First and foremost, the decision was made with increasing offensive production in mind. Flowers hit an abysmal .239/.295/.356 with a wRC+ of 79 in 2015. With patchwork being done elsewhere on offense, the White Sox simply didn’t believe they had any path to success with Flowers in the lineup on a daily basis. That’s certainly a fair assessment. However, Flowers went on to have the best offensive season of his career in Atlanta in 2016. Perhaps the automatic reaction is that Flowers went to a somewhat weaker National League, and the White Sox had no way of predicting that a breakout was coming.

That is not necessarily true. While Flowers wasn’t great during the 2015 season, he showed some shockingly good improvements in areas that sometimes go unnoticed. From 2014 to 2015 some serious improvements were made in his contact and swing rates. He lowered his swing percentage on pitches outside the zone from 34.1 to 29.5 percent while keeping his swing percentage on pitches inside the zone relatively the same. Laying off the garbage helped him raise his contact rate on pitches inside the zone by 7.9 percent. Even more noticeable was the drop in strikeout rate from 36 to 28.8 percent. That adjustment seemed to stick around in Atlanta where he held a 28 percent strikeout rate while raising his walk rate a bit to become an above average hitter, which is not often seen from catchers.

The success of Flowers only compounded the issues that the White Sox saw from their decision to change things at catcher. While they were looking to make an offensive improvement, neither Avila nor Navarro held up their ends of the deal. Navarro’s slash line was horrifying. He hit .207/.265/.322 with a 56 wRC+. He was disastrous at the plate, which was where he was supposed to excel. Avila faired slightly better, mostly due to his ability to take a walk. Avila had a walk rate of 18.2 percent, which helped him reach above average wRC+ (104). The offensive production was bad and disappointing. However, the White Sox can be mostly forgiven for that part of it. They expected success at the plate (although perhaps that’s a poor reflection of their scouting department), but they got failure. Where the White Sox were really burned for their decision was behind the plate.

Tyler Flowers was coming off his best defensive season, in which he had an FRAA of 11.0 and ranked third in framing runs with 15.2. The misconception appears to be that the White Sox weren’t even aware of this impressive framing ability, especially in the year before his release. Rick Hahn put those suggestions to bed with his comments during a conference call in March.

“I think there’s an unfortunate perception out there that we let Tyler Flowers go because we don’t believe in or perhaps are even not aware of framing data,” he said. “Hopefully people realize it was a little more of a sophisticated decision than that. We certainly have, I believe, owned the fact that it did not pan out with (Dioner) Navarro and (Alex) Avila the way we had hoped.”

Hahn makes two things clear with this statement. First, the White Sox do consider and value framing data. Second, he owns up to the fact that the decision to move from Flowers to Navarro and Avila was not a success. He went on to talk in a little more detail about framing and the things the White Sox consider when pursuing a catcher.

“We do very much value catcher defense,” he said. “We spend a great deal of time on framing and teaching framing at the minor league level … In fact, you will recall that Tyler made great advances as part of our organization in his framing metrics. When it does come to evaluating a catcher’s defensive ability, we don’t limit it strictly to framing. We would like to also have their ability to control the running game be evaluated, their ability with lateral movement to handle passed balls in the dirt, to a lesser extend wild pitches and the effect a catcher has on that, as well as their ability to work with a pitching staff and manage a pitcher’s compliance with their game plan as well.

“So it’s easy to look at the decision on Tyler and think it was us not understanding or appreciating framing data, however, nothing could be farther from the truth.”

First off, he’s right about the fact that Flowers learned his framing skill in the White Sox minor league system. When he was acquired, he was actually considered an above-average hitter with questions about whether he could stick behind the plate. (Sound familiar?) What is more interesting is that he goes on to describe the other aspects of defense that they do value. Specifically throwing runners out and blocking.

Using numbers from Baseball Prospectus, Flowers had -2.8 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs in 2015. Being in the red on any defensive metric isn’t a great sign, but certainly those small negatives are outweighed by the +15.2 runs he produced by framing. It becomes even more questionable when the unimpressive -0.8 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs from Navarro in 2016 come into play. His numbers before the addition were very similar, so there wasn’t a drastic change year to year after joining Chicago. Avila wasn’t much better in 2016 with 0.0 blocking runs and -0.6 throwing runs. It’s easy to deflect the displeasure over framing away by mentioning other aspects of defense. After all, framing just happens to be the in vogue stat. However, neither Avila nor Navarro was an upgrade defensively outside of framing.

Add on the poor framing from both Avila and Navarro and the decision becomes even more mind-boggling. It’s not often that an inability to frame is readily seen day to day via the eye test. Navarro made that possible. His -18.8 framing runs in 2016 only backed up what the eyes told us right away. It would’ve been hard to be worse than Navarro behind the plate. In fact, nobody was worse. Avila, however, did his best to catch up by producing a -6.5 framing runs.

The decision to move from Flowers to Avila and Navarro was a bad one. It was made even worse by an inability to identify improvements from Flowers on the offensive side of the ball. The biggest discrepancy, however, was on defense. While Avila and Navarro failed most excessively at framing, they weren’t good in any aspects of defending.

Does this matter anymore? Hahn has owned up to the lack of success they saw from the move. Hahn has expressed a desire to have catchers excel behind the plate. It really shouldn’t matter anymore. However, it continues to leave a bad taste in one’s mouth. Flowers wouldn’t have cost much at all for the White Sox to retain. They failed to see that he was on the verge of a good offensive performance in addition to his consistent ability behind the plate. While Flowers is long gone now, the impact of this catching decision will continue to reverberate.

