SIGN AN OUTFIELDER!

This line of thought was logical. It was commonly known that the White Sox would go into 2016 with Adam Eaton and Melky Cabrera at two of the three outfield positions, but the third was presumably up for grabs after a season’s worth of tape watching Avisail Garcia embarrass himself out there.

What’s more, the free agent market included a plethora of outfield options. Even once you got past the big money guys — Yoenis Cespedes, Justin Upton, Jason Heyward, Alex Gordon — there were other options, all of whom would have been major upgrades over Garcia.

As you know by now, the White Sox went cheap. The only free agent outfielder they signed was Austin Jackson, who they inked to a one-year, $5 million deal well after the cold, dark winter, when Spring Training was already in full swing.

Signing Jackson is a fine idea in some respects. He’s the type of player good teams acquire as depth. It’s when you’re relying on him as an everyday player with no backup plan that you run into trouble, and that’s exactly what the White Sox did.

Jackson hit .254/.318/.343 in 203 plate appearances with the White Sox in 2016 before a torn meniscus in early June–that was supposed to keep him out for six weeks–ended his season.

During his two months of action, Jackson did provide something the White Sox had been missing: A huge defensive upgrade. Installing Jackson in center field and moving Eaton to right gave the White Sox plus defense at two outfield positions, whereas the former Cabrera-Eaton-Garcia outfield gave them one average defender sandwiched between a pair that patrolled the outfield like they were running through an obstacle course in quicksand.

Let’s be clear: The loss of Jackson didn’t sink the White Sox. Nick Schaefer pointed out last month how teams like the Indians and Mets were able to survive despite key losses throughout the season, so it would be preposterous to assume an injury to a glove-only center fielder would sink a team’s chances at contention. But with the Sox lack of depth, it certainly didn’t help.

When Jackson went down, his spot in the lineup and outfield was filled by a number of guys, none of whom were able to provide anything more than replacement-level work.

J.B. Shuck, the most familiar of the bunch after performing commendably in part-time duty in 2015, was considerably below average in every aspect in 2016, hitting .205/.248/.299 in 241 plate appearances and fumbling around defensively in center field. He was the only one of Jackson’s non-September call-up replacements the Sox even attempted to play in center, and was worth -1.4 WARP.

Jerry Sands was around for a while, too, hitting to the tune of .236/.276/.291 in 58 plate appearances. He had three walks and 24 strikeouts and was borderline worse in the field than Garcia, which is difficult to imagine.

The last of the replacement options was Jason Coats, who burst onto the radar with a hot start to the minor league season in Triple-A Charlotte. The former 29th round pick, who was never thought of by most as any sort of legitimate prospect, finally made his debut at the age of 26 and hit .200/.298/.340 in 58 plate appearances.

Nobody expected the likes of Shuck, Sands or Coats to hit like Eaton or field like Jackson. Each is the epitome of “replacement-level player.” But the White Sox inability to plug holes with system depth has been apparent for a while now, and the revolving door in the outfield in 2016 was yet another example of that.

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1. The Royals had a rainout Thursday to mull over the news that they would be without Mike Moustakas for the rest of the season, meaning that two of their four best position players were sent to the DL due to a single foul ball.

“It’s like things are in the world…Hopes fail. An end comes. We are lost in ruin and downfall and there is no escape.”

1. The White Sox could use some more pitching;

2. A left-handed bat would be very nice; and

3. You get more value out of a player by adding them sooner rather than waiting all the way to the deadline; and

4. You can’t buy unless someone is out there willing to sell.

Several teams that looked like they would be sellers got off to good starts, which makes it harder to buy, although they have subsequently come back down to earth — the Brewers, for example.  However, the American League seems to consist entirely of teams that have non-crazy playoff aspirations, other than the A’s or the Twins.*  Meanwhile, teams like the Rockies, Phillies, and Marlins are performing better than pre-season expectations and would have a tough sell to their fanbases and clubhouses if they punted assets at this juncture.

*The Angels and Astros are at the bottom of the AL West, but the former are desperately scrounging about for supplements to the roster, and Houston is probably still too good for people to shovel dirt on them just yet. 

So Hahn’s remark about not having a dance partner is visible front and center, and not just in the smoky backrooms of MLB front offices.

But the White Sox don’t need a major piece to improve the roster.  The easiest places to get better are the areas of biggest weakness–it’s simply a lower bar to clear.  And right now, even if we give Avisail Garcia the benefit of the doubt, the bench is an unmitigated disaster.

