The Chicago White Sox are one of baseball’s biggest surprises. While the team didn’t have high expectations entering the season, they currently have a .5 game lead in the AL Central. And with the Detroit Tigers currently struggling, the White Sox could find themselves buyers at the trade deadline. If they hope to stay in the playoff race, they might want to look at upgrading third base.
Did you know the FanGraphs leaderboards — which already no doubt consume the majority of your time like they do mine — also carry updated minor league data? Yeah, right here:
Let us take a moment, you and I, to delve into the numbers of my favorite of the minor leagues, the International League.
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Let us delve once again into the numbers. The season is now two months aged and we have more stories unfolding than we have enough digital ink to cover: Will the Red Sox ever find an outfielder? Is Adam Jones the new Matt Kemp? Can the White Sox really make a playoff push in a rebuilding year? And will the 2012 Pirates really go down as one of the worst offenses in modern history?
We will not truly know the answers to these questions for some time, but we can peer into the murky mirror-mirror that is the De-Lucker! and at least get a better feel for the state of everything. Much of the offensive fluctuations in the early part of the season come from strange movements in BABIP. The De-Lucker! attempts to smooth those fluctuations and give us a better guess as to who is doing well and who is not.
And Josh Hamilton, you will see, is in both categories.
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Who had the White Sox winning the Central in his or her preseason prognostications? Okay, I’m sure someone somewhere did, and maybe that person is not even a White Sox fan. And, yes, there is still about two-thirds of a season to go. As has been said many times before, the American League Central is full of flawed teams, but the White Sox seemed to be headed for another “transitional” year. In my personal experience, this is when they have been the most dangerous during the Kenny Williams Era — just when you least expect it, there are the White Sox on top. The Santos trade, the manager brouhaha, the talk of letting the kids play despite a dearth of good young talent and more all seemed to point to a year of mediocrity on the South Side.
Yet, here we are: the White Sox currently lead the division by 1.5 games. Gavin Floyd and John Danks have been somewhat disappointing, but Chris Sale has been a revelation as a starter and Jake Peavy is pitching better than he has in years. Paul Konerko‘s bat is continuing its surprising mid-30s surge. Adam Dunn is seemingly back from the dead. Alejandro De Aza quietly having a good year, Alex Rios has been useful, and Dayan Viciedo’s power has made up for his near-total lack of walks. But today I want to briefly mention a key under-the-radar performance by a guy who usually gets attention for other reasons, a guy who I think everyone would say is just about their “favorite” player, and a guy who currently has a higher wOBA than his replacement (ol’ what’s his name) in Minnesota: A.J. Pierzynski. That’s right, he not only keeps coming back, but now he is hitting for power.
The word is out that former Tigers and White Sox outfielder Magglio Ordonez will officially retire this weekend. Many tributes will probably be written to Ordonez, who had a lengthy and productive career. Except for his monster career year in 2007, Ordonez was not really ever the superstar some thought he was (nice job, Scott Boras), but he was a good hitter who got a lot of mileage out of a combination of good power and great contact skills. David Laurila has a great interview with Ordonez that was published earlier, in which the retiree mentions his biggest moment, his walk-off home run in the 2006 ALCS that put the Tigers into the World Series. All things considered, that was probably the right choice — it does not get much bigger than that (without being in the World Series itself). Win Probability Added (WPA) sees that as Ordonez’s biggest playoff hit at .387:
That was a great moment for the Tigers and their fans, but just considered on a individual game basis, Ordonez had many more dramatic hits in the regular seasons. As a farewell to a guy I kind of thought had already retired, let’s look at the three biggest according to WPA.
Three weeks ago, it looked like Chris Sale would no longer be starting games for the Chicago White Sox. Yesterday, he struck out over half the batters he faced in 7.1 innings.
It’s been an interesting year already for the sinewy blue chip. Sale, 23, had immediate success in moving to the starting rotation after spending the entirety of his two major league seasons overwhelming batters from the bullpen. His first five starts resulted in three wins, a 2.82 ERA and opposing hitters were hitting just .205/.262/.342.