Rehashing the details of the catchers added last year can be painful, but it perhaps gives us an insight into the mindset of the team going forward. Omar Narvaez appears to be the guy the White Sox are going with for now. At least until Zack Collins can work his way up in the next few years. Narvaez isn’t egregious behind the plate like Navarro and Avila were. However, he’s not going to help his pitchers out nearly as much as Flowers did. The White Sox must deal with the consequences that has for their pitching staff. They must also consider how that affects their decision making in regards to the catcher position going forward. It doesn’t appear as though Narvaez or Collins is going to be impressive on defense, so what are the White Sox going to do if they continue to fall behind the league in catcher defense? The answer to that question remains to be seen. It is, however, certainly a question that must be answered.

Lead Photo Credit: Steve Mitchell/USA Today Sports Images

The White Sox’ recent saga at catcher is well-known by now. In an effort to boost the offense, a platoon of Alex Avila and Dioner Navarro was acquired after the 2015 season, with Tyler Flowers non-tendered. Predictable issues arose–Avila got hurt, and Navarro was ghastly as a receiver. Slightly less predictable was Navarro’s bat disintegrating as well while Flowers would have a career year at the plate.

But, during the churn of catchers due to injuries and ineffectiveness, Omar Narvaez got his shot once the playoffs were already long out of reach, and showed that the odd profile he demonstrated in the minors would translate to the majors. Narvaez has basically zero power, with only seven home runs in almost 1,800 career minor league plate appearances, to go along with a .336 minor league slugging percentage.

The problem with hitting for no power at all, beyond the lost value of not getting extra base hits in and of itself, is that pitchers have no reason to pitch you carefully. If the worst thing you can do to them is hit a single, why would they walk you?

So far in his career, however, that hasn’t mattered for Narvaez. He walks anyway. He walked more than he struck out in the minors en route to a .353 OBP and so far in 151 major league plate appearances he has walked more than he’s struck out.  Indeed, at the outset of 2017 his statistics reflect a sort of exaggerated version of his purest form, with a triple slash line of .250/.382/.286.  Watching him hit, you can kind of see how he’s able to pull this off, as he has excellent knowledge of the strike zone, willing to take close pitches, and with his 90% contact rate, he is able to either put strikes in play or spoil them.  If anything, it appears that his primary goal at the plate is to walk above all else, with getting a hit as a fallback.

Whether Narvaez can sustain his strangely-shaped production bears monitoring. It seems unlikely that such a player will be the rare catcher that you run out there for ~475+ plate appearances a year (last year only 10 players did so).  However, crucially, Narvaez has improved his pitch framing from his debut in 2016, as FRAA has him in the black for 2017.  And given that the average OBP last year for all players was .322, having a catcher who simply makes pitchers work and gets on base at a .330-.340 clip while providing solid defense is nothing to sneeze at.  In fact, he may be such an improvement on the 2016 White Sox catching situation* that Narvaez represents one of the many reasons the rebuilding version of the team may win roughly the same amount of games as the contending one did.

*The 2016 White Sox were the worst team in the majors in pitch framing, and Navarro alone was worth -2.5 WARP.

It is increasingly looking like Narvaez is usable as the big half of a platoon or a plus backup, and that’s a pretty excellent result for a minor league Rule V draft acquisition. It’s early, but 2017 has been a good year for the prognosis of the White Sox’ potential supporting cast moving forward.

Rodon’s struggles over the past two seasons have been well documented. He failed to hit the strike zone during most of his 2015 campaign, which led to hard hit balls and a ton of walks. His 3.75 ERA wasn’t bad for a first year player but was much higher than anyone would have liked. It was inflated mostly due to his 11.7 percent walk rate and 1.44 WHIP. Yet, during that season he still managed to show good signs for the future. He struck out 22.9 percent of batters faced, showing progression as the season went on and he found a battery partner in Tyler Flowers. Everything signaled that 2016 would be the breakout year.

Then Flowers was non-tendered, a new set of catchers with no receiving skills and unfamiliarity to the young lefty arrived, and Rodon’s progress from the season before was shot. With new battery mate Dioner Navarro calling and catching the pitches, Rodon saw his improved changeup disappear from his repertoire and received no help in terms of framing. His ERA ballooned to 4.04 for the 2016 season despite having a fantastic final two months. Those fantastic two months were, unsurprisingly, mostly because of a change in catcher and subsequent increase in the changeup and ability to get batters out from both sides of the plate.

Inconsistency has truly been the tale of Rodon’s first two seasons with the White Sox. Some of that is to be expected. After all, what his progression we’re seeing now is often hidden in the minor leagues. However, the moving parts behind the plate certainly haven’t helped the young southpaw gain any momentum for a long period of time. Take a look at his pitch usage over the past two seasons, courtesy of Brooks Baseball. It’s riddled with inconsistencies.

Some of this is natural. Take a look at any number of pitchers’ usage graphs and you’ll see some similar peaks and valleys. In order to remain unpredictable, pitchers waver in their preferred method of getting hitters out. However, Rodon’s is particularly erratic for such a short amount of time spent in the big leagues.

