The White Sox Are Demonstrating Why Good Enough Often Isn’t Good Enough
The White Sox remain serious playoff contenders in 2022, but I doubt many would classify this season as a roaring success. With what appeared in the preseason to be the AL Central’s strongest roster, Chicago has not gone on a leisurely stroll to October. Instead, it’s locked in a brutal three-way clash with Cleveland and Minnesota and currently stands 1.5 games behind both.
The reasons for the team’s struggles are myriad. The entire offense failed to produce, especially early in the season, finishing April with a .212/.264/.348 line and an 8–12 record. When healthy, Yasmani Grandal and Yoán Moncada have not hit at all, leaving two offensive problems in unexpected places. Lance Lynn got a late start to the season and has generally been ineffective. The manager has an odd fetish for getting Leury Garcia into the lineup at every possible juncture. We can play this game all day, but we can now throw a new problem onto the pile in the loss of starting shortstop Tim Anderson to an injured ligament in his left middle finger that requires surgery. Anderson is expected to miss four-to-six weeks of play and make a full recovery, but with only eight weeks left in the regular season, that’s a lot of missed time.
After the trade deadline, I projected the White Sox as having the biggest loss in playoff probability of any team due to transactions made around baseball at the deadline. Whereas they would have been projected with a 59.5% shot at the postseason with the pre-deadline rosters, they came out afterward at 52.2%. Despite not actually losing any ground in the last week to their rivals in the standings, replacing Anderson with a combination of Garcia and Lenyn Sosa sends another chunk of the team’s playoff hopes into eternal oblivion.
| Team | W | L | GB | Pct | Div% | WC% | Playoff% | WS Win% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Cleveland Guardians | 84 | 78 | — | .519 | 39.2% | 12.3% | 51.5% | 1.1% |
| Minnesota Twins | 84 | 78 | — | .519 | 35.7% | 12.6% | 48.3% | 1.3% |
| Chicago White Sox | 83 | 79 | 1 | .512 | 25.1% | 11.5% | 36.6% | 0.9% |
| Kansas City Royals | 67 | 95 | 17 | .414 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
| Detroit Tigers | 64 | 98 | 20 | .395 | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% | 0.0% |
For the first time this season, the Sox are projected to have a worse chance at taking the division than both the Twins and Guardians, and roughly a quarter of the scenarios in which they make the playoffs have evaporated. Losing a win is a very big deal for a team in such a tight race, and that gets even a bit worse for Chicago because of the change in MLB’s rules for divisional ties, with tiebreakers being used instead of bonus baseball. Right now, should there be a tiebreaker needed, ZiPS estimates that the Guardians will beat the Sox 74% of the time, and the Twins will come out on top in 69% (not nice!) of tiebreakers. And all that is with projections that assume that Anderson misses an average of five weeks. If he has a setback and can’t get back for the rest of the regular season, it obviously gets worse; in the simulations when he didn’t return (about 10% of sims), Chicago only made the playoffs about three times in ten.
A team can be forgiven for missing the playoffs when its best efforts failed. But did the White Sox really make their best efforts? While they didn’t literally do nothing at the deadline, picking up relief pitcher Jake Diekman in return for Reese McGuire paled in comparison to efforts made by other teams around the league. Despite the team’s holes, both the obvious ones and the suprises, and a farm system with precious little to offer in ways of reinforcements, this minor trade was the first one that the organization had made since April.
To be fair, acquiring Juan Soto or someone like him would almost certainly have been an impossible feat given the lack of high-end talent on Chicago’s farm. But lesser hitters who fit roles that the Sox neglected went for prices that the team could have afforded. Even in one of the weakest systems in baseball, 21 White Sox prospects have a FV of 40 or more. Whit Merrifield, who can play second and the outfield, was acquired by the Blue Jays for two 40-FV prospects. Brandon Drury, who could take over second or spell Moncada at third, went for a single prospect with a 40 FV, Victor Acosta, who now ranks just 23rd in Cincinnati’s system. In other words, there were deals out there that the White Sox would have had the currency to close.
