The White Sox Are Suffering the Consequences of Doing Nothing

Injury and inaction have doomed what was once a promising season for the South Siders.

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A few weeks ago during the All-Star break, a White Sox fan—presumably a very bored one during the only stint of summer without regular season MLB games—posted some in-depth research to Reddit’s baseball forum that claimed his favorite team had endured players suffering an injury once every three days over the past year. During that time, they’d weathered injuries to 15 of the human body’s 16 anatomical regions, as if they’d been playing a real-life game of Operation gone wrong. The only area Chicago had managed to keep intact across its current roster was the left hand/wrist.

Naturally, in the most disappointing White Sox (56–54) season in recent memory, the only injury that was left to happen to them occurred this week to the player they could least afford to lose. The team announced Tuesday that Tim Anderson will be out four to six weeks with a torn finger ligament, putting its most prominent leader out of commission for a large chunk of the regular season’s home stretch.

Anderson—the MLB batting champion in 2019, the AL runs leader and Silver Slugger winner in ’20 and an All-Star in each of the last two seasons—is a massive loss. This hadn’t been a vintage season for the 29-year-old, but he still lands in the top 10 of the American League in batting average (.301) and he has been the White Sox’ fourth-most valuable player by FanGraphs WAR (2.2), behind only Dylan Cease, José Abreu and Luis Robert. When Anderson missed three weeks earlier in the season due to a strained groin, the White Sox lost 10 of their 18 games.

Anderson’s injury would be a lot more manageable for the White Sox to overcome had their front office improved their roster’s depth before the trade deadline :: AP Photo/David Dermer

If the White Sox stay in-house to replace Anderson, they may turn to Leury García, who has already been in over his head this season at the less demanding position of second base. He nevertheless started at shortstop for both games of Tuesday’s doubleheader against the Royals. If the White Sox continue down that path, it would open up more time for Josh Harrison at the keystone and leave them with one of the worst middle infields in the sport. That’s probably what would happen if it was up to manager Tony La Russa, who famously prefers to rely on veterans, even if they’re reaching the twilight of their careers.

The external options available post-trade deadline aren’t too enticing, either. Didi Gregorius, recently designated for assignment by the Phillies, could be worth a flier. But he’s been worth negative WAR this season, enduring his worst season at the plate at age 32. And when considering the many reasons the Phillies never reached the playoffs during Gregorius’s tenure with the team, one can’t overlook the defensively-deficient Didi serving as Philadelphia’s most important fielder. It’d be far from a guarantee he could help Chicago’s cause.

If the White Sox are to do anything except essentially hope a hole at baseball’s signature position doesn’t sink them, it may depend on Lenyn Sosa. The 22-year-old prospect drew a start at second base against the Royals on Tuesday—despite his having far more professional experience at shortstop than García—and hit his first career home run, helping the Sox salvage a doubleheader split in Kansas City. But Sosa, ranked as Chicago’s No. 21 prospect by MLB Pipeline, went 1-for-12 in a cup of coffee earlier this year, and he’s had a middling offensive showing in just 23 career games at Triple A. All that together indicates he’s probably closer to a replacement-level player at this point despite Tuesday’s 428-foot bomb.

Lenyn Sosa's 1st major league home run was a BIG hit. #ChangeTheGame | @NBCSChicago pic.twitter.com/IYyFU4ZQNu

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) August 10, 2022

According to MLB.com’s Robert Falkoff, La Russa said after Tuesday’s win that when he heard the news of Anderson’s injury, he thought about how last year Atlanta rallied in the wake of Ronald Acuña Jr.’s season-ending injury to win the World Series. This scenario is far different, however.

Acuña’s injury occurred in early July, and GM Alex Anthopoulos responded by acquiring four outfielders to make up for his star’s absence and then some. Obviously, Anderson’s injury came after the trade deadline. But the White Sox could’ve used a middle infielder even before Anderson went down; they’ve needed a better second baseman since Nick Madrigal, who now plays for the Cubs, suffered a season-ending hamstring injury last June. It couldn’t have cost them much to bring in pending free agent Donovan Solano from the Reds or Whit Merrifield from Kansas City (The Blue Jays sent the Royals their Nos. 14 and 23 prospects, according to Baseball America’s rankings, for Merrifield).