It appears as though Rodon has finally settled into a repertoire that he feels comfortable using to attack hitters. A good portion of this breakthrough can be attributed to consistently being paired with Omar Narvaez throughout the second half of the season. In that second half, he saw his ERA dip to just 3.45 while he also struck out 77 batters in the span of just 73 innings.

There is other good news as well. Rodon made heavy strides in terms of reducing walks from 2015 to 2016 as he shaved his walk rate from 11.7 to 7.6 percent despite being paired with the worst framing of his professional career. He also saw a dip in cFIP and DRA from 98 to 87 and 4.57 to 4.13 respectively. Those quiet improvements suggest that Rodon has indeed managed to get better over the past two seasons. It also hints that he’s on the verge of a true breakout season.

While there have been some injury concerns and rumors because of the lefty’s odd spring regimen, Rodon appears to be healthy. He made his first Spring Training start Sunday, where he pitched four innings while striking out five, walking one, and giving up just a single hit. The timeline for his appearance in the major league rotation still remains unknown; however, it doesn’t appear as though there’s reason for serious concern over his arm.

With little to no pressure on Rodon to fill a certain role this season, he can finally make the complete breakthrough we’ve been expecting since soon after draft day. The potential to be a top of the rotation starter remains within him. We were in this same scenario a year ago, but Rodon has managed to make even more improvements in the interim. Consistency in both his pitch usage and command could allow him to finally fulfill the hopes that White Sox fans have had for him. That would certainly be helpful if he winds up being the top starter on the staff by the end of the season. This year will be the one where Rodon finds his stride and pitches well for the duration of a season.

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

Rodon had a very encouraging finish to the 2015 season, lowering his walk rate by 4.2 percentage points from the first half of the season to the second. His effectiveness in his rookie campaign, especially in the second half, was reason enough for White Sox fans and writers alike to jump aboard the Rodon hype train. By simply putting his mid-90s fastball and powerful slider in the zone, he built huge expectations for the 2016 season.

What some fans failed to consider, however, was how much Tyler Flowers played a part in Rodon’s improvements during the 2015 season. One of the best framers in the league helped Rodon get more strikes called and utilize his pitches better. With Dioner Navarro catching Rodon for the majority of the first half of 2016, he failed brutally. He couldn’t find the strike zone, he was getting hit hard, and his seldom-used changeup completely disappeared from his repertoire.

For the second-straight season, Rodon greatly improved in the second half. In 2015, it was his slight adjustment of where he set up on the mound and ability to find the strike zone. In 2016 he, with the help of new battery partner Omar Narvaez, discovered the power of his changeup and utilized the backdoor slider. Those two pitches alone helped him lower his opposing batting line against right handed hitting in the first half from .309/.376/.502 to .238/.307/.389. Although he was already a strikeout fiend, he managed to raise his strikeout rate against right-handed hitting 3.5 percentage points from the first half of the season to the second.

His newfound ability to get right handed batters out greatly improved his ability to last longer in games and ultimately be more effective, and he looked like a more dominant and complete pitcher than he ever had before. He began to limit his pitch counts, throw more fastballs in the mid-to-upper 90s, and his highly touted slider became a true weapon. As the White Sox headed further down the stretch with no hope of the postseason, Robin Ventura allowed Rodon to go deeper into games and face higher-leverage situations to test him. The young southpaw responded well to those situations, giving even more reason to believe that Rodon was growing into a top of the rotation role.

The rising expectations for Rodon led to disappointment in the early parts of 2016, but he was able to bounce back incredibly well during the latter parts of the season. In his final start of the season, he set an American League record by striking out the first seven batters of the game. He ultimately gave up two earned runs in the start and only lasted six innings, but his dominance in the early part of the game was a preview of Rodon’s future: slicing and dicing his way through the lineup, using all three of his pitches strategically. His 2016 season was full of struggles, but as a whole Rodon made great strides. His continuing growth is incredibly encouraging for the future of the White Sox and their rotation.

Lead Image Credit: Ken Blaze // USA Today Sports Images

Moving on from Flowers made sense, as despite being heralded as a prospect whose bat would play even if his defense was questionable, Flowers never became an above-average hitter, and most years was at or below the league average for catchers offensively.

Of course, what became Flowers’ strength was that he usually ranked near the top of the league in pitch framing, and had developed a reputation for calling a good game, something Chris Sale was often quick to praise.

So in jettisoning Flowers for the platoon of free-agent acquisitions Alex Avila and Dioner Navarro, the White Sox were essentially attempting to trade defense for offense behind the plate. In theory, this was easy to understand: the White Sox had one of the five worst offenses in baseball a year ago and, with presumed defensive upgrades at third base and in center and right field, upgrading the offense while downgrading defensively at one position was justifiable.

This is especially true when you consider that of the two pluses in Flowers’ game mentioned earlier, one is intangible and the other’s value is still difficult to quantify. (Although the numbers we do have, particularly in the framing department, say Navarro and Avila have been awful).

Where the White Sox failed is in replacing that known quantity with anything resembling an upgrade. In Avila and Navarro, the White Sox were gambling that a platoon of the two veterans would provide enough of an offensive upgrade to make up for the presumed loss defensively. They were low-risk gambles, but given the organization’s lack of depth at the position, it was actually an ill-conceived gamble that was doomed from the start.

It would be one thing if the White Sox were replacing Flowers with a young player they could at least hope to develop. But in Avila and Navarro, the White Sox built their catching position like a house of cards, with the hope not that they had replaced Flowers with something resembling a long-term solution, but instead with hope that they’d get one more season of value before the arrangement toppled to the ground.