This pattern of being content with just being good enough was displayed last winter as well. Despite ranking fourth in the American League in wRC+ in 2021, the offense had obvious needs: another corner outfield bat so that Andrew Vaughn could be a full-time DH; a second baseman; and additional depth to take into account the recent injury histories of Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert. Where stability was needed, the White Sox went with risk and thrift; AJ Pollock was excellent in 2021, but also 34 years old and with a long injury history, and second base was patched up on the cheap with Garcia and Josh Harrison. Outside of that, the team basically stood pat on the offensive side, because, after all, this team was good enough to win the Central by 13 games last year.
Without the good in-season minor league depth that other teams can tap into, and in the middle of their contention window, the White Sox had ample motivation to do as much as they could last winter to protect themselves from their risks. You don’t buy insurance for when everything’s going right. The situations with Jiménez, Moncada, Grandal, and now Anderson represent unexpected bad luck for Chicago. But if Fortune truly favors the bold, it’s no surprise why the White Sox appear to have been abandoned.
Dan Szymborski is a senior writer for FanGraphs and the developer of the ZiPS projection system. He was a writer for ESPN.com from 2010-2018, a regular guest on a number of radio shows and podcasts, and a voting BBWAA member. He also maintains a terrible Twitter account at @DSzymborski.
Does LaRussa take the blame, does Hahn, or will both go?
Something tells me no one is going anywhere.
Yeah, Reinsdorf is loyal to a fault. And when TLR and Hahn do leave, the Sox are likely to go with internal replacements rather than conducting legitimate external searches.
This org is like the Rockies but they play in an easier division and a bigger market, and managed to time a contention window when the rest of the division was in various down-cycles.
Hey! The Rockies would never have traded away a possible HoF shortstop for James Shields.
Granted, that’s because they seem to regard trades as something only other teams can do – but the point still stands.
I am not defending the trade (as it is hard to defend trading for Shields as his trend was very downhill by that point), but the White Sox were 29-27 and two games out of first place on June 4, 2016 when the trade was made. Why they could not have obtained a 40 FV or less prospect for him, I have no clue! Having said that, at that early point in his minor league career, Tatis was valued as a 50 FV prospect and not a 65 FV prospect as he was rated before his big league debut. It was still a poor trade, but it was less horrific considering the situation at the time it occurred.
No, but the Rockies did trade away a possible HoF third baseman (and threw in $51M) for Austin Gomber and a bunch of lottery tickets.
I think there’s a lot to be said about the recriminations that should happen if they somehow miss the playoffs by a couple of games. They really could have done better.
At the same time, this team is miserable and depressing and has no entertainment value for any but the most serious Sox fans. I doubt a better deadline or offseason would have changed that, so I can’t say I’m bothered by their inaction.
I don’t watch any CHW games but I would’ve thought a team with Anderson, Moncada, Jimenez, and Robert woukd at least be somewhat interesting to watch.
It’s remarkable how not fun this team is. I don’t understand how they managed to suck the life out of the game even when some of their good players were healthy but it’s just so ugly.
its a hallmark of TLR teams, no fun allowed
but ground balls are boring
They’ve seldom all played together, to be fair. And also, Vaughn/Abreu/Cease/Kopech/Giolito/Hendricks should be fun. But trombone is right, they really aren’t fun somehow.
What’s fun about Giolito? He throws 92 with a plus changeup but a mediocre/inconsistent slider, and isn’t a good athlete by almost any measure (moves awkwardly, not explosive).
Even serious Sox fans hate the team. They are lifeless and a reflection of the manager.
I know there’s some evidence that managers don’t have much of an effect but part of that is the distance between a 75th percentile one and a 25th percentile one is negligible. If you get a guy who is bad enough to lose the team, kind of like Matt Williams did with the Nats, it sure seems like they’re important. It’s important not to confuse a tightly packed together variable with its seeming lack of effect.
As one of the most serious of Sox fans, this team has negative entertainment value for me. Watching them makes me unhappy, so i have largely stopped.
I’ve been saying the same things as this article since last season ended. The moment last season ended, they decided they were good enough to win a weak division (even with injuries) and then take their chances in the post season instead of improving the team. Their improvements were a couple relievers, a fifth starter, a backup catcher, a mediocre second baseman, and an old outfielder. These were all areas of need, but they half-assed all of them while other teams improved.