Alex Avila is basically the backup catcher, so unless something crazy happens and they add like, Jonathan Lucroy, he’s not going anywhere.  Regardless, his TAv this year is .212.  Jerry Sands is at .208. Carlos Sanchez was just demoted because he was hitting about as badly as you possibly can and Tyler Saladino‘s presence made him completely redundant.  The former had a .129 TAv (!!!!!) and the latter is somehow putting him to shame at .226.

You don’t exactly need an NL cellar dweller to completely crash out on the season and scoop up all of your prospects to improve on that.  So while it is nice to fantasize about trades for Ryan Braun, Lucroy, and Jonathan Villar to plug every hole on offense and turn the team into a Mad Max: Fury Road-style war rig, you could still make improvements right now.  The 2015 Mets, for example, helped their team out a lot by replacing the Eric Campbells of their roster with Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe well before they added Yoenis Cespedes.

The estimable Matt Cassidy of FutureSox pointed out to me on Twitter that Danny Hayes (of the Knights not CSN) and Jason Coats are players that he thinks could be useful internal options, and Matt Davidson is having his best year in Charlotte yet.  But, much like how Miguel Gonzalez–a freely acquired outside asset–looks like he may outperform Jacob Turner and Erik Johnson, the White Sox should be aggressively digging through the bargain bin.

Even if you want to keep Avila, Saladino, and Sands on board that should still leave a fourth spot on the bench that you can devote to the best bat you can find without compromising your backup at any given position.

The White Sox are in first place, but it is a tenuous hold, there is a long way to go, and AL Central rivals are seeing key players go down with injuries at an impressive rate.  There is an opportunity here, the margins are the easiest and cheapest places to add and hoo boy is the bar a low one to clear when it comes to improving the bench.

But the order in which they have come to this 1.5 game lead in the AL Central is causing anxiety. Possibly because it was a five-game lead just a minute ago, possibly because the surging second-place Cleveland Indians were picked by many, PECOTA included, to be their betters and currently have a superior run differential, and possibly because, well, no one in the White Sox starting rotation not named Chris Sale or Jose Quintana has looked capable of turning over a major league lineup twice, which is necessary on most days.

Miguel Gonzalez enters the fray for the fourth time this season, once again looking for a foothold at the fifth starter slot. He enters with a 5.17 ERA, and an even more discouraging 19 hits, 11 strikeouts and 10 walks across 15.1 innings. This is the product of him mostly getting shelled in Toronto but perhaps squeezing more innings out of it than your typical shelling, a borderline gem in Texas that benefitted greatly from a well-time sixth-inning pull, and a disasterpiece in New York where he issued five walks over one strikeout to a bad Yankees offense.

You watch Gonzalez and you see a low-90s fastball with nice sinking action, a slider that flashes average and can get a whiff here or there if the count and the location are right, but you also see a guy who is vacillates between frustrating nibbling and awful mistakes in the zone. The Sox don’t have many options right now–as evidence by Gonzalez going right back in after that Yankees mess–but he needs to start putting together his intriguing ingredients into a palatable meal, in order to get himself off the top of the list of guys to be replaced with a trade acquisition.

Speaking of back of the roster players getting a chance to star, Jerry Sands is batting cleanup and starting at first, as manager Robin Ventura tries to achieve three ends at once: rest Jose Abreu, give a day off to the slumping Avisail Garcia, and give Sands (a career .287/.339/.485 hitter versus lefties) an opportunity to shine against a rare in-division matchup with a lefty starter.

In roster news, Ventura said Jake Petricka is still experiencing soreness in his hip, and while he did not offer a timeline, he does not expect him to return after the minimum 15 days of his disabled list stint. Mike Moustakas returns to the Royals lineup after breaking his thumb. He remains second on the team in homers and slugging percentage despite the absence.

White Sox Lineup:

1. Adam Eaton – RF
2. Jose Abreu – DH
3. Todd Frazier – 3B
4. Jerry Sands – 1B
5. Melky Cabrera – LF
6. Brett Lawrie – 2B
7. Austin Jackson- CF
8. Dioner Navarro – C
9. Tyler Saladino – SS

SP – Miguel Gonzalez

Royals Lineup:

1.  Alcides Escobar – SS
2. Mike Moustakas – 3B
3. Lorenzo Cain – CF
4. Eric Hosmer – 1B
5. Kendrys Morales – DH
6. Alex Gordon – LF
7. Salvador Perez – C
8. Whit Merrifield – 2B
9. Jarrod Dyson – RF

SP – Danny Duffy

The game is at 1:10pm CT on CSN.