Even if Avila weren’t riddled with injury problems, the Sox were still relying on two guys who hadn’t been markedly above replacement level in a number of years, one who was 32-years-old without plus athleticism, and the other who had suffered multiple concussions and hadn’t been the same since his most recently reported one in 2014.

The only way this would have wound up a significant upgrade is if both had hit their ~80th percentile production level, and with that kind of history that’s a gamble that was never going to pay off. Maybe them failing as miserably as they have — Navarro’s bat dropping off specifically — wasn’t foreseeable, but it was a helluva lot more likely than the combination of A) staying healthy and B) hitting like they had in their respective primes.

Again, I’m not advocating the White Sox sticking with the status quo. When the decision to part ways with Flowers was made, it was refreshing to see a team that has too often stood by unproductive incumbents for far too long — Gordon Beckham, Dayan Viciedo, Avisail Garcia come immediately to mind — move on from such a player. But when you’re replacing mediocre with mediocre, all you’re doing, if you’ll pardon the cliche, is shuffling the deck chairs on the Titanic.

The White Sox have a number of problems to address if they want to get back to contention, but when you’re just swapping out replacement-level veterans for other replacement-level veterans, all you’re really doing is providing an opportunity to watch a new player in a new jersey fail time and time again. The White Sox have been a directionless franchise for too long now, and the catching position exemplifies it as much as any move they’ve made.

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Nicholson-USA TODAY Sports

Despite Rick Hahn being coy about the offseason plan, this is an organization that has been gallingly passive in recent years.  In that sense, it is a positive to see them trade away a player that is clearly not part of the future, is blocking someone worth evaluating in the present, and looking for ways to add talent–any talent–to the organization.  After all, whether or not the White Sox choose to rebuild or try to actually capitalize on the good, cheap core that they have in place this winter, Navarro was expendable either way.

Colton Turner is the return coming back from Toronto.  As you might imagine, it’s not exactly the biggest haul, again–this is a free addition to the organization, because the alternative is just watching Navarro leave at the end of the year for nothing.  He’s a 25-year old LHP who was vaporizing both levels of A-ball (as you’d hope) and has struggled quite a bit with his promotion to AA.  The best hope for him is that he’s a LOOGY eventually, but that’s still useful.  The White Sox have certainly had their trouble finding someone to fill that role without spending a decent amount of money on a guy like Zach Duke.

Along those same lines, the trade syncs up with Alex Avila‘s activation from the DL.  There are still a few days to make waiver trades, and one wonders if someone would be interested in giving up something for him.  After all, Avila has had a better year than Navarro has.  Even if the White Sox wanted to bring him back in 2016, he’s a free agent at the end of the year regardless and he’s not getting a Qualifying Offer–there’s no reason you can’t just sign him anyway.

As for Navarro himself, anecdotally he became a lightning rod for criticism, and not without reason.  His bat fell apart, statistical and visual evidence that his framing was killing the pitching staff piled up quickly, and the guy he replaced was Chris Sale‘s personal catcher who was better in every way and promptly went off to have a career year in Atlanta.*  While catcher is a difficult position to solve, and pitch framing metrics do not inspire as much confidence as say, OBP does, a platoon of Avila and Tyler Flowers looks like a it would have been massively preferable to what they wound up doing.  And while no organization is perfect on this score,** the White Sox have been in the red on player evaluations for a while now.

*Sale’s off-the-field blowups this year didn’t come out of nowhere, as we’ve seen him confront the front office before, and anybody who has watched him give up a home run and come back throwing 99+ with zero control knows he’s….competitive.  However, one wonders if the White Sox non-tendering Flowers this winter pushed him into feeling more adversarial with management.  

**For example, the Astros are widely lauded as a Smart Organization that is On The Rise, but this is the same regime that drafted Mark Appel over Kris Bryant, and let J.D. Martinez, Robbie Grossman, and Jonathan Villar go actually for free or basically for free.

Well, despite all of that, Navarro gets to go play in playoff race with his teammates of the last two years, while the White Sox will continue to flush year five of Sale’s Hall of Fame Peak down the toilet without him.

Tim Anderson jumps off the screen in that regard, certainly, and Carlos Rodon looks to be trending in the direction of exciting development, but after Matt Davidson, Kevan Smith, and Charlie Tilson all had their debuts and rookie seasons dashed by injury, the cupboard has been awfully bare.

Thus, and specifically on the position player side, after Anderson, the most surprising and pleasant development in 2016 has been the arrival of Omar Narvaez, the fifth choice at catcher on the year. And no, I’m not here to look at his .357/.486/.393 line over 35 PAs and proclaim him the Venezuelan Joe Mauer. However, even if you zoom out, there’s reason to be happy about his presence and what it represents.

First, the most important thing a catcher can do is defend his position.  To my unqualified eye, Narvaez has looked perfectly adequate behind the plate, and when seeking confirmation with someone who knows what they’re talking about, BP’s own Mauricio Rubio confirmed that he may even merit the label of “solid average.” If that’s Narvaez’ true quality defensively, the bar for what he has to do on offense drops dramatically.

Catchers as a group are bad hitters. If Narvaez were able to muster, say, a .330 OBP, that would put him as Top-10 in the majors in that category for catchers with more than 200 PAs, and most of the players ahead of him on that Top-10 are making a lot of money. Similarly, Jason Castro is sixth in the majors among catchers by WARP while hitting .213/.321/.380 by virtue of his defense. This isn’t to say that single seasons of defensive metrics are gospel, but rather to emphasize: if you are a good defensive catcher, any hitting at all becomes super valuable.