It is hard to know who to blame for all of this. Who is really making the final decisions? Reinsdorf? Williams? Hahn? LaRussa? It is very reminiscent of when the Bulls hired Gar Forman as GM, but Paxson (probably) still had all the power. Will firing Hahn help if Williams is still there? I don’t think anybody can fire TLR except Reinsdorf. Best case scenario is he gets a ceremonial post in the front office and someone else takes over, but I’m not holding my breath.
This is easily the most disappointing season of White Sox baseball since 1984 and it is hard to see them taking a path forward that doesn’t continue to rely on the “maybe everything will work out?” strategy they have employed in one way or another since the late 1990’s. Everything did work out once and they have been coasting on that for nearly 20 years instead of becoming a modern Baseball operation.
I don’t know that the long run issues are quite that bad but given how not fun this season has been for Sox fans I get it. It’s incredibly frustrating to think that the team has peaked and the day to day is such a slog. The few times I’ve caught their games it always felt like work to watch it.
So for the final run before Giolito departs for FA in 2024, what should the Sox do in the off-season. They’ll need bouncebacks from Moncada, Grandal, and Lynn (who’s been better of late). They’ll have about $155M committed after arbitration. That leaves them with about $40-$45M and they still need to resign Abreu for $17M and Cueto for, say, $8M. Or they could scrap those two and pay Judge $35M/year or Correa $30M/year and try to patch the starting pitching for the next three years.
They have about 8 first basemen on the roster and regularly play at least two of them in the outfield. So, much as I think Abreu is really good, they do not “need” to resign a guy who will be 36 next year. They would probably be better off moving Vaughn there permanently and using the money to sign a real outfielder.
But again, who’s in charge? Reinsdorf might demand he come back and he signs the checks.
They have way more than $155M committed. They have a $196M payroll now per RosterResource. The Keuchel money comes off but he’s owed a buyout ($18M down to $1.5M) and Abreu, Cueto, and Velazquez come off (about $26M), but Anderson/Robert/Moncada/Eloy get guaranteed contract raises (+$13.5M) and Giolito/Cease/Kopech are due arb raises (plus a few other small ones like Lopez/Engel). The Harrison option vs. buy-out is up for debate ($5.5M vs. $1.5M) but a replacement would be needed externally. There are also some small raises like Hendriks getting $1M more, Kelly getting $2M more, a full season of Diekman, etc.
Re-signing Abreu and adding another SP for under $10M (Cueto or someone else) is pretty much it given their willingness to spend.
Roster Resource’s committed pre-arb 2023 payroll of $121M already includes Anderson/Robert/Moncada/Eloy’s 2023 pay and the buyouts for Keuchel, Harrison, et al. I added $34M for the arb salaries of Giolito, ReyLo, Engel, Cease, and Kopech to get $155M.
I was adding/subtracting from 2022 Payroll at $196M.
That $121M number doesn’t include the options (Club for Anderson, Player for Pollock which is almost guaranteed to be exercised, Club for Harrison which is a maybe). It also doesn’t include filling out the roster with pre-arb guys (plus pre-arb guys who’ll come up as injury or other replacements during the season). Taking the guaranteed contracts + Anderson + Pollock gets you to $141M already, before Harrison decision, the arb guys, the pre-arb guys.
This stuff can be tricky so I’m not calling you an idiot or anything. Just calling the White Sox front office idiots for getting into this predicament.
Thanks for not calling me an idiot when you got it wrong too initially.
As far as Rick Hahn and company being idiots, they were as player-friendly as Fangraphs wants teams to be:
1) Didn’t toy around with any of Moncada, Kopech, Robert, Cease, or Jimenez’s service time and then gave Moncada, Robert, and Jimenez long-term contracts that bought out their first 2 FA years for nearly what they would have made on the FA market assuming they played well.
2) Didn’t QO Rodon so he could find the best contract possible.
3) They spend $25M annually in the FA market, granted it’s spread over 4 scrap-heap players than 1 star player, but this year’s off-season yielded the star-like Cueto and decent Harrison.
Now fans say they wanted the White Sox run ruthlessly to extract every $ possible for more FA buys or veteran trades, hedge against downturns in their core players’ performance, or to have an extra year of control on all these players to thus extend the window.