Then due to some rather mysterious general elbow fatigue, Sale was moved back to the bullpen where he summarily blew a save on an unearned run. Days later, Sale managed to convince Robin Ventura (or whomever necessary) that he ought to be starting again, and he’s been filthy ever since. In his four starts after the bullpen flap, he’s posted a 1.82 ERA over 24.2 innings pitched, holding opponents to a .189/.247/.244 slash line.
Paul Konerko is one of the best hitters in baseball. While he’s rarely mentioned among players like Josh Hamilton, Matt Kemp or Ryan Braun, Konerko has been a an important presence in the middle of the Chicago White Sox lineup. In fact, this season, he leads the American League with a .489 wOBA and a .399 batting average.
What’s even more amazing about Konerko’s success is that he’s doing this as a 36-year-old. Conventional wisdom says that Konerko entered his decline phase years ago — but in 2010, something changed. At 34 years old, an age where most players are struggling to stay in the majors Konerko got better and has blossomed into one of the game’s best hitters.
After suffering through an abysmal 2011 season, White Sox designated hitter Adam Dunn is off to a fantastic start this year.
Last season, the 31-year-old Dunn put up a career-low .266 weighted on-base average (wOBA), or 59 wRC+, in nearly 500 plate appearances. His on-base percentage — which normally was a strength for the slugger — was .292, or 62 points below his previous career low when he was 23. Most disturbing was the sudden disappearance of his power. Dunn has always been a high-strikeout, high-walk, high-slugging player. But last year, Dunn posted an isolated power of only .118. To put that into perspective, consider this: Dunn’s ISO was only two points higher than Nyjer Morgan’s (.116). Dunn also saw his HR/FB ratio drop to 9.6% in a hitter- and home-run-friendly park. His previous career-low was 17.8%, all the way back in 2002.
But now? Well, we’re seeing the old Adam Dunn. Through May 7, he has managed a .394 wOBA, which is fueled by a .364 OBP, .321 ISO and a 28.1% HR/FB. And both the ISO and HR/FB numbers are better than his career highs. The obvious question is whether these numbers are sustainable. Given how quickly outcomes like BB% and HR/FB stabilize, there’s a good chance that Dunn’s end-of-season numbers could be similar to what they are today. The question I have is what is Dunn doing differently? To get a better handle on this, I took a look at Dunn’s performance on specific pitches in different locations.
The Chicago White Sox and Oakland Athletics engaged in a marathon 14-inning contest on Wednesday afternoon that featured two blown saves, a game-tying home run from each team’s cleanup hitter, and perhaps even a budding closer controversy in the Windy City.
Left-hander Hector Santiago surprised many when he seized the closer role for the White Sox out of spring training. The 24-year-old had only pitched 5.1 innings about Double-A prior to this season — those innings came in a very brief stint with the big league club last July before getting sent back down to Double-A — but he impressed enough to be named closer this spring after surrendering only one earned run in eleven innings.
Selected by the White Sox in the 30th round of the 2006 Draft, Santiago started his professional career as a reliever, but was transitioned into the starting rotation last season. He has always been able to miss bats. His career strikeout rate in the minors was 9.6 K/9. He throws 93-94 MPH with the fastball from the left side, which is certainly a skill that does not grow on trees, but his newly-developed signature pitch – the screwball – is what has suddenly catapulted him to the big leagues. It’s the pitch that makes him different. It’s the pitch that could help him find success at the highest level.
Gordon Beckham has not lived up to expectations. After being selected eighth overall by the Chicago White Sox in 2008, Beckham was expected to be one of the team’s future stars. And after a strong rookie season, it looked like Beckham might achieve that goal. Since then, however, Beckham was struggled mightily. For the 25-year-old, 2012 is a make-or-break year. The early signs do not look encouraging.