*Side note: Narvaez was once a switch hitter, but seems to have abandoned it to hit full-time from the left side.

Obviously, it can be tricky to keep drawing walks against major league pitchers if they have no reason to be afraid of you doing anything other than hitting a single, although we have seen Alex Avila maintain good OBPs even after his contact and power abandoned him. But, if Narvaez can play solid defense, as a lefty bat he looks like an intriguing bench option, particularly if he can maintain even 80 percent of his .277/.353/.336 minor league line in the majors.** There are a fair amount of catchers who hit right-handed and need protection from any decent right-handed pitching.

Moreover, as I’ve said in reference to Tyler Saladino, being able to generate serviceable bench options internally is a cascading boon to the organization. It obviates the need to shop in the free agent market for guys like that, saving financial resources (which to the White Sox is evidently a priority of puzzling urgency) and erases the misery of the Emilio Bonifacio/Gordon Beckham/Dioner Navarro-type results that that sort of free agent can present. It also provides credible on-hand depth, instead of, say, being stuck giving regular playing time to Ray Olmedo in the only real playoff push the organization has seen since 2008.

**It is not conclusive on the matter, but I do think it is worth pointing out that Kiley McDaniel described Narvaez as possessing an advanced approach at the plate, as it is very easy to draw a lot of walks in the minors without having any real meaningful on-base skills that will translate to the majors.

So, here’s to hoping Narvaez can get plenty of playing time over the next few months to see if he can indeed be penciled in as the backup catcher for 2017.  It’s not the most important job on the team, but as we’ve seen, any time you can solve a problem on the roster–particularly when done cheaply and for multiple years–it is a big deal.

Lead Image Credit: David Richard // USA Today Sports Images

Let’s check on how four of these former White Sox players are doing, and perhaps what’s lead to their string of success.

Conor Gillaspie

After departing from the South side after three very long years, Conor Gillaspie has returned to the franchise that drafted him, the San Francisco Giants. Gillaspie only tallied a line of .260/.314/.397 during his time with the White Sox, and in 2015 was striking out at over an 18 percent clip while only walking 5 percent of the time with poor defense at third. It’s safe to say among other things, Gillaspie quickly became the bane of many a White Sox fan’s existence.

Things aren’t much different for Gillaspie on the West Coast, though. Gillaspie is currently seeing a line of .258/.313/.393 which is less than impressive, but has improved his strikeout rate generously. Gillaspie is only striking out at an 11.5 percent clip in San Francisco, and walking 6.1 percent of the time.

The Difference: Gillaspie has only playing in 49 games so far in 2016. That’s comfortable for a player who’s posting a slash line such as Gillespie’s — that’s the type of role a player such as him should be taking on. When the White Sox organization was trying to run him out for 130 games a season while barely being able to scrape the surface of replacement level, a player like Gillaspie is bound to disappoint.

Gordon Beckham

Part of the infield tandem that led to much of the disdain that is the root cause of jaded fandom, Gordon Beckham hit just .242/.304/.370 during his seven very long years with the White Sox. Finally this past offseason, the White Sox were finally able to cut ties permanently (or so we hope) with Beckham.

But now, fast forward to 2016. Not only did the White Sox lose a series to the Atlanta Braves — a team who had hit 57 home runs entering the break — to end the first half, but Beckham himself took his former team for a ride blasting a home run, and gathering three hits in his return to U.S. Cellular Field.

Beckham is now hitting — wait for it — .290/.387/.458 with the Braves. He’s taking walks at an 11.3 percent rate, something he’s never done in his career and he’s lowered his strikeout rate by over five percent from 2015 to 2016. Who would have thought that could ever be possible for a guy the White Sox tried so hard to groom into a franchise player for almost a decade?

The Difference: The thing with Beckham, is that much like Gillaspie, the sample size is small. Beckham has only participated in 34 games in Atlanta this season. The White Sox tried extensively hard to make Beckham into an everyday infielder, using him in as many as 151 games in 2012. When the sample size expands by that much, but the talent isn’t adequately available over the course of that many games per season, you get White Sox-era Gordon Beckham. When you use a player such a Beckham sparingly the way Atlanta has, you give him the environment he needs to flourish in the role he’s best suited for.

Marcus Semien

This one hurts. Always a big fan of Marcus Semien, when I heard that he was included in the trade that would bring Jeff Samardzija over to the White Sox for what ended up being one very heartbreaking season, in the back of my mind I was not entirely pleased.

And this is why. While Samardzija saw his ERA rise to 4.98 — a level he’d never reached as a starting pitcher — and allowed a career high number of hits and earned runs in 2015, Semien was on the path to Figuring It Out.

Semien played in 151 games in Oakland in 2015, and while he committed a harrowing number of errors and didn’t quite impress in the power department, that began to change.

Samardzija is now pitching in San Francisco and posting an ERA nearly a full run lower than that of the one he posted in Chicago. Meanwhile, Semien has slashed his error total significantly from an almost impressively poor 35 errors in 2015 to just nine so far in 2016, and seems to have found his power stroke, something he desperately was searching for in Chicago.