Are you MLBPA champions or team optimizers? Pick one and stick with it all the way.
As for me, I haven’t liked several of Hahn’s recent moves such as 1) the 3 year contracts for Abreu (which worked well contrary to what I would have predicted) Keuchel, and Leury Garcia
2) the trade for Kimbrel
3) the signing of Adam Eaton
But these are peripheral to the success of the team, which is floundering due to the sudden decline of their core.
Unlike the Red Sox, who are not going to succeed in the AL East if three (if not all 4) other division teams are better than them, the White Sox barely have an excuse for doing practically nothing at the deadline in a very winnable division. The fact that they took on a Red Sox cast off speaks volumes towards how much they really tried to get ‘better’. They should be trying to win that cakewalk division every year, all the time, no excuses.
As someone who doesn’t watch a lot of White Sox games, can someone explain the Leury Garcia thing to me? This isn’t even someone who cold fool a traditionally-minded manager with an empty .280 batting average, by any metric traditional or advanced he is noncompetitive as a hitter
Tony LaRussa is the manager and he plays 1950’s baseball, which means he loves small scrappy guys who can run even when they aren’t good.
Some real Ryan Theriot vibes here.
He has TWTW.
He signed a 3 year deal in the offseason after a career season and the White Sox are painfully adverse to admitting they made mistakes. Also they have so little depth that Leury is still their best option when anything when breaks, despite not being a good player.
As someone who watches too much White Sox baseball, I need it explained to me too.
He’s a useful piece. A switch hitter who can run a little and play 6 defensive positionsadequately. He should get 40 – 50 starts, 100 – 120 games, and 200 PA a year. Maybe 70 starts and 300 PA if there are a lot of injuries. There is no justifying his usage this year.
Exactly. He’s Willie Bloomquist with less speed and less of a hit tool, and shouldn’t get more playing time than Bloomquist typically got. LaRussa is playing him like he’s the second coming of Tony Phillips.
Part of it is that Harrison wasn’t hitting much in the first half or so of the season either, part of it is that the guy who was angling to take the utility infielder job from Garcia tore his ACL, and part of it is that the manager is simply senile
If the White Sox ever signed 6-year free agents or made waiver claims, they could’ve re-signed Garcia to a 1-year deal (or not signed him) and move on if someone in the minors was outperforming him.
They have this idea where they think, ‘Oh, this depth guy isn’t better than the depth guy we already have so we don’t need to sign anyone’. But if you sign 3 depth minor league depth guys, chances are one of them pops and becomes your new best option. That’s what the Dodgers, Rays, Giants, Yankees, Astros, etc. do.
LaRussa always says “He had competitve at-bats” after Leury goes 0-4 but only stuck out once. There’s this weird thing with him and Leury where results don’t actually seem to matter.
Luis Guillorme has competitive at-bats. Leury Garcia’s at-bats just delay the inevitable.
Signing in just to say that the photo of Anderson used here is perfect for this piece.
There is some bizarre decision making going on here. Perhaps the most bizarre in the league outside of Denver.
First, and most obvious, is that they’re playing guys in the outfield corners that have no business playing there. The Andrew Vaughn in the outfield experiment should never have happened and needs to end next year. It’s been like the Rhys Hoskins OF experiment, which the Phillies ended mercifully, but the White Sox just keep on banging their head against the wall. Gavin Sheets should also not be counted on to play outfield. Of course, this only happened because they were extra loyal to Abreu, when they had Vaughn as his ready made replacement (Coulda rotated them at 1B/DH, of course, but that would mean Jimenez had to play the outfield all the time and that’s not ideal either).
The non-QO for Rodon was another self inflicted wound. The only justification for that I can see is if you thought his medicals were terrible and not only did you not want to be on the hook for it, but you also figured any other team seeing those medical wouldn’t offer him anything better if it meant giving up a draft pick. Welp, their evaluation clearly stunk.
Also, the Kimbrel thing was so hilarious and totally self inflicted. They never should have picked up his option, but it seemed like they did just because they expected they would when they acquired him and they either didn’t want to admit defeat or they really thought he somehow carried some value with his contract (or both). Of course, because of that egregious miscalculation, they ended up only getting pollock and that’s worked out atrociously.