Lead Image Credit: Anthony Gruppuso // USA Today Sports Images

1. On such a premise, Chris Sale set out to improve on his 8-0 record against an Astros lineup that had tuned up his compatriots for 11 runs in the first two entries of this series.

And to be honest, it looked pretty easy. Sale always makes pitching look easy, but recently he’s been making it look easy compared to 2015 Chris Sale too.

He allowed one soft single through the first five innings, shut out the Astros through the first seven innings, and weathered an Evan Gattis solo shot in the eighth to throw his third complete game of the season. In 107 brisk pitches, Sale added to his MLB lead in wins (9), now leads the AL in innings (68.1) and is breathing down Jose Quintana‘s neck for the AL ERA lead (1.58).

2. But the solo shot did complicate things. Sale immediately burning through his insurance run as he entered the ninth inning with a rested and ready David Robertson in the bullpen, added to the fact that he was missing armside to start the ninth, all demanded complete faith in his total dominance to stick with him through the end.

Sale validated the decision. He dialed up a 94 mph fastball with life to blow away Jose Altuve for the first out, and capped off the night with a backdoor slider off that froze Tuesday’s villain, Tyler White.

3. There have been plenty of nights where we have been able to gawk at how Sale’s impossibly nutty stuff and life allows him to pitch over clunky command. This was not one of those nights. Sale was so precise, all of his dominance just came from hitting his spots in the zone.

He threw an impossible 80 of 107 pitches for strikes, he threw first-pitch strikes to 24 of 31 batters, and nine of his 12 whiffs came just off his fastball, as he reserved his looping slider for nailing the corners. Sale threw nothing but strikes, and whether or not hitters chased in vain was just window dressing. He’s indomitable when he’s pitching this way, and he has so many other ways to do it as well.

4. The little bit of run support the White Sox provided came from very odd sources, as Astros starter Collin McHugh would have been the pitching star on almost any other night (7 IP, 5 H, 2 ER, BB, 8 K). The Sox staked Sale to an early lead in the second when Todd Frazier nubbed an infield single too deep for Altuve to retrieve in time. After teasing at testing Gattis’ arm for a while, Frazier finally made his rush and nabbed second on a pitch in the dirt, then came around to score when DH Jerry Sands looped an RBI single off the end of the bat over Altuve’s head.

Another infield single keyed a run in the seventh, as Jimmy Rollins placed a swinging bunt against the shift down the third base line. Rollins too abused Gattis to steal second, advanced to third on yet another Sands single, before easing home when Alex Avila fisted a sacrifice fly to left.

5. Sands was a forgotten man during Avisail Garcia‘s hot streak, but was the only member of the lineup with multiple hits Thursday night as he subbed in for the slumping DH. Rollins, out of the second spot in the order on a rare occasion, added a sharp night in the field to his role in the seventh inning rally.

Team Record: 25-16

Next game is Friday at 8:10pm CT vs. Kansas City on CSN

Lead Image Credit: Kim Klement // USA Today Sports Images

To be more fair to the White Sox cold bats, Sunday’s loss wrapped a series where they scored five runs total, and were a Chris Sale violin solo from being swept by the Rays.

1. Jose Quintana had a down start. Every now and then pounding his fastball at low-90s isn’t paired with invincible command, and when he can’t get his breaking stuff over, as was the case when he was giving up three-straight ropes to Logan Forsythe, Brandon Guyer and Evan Longoria to start a rough third inning in which the Rays staked themselves to a 3-1 lead.

The good news is that he stabilized, settled down and still delivered six innings with only the three runs allowed, and saved his ERA because only two of those were earned.

The bad news is that run was unearned because Quintana himself picked up an error when his foot missed the bag on what would have been an inning-ending groundout to first.

And then that was the difference in the game.

2. Baseball fans will be happy to know that Matt Moore‘s arm and stuff look lively again, and he announced his return with authority Sunday by striking out seven in his first four innings of work, and 10 overall with a surprising absence of walks over six and a third strong innings.