Semien is hitting .242/.307/.477 with an ISO of .234. While his strikeout rate is still quite high at 23 percent, and his OBP is leaner than one may like, he’s making up for it by hitting the ball with authority — and doing it at the Oakland Coliseum, a stadium that’s second to last in home run totals.

The Difference: Semien was still a work in progress. It wasn’t time to give up on him for a year of a pitcher who was on the verge of free agency and very unlikely to sign despite the rumors of a “hometown discount”. Semien had his flaws, but he wasn’t unsalvageable. They were simply kinks that needed to be ironed out, and 85 games in a White Sox uniform surely wasn’t enough to see if Semien could reach his full potential. The White Sox spent years waiting for the prophecies of Beckham and Gillaspie to be fulfilled, but 85 games of Semien and this organization had decided that they’d seen enough. The White Sox didn’t lose an All-Star talent in Semien, but considering that the trade they sent him away in as now left them empty handed, the loss of Semien stings just a bit more than it should.

Tyler Flowers

Yet another former White Sox player who ended up back with the organization that drafted him. After seven years with the White Sox, the South siders officially cut ties with catcher Tyler Flowers.

Flowers never truly dazzled in Chicago, he posted a meager .223/.289/.376 slash line during his time in with the Sox, and once had a strikeout rate that reached 36 percent.

But now, in the Braves organization, though Flowers isn’t blowing anyone away with his exceptional power numbers and hasn’t lowered that hearty strikeout rate enough to earn the status of The One That Got Away, he’s doing good things for someone who is still Tyler Flowers. Playing in just 53 games, Flowers has posted a slash line of .253/.343/.425 with the Braves and is walking at the highest clip of his career at over eight percent (minimum 50 games).

The Difference: Saying that perhaps the White Sox were trying to stretch too much out of Flowers would feel like an inaccurate statement, seeing as Flowers only played in over 100 games two of his seven seasons on the South side. Perhaps Flowers’ success in Atlanta is just a flukey, small sample size baseball thing, but the Braves seem to understand that Flowers isn’t the type of player you want behind the plate for everyday use — something the White Sox tried to make work for nearly two seasons. Again, understanding players limits seems to be key here.

The kernel to take away is this: It’s seems as though the White Sox have a penchant for looking at a utility player’s success in small sample sizes and try and stretch that success into everyday stardom. Only when these players end up with other organizations that understand their ability to flourish in a bench or backup role and don’t try to push their limits do we see their full potential at the major league level. Not every player is destined to become a starter, sometimes sufficient depth is all you can ask for.

And as we saw with Semien, perhaps prospects that haven’t reached their full potential yet shouldn’t be traded for one year of a highly-touted pitcher, because these things, much like with Semien, will come back to haunt you when you’re left empty handed. There’s nothing worse in baseball than watching prospect that was once in your organization have success with another because of a trade that your team is no longer benefiting from.

These are all simple lessons learned. Learned by fans, by baseball, and hopefully by the White Sox front office. Hey, at least the organization held onto Tim Anderson though, right?

Lead photo courtesy of Kenny Karst-USA TODAY Sports

When the White Sox signed Alex Avila this winter I was initially ecstatic. I assumed that the White Sox had just acquired another capable backup catcher who would provide some platoon relief for incumbent Tyler Flowers. I thought limiting Avila to a backup spot would both keep him healthy and improve his offense as he would be hitting more often with fresh legs.  Then the next few days happened and much to my dismay Flowers was jettisoned by the White Sox which paved the way for Dioner Navarro to sign with the team and create the catching tandem with which Chicago opened the season.

Now, I understand what the White Sox brass probably had in mind when they acquired Avila and Navarro; that these moves would make the offense from the catcher position more palatable, and through that lens it does make some sense.  Flowers had posted an uninspiring TAv of .245 over the 2014 and 2015 seasons combined, the White Sox as a team desperately needed more offense due to the many black holes employed by the offense (the Sox had yet to bring in Todd Frazier and Brett Lawrie), and the Avila (multi-year TAv of .265 against RHP) Navarro (multi-year TAv of .289 against LHP) tandem had strong, complementary platoon splits versus right handed and left handed pitching, respectfully. Unfortunately lost in the desire to bring on more offense was seemingly nary a concern for the erosion of Avila’s body from his previous years of abuse, and most importantly, a complete disregard for defense and the associated ramifications that would have on the pitching staff.

I can forgive the White Sox for overlooking the first of my two objections. Herm Schneider and company have done a wonderful job keeping White Sox players healthy over the years and this phenomenon has gone on for quite some time and by any measure can be considered a somewhat sustainable expectation (I can only assume that this has been accomplished by an underground pipeline that runs from U.S. Cellular Field to the United Center and somehow sucks all of the stem cells out of Derrick Rose’s knees, Taj Gibson’s ankles, and Joakim Noah’s feet for use in re-growing injured muscle and ligament tissue from White Sox players). And it’s worth mentioning that both Avila and Navarro hold strong reputations for pitch calling and staff management. However, I was completely miffed by the lack of concern regarding defense, namely catcher framing.