This is a travesty and a sham and a mockery. A traveshamockery
Abreu has been their best hitter and position player this year (not to mention being the MVP in 2020), so the “solution” of letting Abreu walk would have been a disaster. The White Sox’s problem is not having enough good players, not too many.
That’s a decision that looked very flawed but worked out very well for them.
Aside from hiring Tony la Russa or giving out that deal for Leury Garcia or Dallas Keuchel it’s hard to identify specific places they went wrong. It’s more of a general depth issue that’s more systemic than flashy.
A “disaster” is an overstatement. Abreu’s been good, but he’s got a 144 wRC+ this year compared to Vaughn’s 131. The difference in their WAR is mostly because of Vaughn’s atrocious OF defense. Put him at first where he belongs and the WAR would end up much closer.
If they did that, they would be getting 90% of the production for about 1/20th the cost, and they could have allocated the leftover money to someone who can actually play the OF.
Vaughn wasn’t ready in 2020 or arguably in 2021 and is outperforming his xwOBA this year to put up a lesser line than Abreu (who is underperforming his xwOBA). Not to mention the fact that Jerry fired you as soon as Abreu signed with Milwaukee and the clubhouse has lost its leader.
I know this post is about the White Sox but I have to point out any credit giving to the Phillies for giving up on Hoskins in the outfield has to be thrown out with how much money they are paying to Castellanos and Schwarber to play the outfield, it is one thing to try a young cheap guy in the outfield to get their bat in the lineup but to pay $39 mil for the next 4 years to play two guys who have proven multiple times they don’t belong out there was such a massive mistake in team building.
It was different front offices involved in 2018 when Hoskins last played the outfield and in 2022 when they signed Castellanos and Schwarber, first of all. And even if it was the same guys, I don’t think the fact that they signed those guys 4 years after moving Hoskins back to 1B impacts the analysis of whether it was smart to move Hoskins or not.
You forgot replacing the disappointment of Cesar Hernandez with someone older, less talented, and not a switch hitter for roughly the same amount of money.
Harrison has been a lot better than Hernandez this year? He’s one of very few hitters meeting expectations
That one has worked out better than anticipated since I thought the ceiling for that was pretty much a wash.
So why does TLR seem to treat Harrison/Garcia as a platoon when Harrison is clearly better both offensively and defensively? Harrison has a wRC+ against RHP of 103. Garcia’s is 46. As usual, even when they get something right, TLR manages to screw it up. Like yesterday when he started Vaughn in RF ahead of either Pollock or Engel against a lefty. Sure, that’s just one game, but he does shit like that twice a week.
Oh he’s dumb as a rock, no disagreement. I’m just saying that Harrison is performing as expected
The Kimbrel option was a perfect example of sunk cost fallacy. Additionally, they picked up Kimbrel’s $16M option to trade him for AJ Pollock who is making $14M and is old and always hurt. They should have declined Kimbrel’s option and signed Mark Canha for around the same money as Pollock. Canha is a better, healthier player at this point. Just overall odd logic by the front office.
Technically, the White Sox and Rockies play in different leagues (although not in practice anymore), so the White Sox are indeed the most baffling in the league except maybe the Angels.
As a Guardians fan, I’m very surprised at just how noncompetitive this Sox team has been. I expected them to run away with the AL Central, with the Twins maybe giving them some competition if they stayed healthy and their offseason acquisitions clicked. A rotation anchored by Lynn, Giolito, and Cease, a bullpen with Hendricks, Diekman, Graveman, Kelly, and Bummer, and an offense with Abreu, Moncada, Robert, Anderson, and a bunch of decent guys. Plus guys like Garcia, Harrison and Engle to spell players all over the place and Reynaldo Lopez and Michael Kopech to fill in in the bullpen and rotation whenever they were needed. Instead, the baby Guardians are in a dogfight with the Twins for first and the Sox are just… existing. To see a team with that much talent and decent depth just flounder like this is kind of jarring.
That’s usually when managers get fired, but not this team.
I think that’s the most apt description of this team. “The White Sox were also there.”
The technical term is “also ran”.
In a way, the ChiSox did the same thing as Cleveland: bet on talent on-hand.
Differences?