White Sox fans were probably less happy to see a guy with below average control before Tommy John surgery blow through the lineup without much effort, only yielding runs on an Austin Jackson jamshot RBI single in the third, and a Avisail Garcia RBI knock up the middle when he ran out of gas in the seventh.

Overlaps between these two groups probably found themselves very torn.

3. The Sox 3-4-5 hitters went 0-for-11 with nine strikeouts on the day, which depending on your level of baseball expertise, it is either my duty to inform you this is actually very bad, or you do not need the explanation and just started emanating a deep guttural moan while gripping your knees and rocking back and forth upon reading the previous clause.

Todd Frazier, the one true offensive stud acquired in the offseason, is now 2-for-20 with nine strikeouts over his last five games. Jerry Sands got his second start of the year and batted fifth against a left-hander, and now he’s struck out in six of 10 trips to the plate. Got that one dinger, though.

4. On a positive note, Brett Lawrie continued his hot series, collecting two more hits and a run after hitting a ball to Jupiter on Saturday. He went 5-for-12 in Tampa with two runs and two RBI to put his season line to .303/.333/.435. Since the criteria for No. 2 hitters so far has been ‘smallish, fast guy who doesn’t feel like a natural middle-of-the-order hitter,’ maybe he’ll work his way up in the mix.

Zach Duke had his first very good outing of the year, striking out two–including a right-hander–over a perfect inning of work.

5. Dioner Navarro continued to sparkle with his defensive throws, picking off Logan Morrison at first to end Quintana’s jam in the third and gunning down Guyer trying to steal second in the eighth. Between his arm and the rave reviews he’s gotten for his receiving, he’d be claiming the primary catcher role as his own if he could ever get a hit.

Team Record: 8-4

Next game is Monday at 7:10pm CT vs. the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim on CSN.

Lead Photo Credit: Kim Klement // USA Today Sports Images

You may or may not have heard, but Jose Quintana is really good so if you like the White Sox it is nice that he is starting today.  The Rays counter with Matt Moore, who is rather hard to predict, given that the data on him is sparse and scattered around long intervals of inactivity due to injury.  Moore was okay in his debut against Toronto and excellent in his second start against Cleveland and was widely regarded as an excellent prospect several years and major injuries ago.  cFIP has been less enamored of him over the course of his career, though.

1. But what datapoint could be much more certain than Jerry Sands being a career .198/.283/.283 hitter vs. right-handed pitching. It’s clear as day. He’s a quad-A outfielder with decent pop but without the bat speed/recognition to deal with same-handed velocity. There’s a ton of these guys, and logic and numbers, and Phil Hughes blowing him away without effort his first two times up.

But now we all live in and have to ponder an existence where Sands reached out and pounded a slider out to dead center for a two-run blow in the seventh inning of the Sox third-straight victory.

Life is a relentlessly baffling mystery but sometimes it’s for the best.

(Sands struck out in his three other plate appearances)

2. After six shutout innings Wednesday night, Carlos Rodon has allowed just one run over 13 innings of work, and his best work still eludes him. He had a vaporizing, wipeout slider that he used for six strikeouts, including particularly gruesome abuses of left-handed Twins rookie Max Kepler, the last of which helped him escape a sixth-inning jam unscathed. Good movement on his fastball and the cold Minnesota air allowed him to pitch over five walks, some of which might have been prompted by a tighter than necessary strike zone. He’s at 10-straight quality starts, and is real, real good at this game.

3. Hughes doesn’t do a lot of mind-boggling stuff on the mound. He makes his living–and has found such a perfect home in Minnesota–by throwing strikes. Tons of them. With everything. Not overwhelming strikes, he mostly sits 90-93 mph and has a starkly below-average strikeout rate.

With that in mind, Hughes vaporizing the Sox lineup, cruising into the fourth before allowing a hit and striking out seven of the first 17 hitters he faced was a source of well-earned aggravation. He’s never going to be someone hitters will need to wait out to find something to cut on, but when a failure to drive anything is combined with Hughes coasting along at 10 pitches an inning, it looks like a clinic.

4. Worse yet, the White Sox made the least of the early major scoring opportunities they finally created. Melky Cabrera led off the fifth with a single and was doubled over to third by a suddenly lively Brett Lawrie, but they were both stranded when Hughes filleted through Sands and Alex Avila, and got Austin Jackson to beat one into the ground for the final out. Comparatively, a first-and-third situation with no outs and Jose Abreu at the plate resulting an RBI double play the next inning was a large upgrade.