According to Baseball Prospectus’ framing numbers, during the 2015 Major League Baseball season, only two catchers, Yasmani Grandal and Francisco Cervelli, were worth more Framing Runs than Tyler Flowers and his 16.7 runs. Additionally, looking at StatCorner’s Catcher Report, Flowers was worth just over 22.5 runs above average with his framing in 2015 which ranked second in MLB to the aforementioned Cervelli.  What I’m getting at is that even if you believe catcher framing is a somewhat subjective science, there’s probably merit to the numbers when two independent data sources come to the similar conclusion that not only was Flowers above average at stealing his pitchers an extra strike here and there, he was essentially among the league’s elite in this category. The same certainly cannot be said about Avila, -8.5 BP Framing Runs and -5.8 StatCorner runs above average, and Navarro, -3.3 BP Framing Runs and -4.1 SC runs above average, in 2015.  Considering the White Sox primary backup catcher in 2015, Geovany Soto was just about average defensively, -0.6 BP Framing Runs and +5.6 SC runs above average, the projected defensive downgrade the White Sox made from 2015 to 2016 was, in total, massive.

Now, I’m not the first person to point out and critique the move from the defensive prospective. Patrick Nolan of South Side Sox talked about this in his review of the White Sox off-season. At face value, he argued, the moves looked like a sure downgrade from the White Sox, unless there was some sort of asymmetric information the White Sox had, like the ability to teach framing. I was hopeful that this might be the case, but so far in the new season, both Avila and especially Navarro have been quite awful at pitch framing with Avila posting -0.4 BP Framing Runs and -1.3 SC runs above average and Navarro at a staggering -4.7 BP Framing runs and -6.3 SC runs above average suggesting the White Sox have no such information. These numbers alone are quite concerning, but I believe they’re even more concerning when you consider the composition of the White Sox top heavy pitching staff.

The White Sox have two excellent starting pitchers in Chris Sale and Jose Quintana that I believe are not as susceptible to adverse effects from poor pitch framing as you average starting pitcher would be.  They’re both well-established veterans with histories of excellent control and most importantly, their “stuff,” in my opinion, is good enough to the point where neither pitcher has to rely on nibbling at the corners of the strike zone in order to get batters out.

My best guess is that the White Sox front office held the same belief of these two players and that played heavily into their decision to punt catcher defense for offense. And unsurprisingly, these two pitchers have not really been impacted at all by the defensive downgrade at catcher as both of them are slicing through lineups like a lightsaber through a Skywalker appendage. But this is and was completely expected, and most projection systems pegged Sale and Quintana as (and this is a purely scientific term) friggin’ awesome, admittedly not to their current degree but I’d expect some natural regression, and still had the White Sox as a slightly above average team destined for 83 or 84 wins.

What I’m getting at is that I believe there should have been more thought given to maximizing the “unknowns” of the White Sox rotation and less concern given to lack of impact on the two “known” aspects of the rotation as the “unknowns”  are the part of this equation that tip the scales toward playoff contention. Case in point: the White Sox were garbage last year and Sale and Quintana were still great. The reality is that improvement from all of the other players would be the engine that would make the playoff wheel turn. And the biggest potential for improvement was locked within the White Sox third starter Carlos Rodon.

Rodon flashed huge potential down the stretch last season, finishing the year on an eight-start run that saw him throw 54 and 2/3 innings to the tune of a 1.81 ERA, 3.61 FIP, 1.08 WHIP, and a 49:21 K:BB ratio while allowing only four home runs. Rodon was excellent during this stretch and non-coincidentally, in my opinion, all of this good work came after the White Sox made the decision to stop having Rodon pitch Geovany Soto and throw exclusively to Tyler Flowers instead. Flowers was exactly the type of catcher that Rodon needed. Though Rodon is extremely talented, he still has erratic control and is very prone to missing his spots.

When a pitcher is missing his spots, the home plate umpire almost always begins to squeeze the strike zone, which is especially problematic for a young starter who has enough trouble hitting the zone when it is fully operational. And whether it’s right or wrong for the home plate umpire to do something like this, having a catcher, like Flowers, who is able to tilt borderline strike calls, or at the very least preserve strike calls on pitches that should be strikes, is a huge countermeasure. Neither Avila nor Navarro have been able to do this, and according to StatCorner they currently hold staggering zone ball percentages (the percentage of pitches that are in the strike zone that are called balls) of 18.6% and 20.9% respectively, which is third-worst and worst among catchers with more than 500 pitches received in the 2016 season.

All of this suggests that Rodon’s security blanket is more than gone and this has most likely led to the regression from the form he was able to show down the stretch last season. The loss of a strong pitch framing catcher has had an additional side effect on Rodon. Pitch f/x data is showing a drastic shift in pitch mix and velocity from last August and September in comparison to this season. Below is the Brooks Baseball Pitch F/X data during the two snippets in time:

As can be seen, not only is Rodon using his off-speed pitches less frequently, his velocity is down across the board. Now, this is just me hypothesizing, but I would wager these changes are symptomatic of a pitcher sacrificing his best two assets (his slider and velocity) in order to throw strikes. It’s incredibly hard to say that that is caused directly by poor catcher framing, but the inability to get extra strikes for Rodon is likely a contributing factor that puts him behind in the count more often, and that limits the arsenal with which he can attack hitters. It also allows hitters to be more selective when facing Rodon which no doubt leads to fewer swings at his almost unhittable slider, further limiting Rodon’s effectiveness.

While I chose Rodon to showcase some adverse effects of the pitch framing, I don’t believe they are only impacting Rodon. Most mid-to-back end of the rotation starters only have one significant out pitch, and that, quite frankly, is why they are back end starters.  This year for Mat Latos, it’s been his splitter, for John Danks, it had historically been his changeup, and we haven’t really seen much of Miguel Gonzalez but in years past it had been his slider. These guys don’t have three plus pitches like Chris Sale does, or two plus pitches like Jose Quintana does. Perhaps more importantly, they do not have dominant fastballs, and are more likely to nibble at the strike zone until they can get the batter into a count where he is more apt to swing out of the zone. This becomes much more difficult when the catcher is not adept at swaying umpires on borderline pitches.