Cleveland has one of the lowest payrolls and ChiSox are nearly four times higher.
Cleveland has (by ESPN) the second best farm, ChiSox the second worst.
Cleveland has thrown out 13 rookies this season, with more to come. They opened the season with questions everywhere but 3B and the ChiSox were running “known quantities” pretty much everywhere.
By now Clevelands is working to find enough PAs for all the kids while ChiSox are working to find bodies.
Baseball is unpredictable. Stuff happens.
After today’s games, the ChiSox are 3.5 games behind,.
And, in what is supposed to be a “soft division” they are 5-8 vs Cleveland, with most of their wins in April. 4-6 vs the Twins, 7-3 vs Detroit, and probably most damning,7-7 vs KC.
There’s still 50 games to go so they might still turn things around but they need to get going soon or they may end up closer to KC than the playoffs.
The “soft” division isn’t going to stay soft forever.
Even last year they went 9-10 against the Royals. Their inability to take advantage of that matchup is perplexing.
Thanks, Dan, for accurately describing the annual frustration of being a White Sox fan and the ownership goal to be just barely good enough and fingers crossed.
To add to that, the hitting coach emphasizes contact rather than power. The results show that. Sox are top of the league in BA while being almost bottom in OPS. To top that, they are woeful with RISP. And the bullpen has been very, very shaky and inconsistent. Add to that the fact that the ‘ideal’ lineup has played 2 games this season due to injuries. The circus on the basepaths is an added bonus, on top of this shitpile.
As others have said, this is just a un-fun team to watch.
Uh, Cleveland is also preaching contact over power.
(just saying.)
Of course, with most young players, power is the last skill to show up so Francona has them thinking little ball instead of waiting for the homerun.
Also, Cleveland has an excellent bullpen and a solid defense everywhere.
They have been solid late and in extras to boot. Sometimes young teams are too dumb to know they can’t possibly win. 😊
I think the difference here is that Cleveland has built their team/system around high-hit-tool guys, whereas the CWS seem to be trying to shove everyone into contact over power, hit/power tools be damned.
Yes, the coaching approach has to align with the player tools.
There’s only so much coaching can achieve and in some cases it can be counterproductive. Cleveland tried teaching contact to guys like Naquin and Zimmer and it didn’t take. They also tried to make a slugger out of Yandy Diaz. When it didn’t take they traded him for a power guy. Who never learned contact. Double failure, that.
Pitch recognition is (mostly) teachable but eye to ball and bat speed generally aren’t. And in a well balanced roster there is room for all kinds of players and while an ideal team would have nine 300/400/500 players the real world isn’t ideal and those guys are rare.
The job of coaching staffs is to make the best of what they have and if what they have is three true outcomes or slash and run guys, they have to figure out how to best use them, not try to change them. And that isn’t unique to any team. You see it all over. Pitching coaches as well as hitting gurus.
IMO, Hahn is to blame period. DEAD LAST in all of MLB with offensive walks. Completely HORRIBLE defensively, DEAD LAST Total Zone Total Fielding Runs Above Avg. (-52). 25th ranked Total Defensive Efficiency. 25th rated OPS Vs RHP. This team is not built to win a championship. I do agree, they have been hurt by injuries. But this team isn’t close to being a World Series contender how they are built.
Whatever happened to Grandal?
.204 BA, 12% BB%, 22% K%, and .253 BABIP
are all not too surprising numbers for Grandal
but .061 ISO? That is shockingly abysmal.
I get that ball is changed, but he had decent pop before the “juiced” ball.
His 2021 was amazing.
Only two players in the history of MLB with <.250 BA and wrc+ >150 (min. 300 PA)
1989 Jack Clark with .242/.410/.459 wrc+ 151
2021 Yasmani Grandal with .240/.420/.520 wrc+ 159
His knees were hurt and then his back went during the season. They’ve been playing him and Moncada hurt for much of the season.
Grandal has been the slowest player in the league this year.
That’s not really any different than last year. His hr% has gone from 6% to 1% and his BB% has gone from 23% to 12%. Neither of those things rely on speed.
This, “good enough to get to October” mentality has been my biggest peeve about the AL Central for a number of years. Bummer that the White Sox have gone from fun to blah so fast