Elvis Andrus Stays in Chicago, Shifts Over to Second

It’s always nice to feel welcome. After excelling for the White Sox as a stopgap shortstop in 2022, Elvis Andrus will return to Chicago in 2023, this time as the team’s starting second baseman. Toward the end of the 2022 season, he made clear to reporters that he would welcome a return engagement and was open to shifting positions if need be. Apparently Rick Hahn was listening. The deal, pending a physical, is for a reported one year and $3 million. ESPN‘s Jeff Passan and USA Today’s Bob Nightengale first reported the deal and terms, respectively. Amazingly, after 14 years in the big leagues, this was the first time Andrus had ever been a free agent.

Although Andrus didn’t make our Top 50 Free Agents list, he accrued more WAR in 2022 than 37 players who did, and he has, in my opinion, the greatest surname in all of baseball. Our crowdsourced predictions pegged him for two years and $20 million, so if one year and $3 million sounds like a lot less to you, then your math is spot on. According to MLB Trade Rumors, the only other teams reported to have interest in Andrus were the Red Sox and Angels.

There was a confluence of factors depressing Andrus’ market. The first was his age. Even coming off a 3.5 WAR-season, a 34-year-old shortstop is always going to be a stopgap measure. That’s why he would have made so much sense as a fill-in for Trevor Story in Boston, or as yet another limited-time attraction in Shohei Ohtani’s Last Ride, right next to Disneyland. The second factor was the presence of four excellent and younger free-agent shortstops in Trea Turner, Carlos Correa, Xander Bogaerts, and Dansby Swanson (or as I like to call them, Xansby Cornerrea). Michael Baumann wrote about the last factor in January. Even after Cornerrea was off the market, there were plenty of teams that would have been better with Andrus at short, but those teams generally weren’t motivated either to win or spend money, and they already had young shortstops with varying degrees of promise who needed playing time.

All the same, Andrus is an excellent fit in Chicago. It certainly seems like both sides are happy to be reunited, and the White Sox are in a spot where an extra win could make a big difference in the outcome of their season. When they signed Andrew Benintendi back in December, Patrick Dubuque wrote at Baseball Prospectus that all of the teams in the AL Central were playing The Price Is Right, trying to squeeze into the playoffs with no more and no less than 82 wins. As things stand right now, our playoff odds give the White Sox a 27.8% chance of making the playoffs, so they’ll still need some luck to make it to the Showcase Showdown.

Andrus seemed genuinely enthusiastic when speaking to reporters upon his arrival at White Sox camp on Monday. “The joy that I had for a month,” he said. “I want to be able to, you know, stretch that feeling for six or, you know, close to seven, eight months.” We’ve covered his fascinating journey in 2022 pretty thoroughly, but the story is fun enough that I’ll be glad to tell it one more time.

In 2014, Andrus signed an eight-year, $120 million contract extension with the Rangers that included a $15 million option for 2023 that became a player option if he got waived or traded and if he accrued 550 plate appearances in 2022. He was indeed traded to Oakland in 2021, with the Rangers paying part of his salary. But rather than allow Andrus to reach 550 PAs and trigger the option, the A’s released him on August 17. This despite the fact that with a 98 wRC+ and 1.6 WAR, he was their third-best player behind Sean Murphy and Frankie Montas, neither of whom is in Oakland anymore either. (That’s not the fun part. The fun part comes next.)

Two days later, Andrus signed with the White Sox, who desperately needed middle infield help after Tim Anderson and Leury Garcia went down with injuries. Whether because he was out for vengeance or because he just really likes giardiniera, Andrus started absolutely mashing in Chicago, leading the White Sox with 2.0 WAR the rest of the way. The rest of the way was 43 games, meaning he was on an MVP-caliber 7.7 WAR pace.

Between August 18 and September 20, Andrus put up a 151 wRC+, fifth-best in the league. (He also got to rub his old team’s faces in it when the Sox headed out to Oakland for a four-game series on September 8–12, hitting two home runs and slashing .333/.400/.722.) I picked September 20 as my dividing line because that’s when Ben Clemens wrote about the surge. Starting on September 21, Andrus finished the season with a wRC+ of 49, proving that The Clemens Curse is very real indeed. For what it’s worth, Andrus actually peaked on September 16 (his 15-game rolling wRC+ was 207, a height he hadn’t reached since 2016), but a catchy phrase is a catchy phrase.

Ben didn’t find a ton when he went looking for reasons for Andrus’ breakout. His plate discipline numbers stayed the same, and his swing didn’t look much different. What had changed was his batted ball distribution. Andrus hit more line drives and fewer fly balls, and all of his air balls were hit harder; he had a 29.4% hard-hit rate on air balls in Oakland and a 40% hard-hit rate during his torrid start in Chicago. Once he started to cool off, it fell to 33.3%, and the fly ball and line drive rates returned to their season averages as well.

Andrus credited his success in 2022 to finally feeling comfortable after dealing with injuries, particularly the broken elbow he suffered in 2018. “Since I got hurt and broke my arm, it’s been a constant fight with my approach and my swing and just trying to feel like I am right now,” he said at the end of last season. All the same, I don’t think anyone is banking on him replicating his hottest month, or even 2022 as a whole. It wasn’t just a bounceback season; it marks only the third time in his 14-year career that Andrus has been an above-average hitter, and the first time since 2017 that his wRC+ has topped 76. He hasn’t posted a sprint speed at the league average since 2016, so the days of beating his expected stats by legging out some infield hits are long gone. In a normal season, he provides solid defense at shortstop and offense that’s somewhere between terrible and solid, and that should be more than enough for Chicago.

Andrus doesn’t just bring talent to the White Sox, though. He also adds dependability to an extremely shallow roster, having played at least 145 games in 12 of his 14 big league seasons. Moving to second base also allows him to fill a yawning chasm in Chicago’s depth chart. That’s why I haven’t spent a lot of time wondering whether he will be as good a second baseman as he was a shortstop. Even if his defense takes a step back, he’s still going to be a big improvement. In 2022, White Sox second basemen had a wRC+ of 69 and combined for 0 WAR, both good for 29th in the league. (Quick reminder: the league has 30 teams, so that’s bad.) Before Andrus signed, ZiPS projected Chicago to receive 0.9 WAR from a combination of — and I’m quoting Dan Szymborski here — “Gonzalez/Sosa/Sanchez No Garcia, Plz.” Garcia (that’s Leury) was worth -1.1 WAR over 97 games in 2022, and the kindest of our projections sees him accruing 0.2 in 2023. The only way Andrus could fail to be a significant upgrade over the other options at second base is if he replicates the absolute worst season of his career.

The White Sox still lack depth and are still in desperate need of a right fielder. With this signing, they’re still below their 2022 payroll, so it’s at least possible that they’re willing to keep adding. Who knows, maybe they’ll sign Jurickson Profar tomorrow and end up without any gaping holes in their starting lineup. Regardless, if the Sox are serious about receiving a full season of great play from Andrus, it may be as simple as stationing someone next to his locker before every game to whisper into his ear, “Remember all that money the A’s didn’t want to pay you?”