Now, all this doom and gloom might make it seem like the White Sox are off to a terrible start in 2016. In fact, quite the opposite is true. Through 35 games, they’re 23-12 and have a five-game lead on the second place Cleveland Indians. With Avisail Garcia’s recent surge the offense is looking very solid. However, as I said above, any team on top of the division should always be cognizant of their Achilles’ heel and seek out ways to improve the situation. Currently, I believe the catching position is the biggest concern for the White Sox and is negatively impacting the other position of weakness for the Sox, the back end of the rotation. I don’t have a perfect solution for the Sox, but I do know that improving the catcher defense would go a long way toward pushing this team to the playoffs, while leaving it unchecked will continue to have adverse effects on the team.

Lead Image Credit: Brad Rempel // USA Today Sports Images

His fastball in his last two times out has been a solid four miles per hour slower than even his Opening Day start, his slider has dropped by the same magnitude while he’s switched to a loopy slurve that didn’t get any swings and misses Tuesday, and his strikeout rate has dropped eight percent from last season’s reign as king of whiffs in the AL.

It could also be the best month of his career. It’s the first five-win month of his career, which is ephemeral, but since he’s averaging more than seven innings per start, Sale has more impact on the decisions than most.

Superficially, Sale is getting all the luck that eluded him last year. Even Philip Humber in 2011 rode rock bottom BABIP and high strand rates longer than Sale has so far without getting written up breathlessly. The difference is whether it can still be trusted that Sale has the whiffs in his back pocket when he needs them. He pops out top velocity (touched 96 mph Tuesday) and ramps it up over the start enough to keep the faith, and if 99 out of 100 pitchers would simply be grappling with physical decline rather than giving a feint to the entire league, the 100th would be Chris Sale.

2. Sale pumped in first strikes to 21 of 29 hitters Tuesday night, using a lot of low-90s fastballs early in the count against the Blue Jays lineup that’s one of the least aggressive in baseball so far in 2016. That’s one of the largest hints of how he was acting on his preseason goals for more efficiency, but Adam Eaton also threw out a quote that was a bit more provocative than the usual ‘this team is great’ fare.

“He has a chance to throw a no-hitter every night. He has that type of stuff,’’ Eaton said. “I definitely think his mentality has changed this year and that has to do with the catching. [With] Navarro and Alex [Avila], he seems not to get mad as much. He stays on task.’’

Sale had nothing but praise for Tyler Flowers, but that has little impact on the outside perception of Flowers’ ability to rein Sale in. Recently, Sale’s outings are too low stress for this principle to really get a workout, but it’s something to watch for the rest of the season.

3. Yesterday’s note about it still being early enough to flip a batting line with a few hot games certainly applies to Avisail Garcia, who vaulted his OPS more than 150 points just by having four hits over the last two games, including slapping a lifeless R.A. Dickey knuckler to the moon Tuesday night (and promptly getting a very eager free pass his next time up).

Garcia hasn’t done anything in the last two days that he hasn’t done before (spray singles to right field, swat hangers), but if the conversion rate on the things he can do was higher, he probably wouldn’t have people suggesting he be demoted. An Avisail Garcia full of limitations but being excellent at the things he’s capable of is not a foolish thing to hope for and can probably at least fight off Jerry Sands for playing time. The Sox’ ridiculously hot start will still ratchet up the scrutiny on Garcia either way, especially since DH help will be the easiest to find.

4. Hector Sanchez is now with the big club after injuries felled Alex Avila and Kevan Smith, and it would stand to reason that he would get into a game soon, since Dioner Navarro, of 32 years on this Earth, parts of 13 seasons in the majors and 921 games, has appeared in parts of the last six games in a row.

Navarro has been looking increasingly hitterish since working regularly, going 5-for-10 with two home runs and two walks in the last four games. Returns against right-handed pitching can probably be expected to diminish when the opposition is not a bad knuckleballer who can’t break 80 mph, though.

5. Zach Putnam worked the ninth inning of Tuesday’s blowout, striking out the side with his usual recipe of “Here, try to hit my insane splitter.” He threw splitters on 10 of his 13 pitches, and half of those 10 went for a swing and miss.

That actually dragged down his whiff percentage for a pitch he throws roughly three out of every five times on average (he gets whiffs on ~56 percent of swings). His success is … odd. That Putnam is striking out more than 30 percent of hitters again is actually a repeat of last season, but he was hurt down the stretch of 2015 and finished with a 4.07 ERA despite a flashy 64 strikeouts in 48.2 innings. Putnam’s one dimensional nature is hysterical to watch — everything we know about the complexities of pitching makes a guy throwing the same nasty tumbler over and over and getting major leaguers out absurd — but it also serves to make him more volatile. Naturally, if he comes out and doesn’t have his splitter working, he’s a tomato can and your first hint of such is typically a ball rocketing over the fence.

It would still be nice to see him get more high-leverage work due to just how useful a reliever with no real platoon split, a high strikeout rate and a pitch built to induce grounders can be in U.S. Cellular Field.

Lead Image Credit: Dan Hamilton // USA Today Sports Images