5. Jake Petricka, Nate Jones and David Robertson combined for three perfect innings in relief to seal up the win. Petricka in particular flashed some of the best command on his sinker all season.

Zach Duke appeared, but was not perfect, and did not rack up any innings. His at least going 0-2 on Joe Mauer before allowing a double seemed like an improvement and probably was.

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The White Sox start their season in Oakland, a traditional house of horrors, but they literally swept the A’s in their own place last May. It’s really hard to launch an ‘Oakland is traditionally unfriendly’ argument immediately after a sweep. It’s almost as if the A’s being a bad baseball team are a larger factor in this equation than anything else, and that will likely still be the dominant factor (PECOTA pegs them for 86 losses and they need what would be surprisingly big years from Rich Hill and Chris Bassitt in the heart of their rotation).

Traveling to the West coast is typically a bear, but the Sox have been in California since last week and will be coming from an off day. They likely won’t feel the burn until their home opener Friday, which comes barely over 24 hours after they start their final game in Oakland.

Jerry Sands making the roster doesn’t promise to provide a ton of use, given that he’s a lefty-masher in a division where Tommy Milone is the only left-handed opposing starter. But at least the Sox project to face Milone in their series against the Twins next week, should he stick at the No. 4 slot. That comes after Rich Hill in the second game of the year, a bizarrely temporarily four-man Rays rotation with Drew Smyly and Matt Moore, an Angels rotation with Andrew Heaney and Hector Santiago, and a chance of running into J.A. Happ at the end of the month. More division-heavy months are going to make the Sox need for a left-handed upgrade quite clear, but point being, if the Sox have any sincere interest in using Sands, that will reveal itself in the first month.

Finally, much has been made–well, relative to this tiny corner of humanity–about the 19 games in 19 days stretch the Sox face starting on the 13th, and whether the White Sox pitching depth can sustain the workload without needing an extra reliever. The worrisome Spring put together by Mat Latos, which has in turn prompted the signing of Miguel Gonzalez, has offered the distinct possibility of some four and five inning efforts at the end of the rotation.

I shade old school on the rising trend of expanding bullpens, and the Sox have some old school tendencies of their own, such as letting their starters throw more than any other team in baseball. The Sox are the only franchise in baseball that lets its starters throw over a hundred pitches per night, and while it’s not a perfect relationship, that usually transitions into more innings and less work for relievers. Combined with the Sox record for pitching health, and this stretch coming early in the year before rest for Sale and Carlos Rodon becomes a major consideration, I see the Sox navigating their early-year gauntlet with a standard roster setup intact.

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For the White Sox, they clearly picked the best option if we accept what they prioritized, since some of the superficial elements are pretty ugly. Sands didn’t have a particularly good Spring, hitting just .204/.259/.408 with three home runs even after Friday night’s impossibly clutch go-ahead RBI single, and his career numbers suggest he’s pretty much unplayable vs. right-handed pitching (Multi-year .197 TAv vs. RHP).

Sands is a specialist almost to the degree that Paul Konerko was in 2014, and since he’s the fifth outfielder without much defensive skill, he might be playing a similar role. Sands has a handful of major league appearances at first base, but over 200 games there in the minors. Robin Ventura even mentioned having Sands fill in at third when necessary, though it’s not clear why a team with three other players with third base experience would ever stick a guy with two career minor league games there to his credit.

Gerald Robert Sands is on the roster to hit left-handers (Multi-year .275 TAv), and it’s easy where the Sox are coming from in prioritizing this. After keeping Konerko on the roster as a lefty masher/historical novelty in 2014, the Sox pendulum swung to the opposite end in 2015, when they hit an AL-worst .240/.295/.350 against them. Backup catcher Geovany Soto was the Sox best option to hit lefties off the bench, but Ventura was hesitant to burn him for pinch-hitting. Now he has protection for when opposing managers try throw LOOGYs at him late in games, and some backup if Melky Cabrera‘s struggles against lefties become a multi-year issue.

If that doesn’t sound like a lot of uses for Sands; it’s not. He’s very specialized, and if he goes through a cold spot, his presence will lose its charm very quickly. Perhaps, for a team that will likely need a full-time solution if Avisail Garcia continues down his current career path, and recently came into a $13 million to more appropriately address it, that is part of the design.

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