where the game is going. Do I like it? No. But that’s what guys chase now and it gets you paid better. That’s the priority. It’s not what I’d like to do, but that’s where the priority is.”

If Benintendi were to take another step forward in 2026 — not improbable for a veteran player willing, albeit begrudgingly, to change — he would have been well-positioned to hit a lot of home runs in 2026, at least for someone who’s never hit many before. That was the logic underlining my boldness.

Unfortunately for my prediction, 30 homers is now something of a long shot. He needs to hit 24 home runs in 97 games, or roughly a 40-homer pace over 162. He’s never come close to that at any point in his career.

Fortunately for the White Sox, though, I do think the spirit of that “next step” season is still alive. Benintendi looks even more slugger-ish over the first 10 or so weeks of the season. He’s hitting the ball hard almost half the time, with one of the largest leaps in hard-hit rate of 2026. He’s still hitting the ball in the air, but he’s lifting and pulling more than ever. He’s now fifth in pull-air rate, at 33.3%.

What’s sunk his line (and home run aggregation) to this point is his strikeout rate. It’s soared to 28.0%. You can’t hit a homer if you don’t make contact, and he hasn’t thus far. This wasn’t something I’d considered in the preseason. Benintendi’s highest strikeout rate over a full season was 22.8% way back in 2019, and for his career he’s at just 18.0%. Not striking out has often been the one thing going well for him.

That said, his high strikeout rate in 2026 is mostly from an outlier couple of weeks to open the season, when he swung and missed nearly 50% of the time. He even swung and missed on a pitch that hit him in the back shoulder. The strikeouts aren’t something we’ve seen before or since, and I assume that was just a freak slump.



It’s worth pointing out that, despite hitting the ball much harder this year, the gain hasn’t been on his pull-air contact. The increase in hard-hit rate is coming from everything else — grounders, and line drives hit up the middle and the other way. That’s good news for his profile overall, but it doesn’t quite help him on his home run pace.

Regardless of exit velocity and direction, the airborne contact has also been less of a home run threat this year. We can see this in his launch angle distribution, which has subtly shifted down, out of the home run angles and into the line drive range. And so Benintendi’s pull-air distance is about 30 feet shorter this year on average:

Benintendi has become one of the more compelling storylines on this suddenly competitive White Sox roster. He debuted at 21 years old back in 2016. Eric Logenhagen ranked him the second-best prospect in baseball the following year on our 2017 Top 100 Prospects List. And by 2018, Benintendi justified that ranking, with 16 homers and 41 doubles as the two-hole hitter on a Red Sox team that steamrolled the rest of the league en route to a championship. He led Boston in hits in its five-game World Series victory over the Dodgers, a key part of one of the best outfield groups to ever make the series, as Jeff Sullivan wrote at the time. Benintendi was off to a decent start on the WAR leaderboard through age 23.

And then he fell behind. The all-fields, slap-hitting approach was only enough for average production at the plate in most years, especially as he started to chase out of the zone. He toed the line with replacement level in years his defense slumped. As he ate through his team control, he bounced from the Red Sox to the Royals to the Yankees, unceremoniously. In 2022, which he started in Kansas City before getting traded to New York at the deadline, a strong first half propelled him to his only All-Star selection, though he fractured his hammate bone in early September missed the rest of the season.

When Benintendi reached free agency ahead of the 2023 season, he signed a five-year, $75 million deal to play on the South Side. The White Sox at the time were trying to make the most of a core that had won 93 games two years prior, and Benintendi was a fine, supplementary veteran who could lengthen their lineup, with perhaps some post-hype potential at 29 years old. Chicago was likely his best shot at a serious payday, and maybe even his best shot to win at the time. It was a good match and a fresh start.

It worked out for neither side. The White Sox were awful and sold off most of their core, beginning a viscous tank. And both Benintendi’s bat and defense declined, sinking to sub-replacement level in 2023. Even as he started to hit a few homers in 2024 and 2025, it wasn’t enough to make up for the rest, and he’s been worth -0.5 WAR in Chicago.

But now, on year four of that five-year deal, the White Sox have stumbled into relevance. I wouldn’t call them a great team, and our Playoff Odds remain unimpressed. And yet, they’re 1.5 games out of first place in their division, and they hold the second Wild Card spot with a three-game cushion over the first team out in a weak American League. A playoff push is looking more and more plausible for this group.

And so, Benintendi now finds himself in one of the more important stretches of his career, and certainly the most important since arriving in Chicago. The good news is, again, the profile overall implies something of a step forward, even if it’s not the one I so boldly predicted in the preseason. He’s still shown one of the most impressive bumps in contact quality in the majors this year, and whether that results in more homers or simply better results on line drives, I think that’s a good sign. His overall numbers are sunk by that strikeout bonanza from the first two weeks, but he’s posted a 130 wRC+ over his last 99 plate appearances.

Can he keep it up? Well, the White Sox certainly need him to for the moment. They recently placed Munetaka Murakami on the injured list with a Grade 2 hamstring strain. Their success often comes from hitting lots of home runs, and losing the hitter with the third-most homers in baseball this year, you know, is bad. Whether or not he can keep this up, it’s a conveniently timed hot streak. Benintendi has hit three home runs over his last eight games, each in a White Sox win.