The offense has been terrible this season and it’s tiresome. It’s tiresome both because this is not a new experience, but also because it was completely foreseeable and preventable. Almost every hitter on this roster has delivered a season within the reasonable bands of expectation.* Until a month or ago, or so, the biggest exception was the most important bat–Jose Abreu.
*Even Todd Frazier is outperforming his 2013 season. While his .211/.293/.447 line is disappointing, it is also easily within the realm of BABIP variance–his ISO is basically identical to last year’s mark, and he has even substantially increased his walk rage from last year, achieving a career high in that regard. If your offense can’t survive one of your top four hitters underperforming by 5-10 percent then your offense is really bad anyway.
First, here is Abreu’s triple slash line on a month-by-month basis:
| AVG | OBP | SLG | |
| March/April | .229 | .303 | .354 |
| May | .252 | .306 | .405 |
| June | .306 | .355 | .531 |
| July | .289 | .340 | .361 |
| August | .373 | .429 | .650 |
Abreu’s first few months were some of the worst we’ve ever seen him. However, after a plus June and a nuclear August (which is not yet finished), his numbers are getting dragged closer and closer to his 2015 line. There’s still time for him to straight up replicate them exactly or even exceed them in some respects–as it is, it’s only his power that has dipped when you compare his current .287/.343/.454 season to last year’s .290/.347/.502.
The takeaway for Abreu as an individual player, to me, is that we now have two years of data that say Abreu’s 2014 is the outlier–or, at the very least, that his skills have eroded since then. Perhaps he can shore up his approach to offset attrition in his hit and power tools as he ages away from his physical peak. And yeah, it is disappointing to see that it is unlikely 2014 Abreu is going to come back, but it’s not impossible for him to be productive for a while yet.
However, Abreu’s recovery also means that he could be having a Meets Expectations season, even if it arrived in an irregular shape. And in a certain way, that is yet another embarrassment for the front office. If Abreu had been miserable all season it would have been a valid, if incomplete, excuse for the offense being terrible. After all, the front office could say, what was wrong with us assuming Abreu would maintain last year’s level of performance?
However, if Abreu winds up with another, say, .850 OPS, that means that this was the offense they should have known they had–and that means they should have known there was no way it would have been good enough. Instead of having Abreu as a scapegoat, this is another datapoint that “hope for the best with no contingency plan” was the strategy this winter. Instead of being the victims of random misfortune, this means that the White Sox were counting on a bunch of hitters performing above reasonable expectations for this plan to have worked.
It is also yet another vivid demonstration as to why banking on fixing problems with the roster at the deadline instead of over the winter was asinine. Abreu’s worst months came in the first half–although ironically the team performed its best during that time. But the team wound up being far too dead to justify buying at the deadline, once again.
And it’s increasingly looking like it’s because the organization cannot yet generate sufficient internal depth after decades of incompetence and thrift, and because it is unwilling to make up for that deficiency by spending any meaningful money in free agency. The offense has been trash for years and years and years now, and it’s not because Abreu had his worst at-bats at the beginning of the year instead of somewhere else in the timeline.
Lead Image Credit: Steve Mitchell // USA Today Sports Images
That august slash line gives me the vapors
the white sox are 1 really good hitter or 2 slightly above average hitters away from having a meaningful offense. the problem is going the free agency route to fix things is no for sure thing. for 2 consecutive years the free agents that signed the top contracts have been absolutely terrible. look at this most recent class of offensive free agents:
heyward – $184M for 8 years – WAR 1 (yikes!!)
davis – $161M for 7 years – 2.6 WAR – hard to peg this guy; not someone i would have given this contract to
upton – $133M for 6 years – WAR 0.6 (yikes!!)
cespedes – $75M for 3 years – WAR 2.8 – but having a pretty darn good year – worth it
gordon – $72M for 4 years – WAR 0.9 – much of this has to be from defense looking at his hitting stats
zobrist – $56M for 4 years – WAR 3.0 – solid all around player – how will his contract age? he’s 35
murphy – $37M for 3 years – best contract this past offseason, but would you have taken this gamble after his playoffs explosion?
Well, you left out Dexter Fowler, Mike Napoli, Dae-ho Lee, Ian Desmond, Pedro Alvarez, Steve Pearce, etc. all of whom would have helped to varying degrees.
You are right a lot of them have worked out poorly, but to refuse to make a move because it isn’t a “sure thing” is an easy way to sit there with Avisail Garcia crossing your fingers as you sink into the ocean every year until Chris Sale is old / ineffective / gone.