Alas, Chicago did nothing before the deadline to improve its offense or rotation—neither of which have lived up to expectations, injuries aside. The only acquisition came in the form of lefthander Jake Diekman for backup catcher Reese McGuire. Diekman is a fine reliever who does improve the bullpen, which also has been ravaged by injuries, but his addition is hardly enough for the team to turn things around.

The White Sox didn’t need to trade for Juan Soto, Luis Castillo or any of the other All-Stars available at the deadline. Adding depth to a roster that has gone without a number of key contributors for chunks of the season would have been enough to give them a shot at snagging a wild-card berth or running down the Twins in the AL Central. Instead, the front office elected to do next to nothing and hoped that this team, which entered the year with such lofty expectations, would turn things around despite all the evidence to the contrary. It’s true that the White Sox have lost the second-most projected value for any American League team, according to Baseball Prospectus’ Injury List Ledger tool. But even as the team grew healthier last month, it still failed to ascend in the standings.

Entering the season, the South Siders were strong favorites to defend their division title, given a 59.2% chance to do so by FanGraphs, which estimated their playoff odds to be 72.2% and projected them to finish 10 games above Minnesota, the largest gap for any division. Baseball Prospectus’ PECOTA largely concurred, giving the Sox a 59% chance to win the Central with 81.8% playoff odds.

Those probabilities have drastically decreased, with their FanGraphs divisional odds standing at 29.5% and their postseason odds at 44.5%, while PECOTA gives them a 25.3% shot to win the Central and a 38.6% chance to make the playoffs. Both sites project Chicago to finish third in the division, behind the Twins and Guardians, who are currently tied for first in the Central, 1.5 games ahead of the White Sox. And their -13 run differential indicates the team is lucky to be as close as it is. In a year that began with World Series aspirations, the Sox are behind a Cleveland team that isn’t prioritizing winning in 2022. The Guardians’ only deadline move was to trade backup catcher Sandy León to Minnesota, a team they’re ostensibly battling for a playoff spot. And yet, Chicago has trailed Cleveland in the standings since June 7 and hasn’t had a share of the AL Central lead since April 20, when the season wasn’t even two weeks old.

While the Twins and Guardians have certainly proved to be worthy adversaries, they haven’t exactly run away with the division. If the White Sox had maintained their winning percentage from last season, a 93-win campaign, it would be six games up in the win column over both Minnesota and Cleveland.

Instead, the team has fallen apart at the seams. Chicago’s top two projected starters (Lance Lynn and Lucas Giolito) have seen their home run rates skyrocket and are sporting a combined ERA of 5.26. Its offense ranks around the middle of the pack, but this is a lineup that should have been a force. Injuries are partly to blame for that loss of offensive production, but a handful of expected contributors have been downright awful. Yoán Moncada has been an utter disaster at the plate. Out of 31 third basemen with at least 250 plate appearances, the former No. 1 prospect in baseball ranks 30th with a 64 wRC+. A.J. Pollock, acquired for Craig Kimbrel the week before Opening Day, is having the worst season of his 11-year career. Catcher Yasmani Grandal had a 155 OPS+ last season, indicating he was 55% better than the league-average hitter; this year, he’s 48% below league average. Perhaps nothing more encapsulates the White Sox this season than what happened last week, when in the first inning of their last game before the trade deadline, La Russa was caught on camera nodding off in the dugout.

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If you squint hard enough, you can find reasons to believe the White Sox could turn their season around. Robert, Eloy Jiménez and Liam Hendriks have all returned from injured list stints over the last month. Cease and Johnny Cueto have picked up some of the slack in the rotation, while former AL MVP Abreu and second-year standout Andrew Vaughn pack a powerful punch in the heart of the lineup. Chicago’s schedule is the sixth-easiest remaining by opponents’ winning percentage, per Tankathon. And the White Sox have nine games left against the Twins and six left against the Guardians, giving them plenty of opportunities to leapfrog their rivals in the standings.

But there are just as many, if not more, arguments supporting the opposite view. Both Minnesota and Cleveland have soft schedules ahead, too (Cleveland owns the eighth-easiest, Minnesota the 10th). And anyway, the Sox haven’t proven to be able to consistently beat the two teams ahead of them (5–8 vs. Cleveland, 4–6 vs. Minnesota). So much about this Chicago team screams mediocre, from its 23–22 record against the league-worst AL Central to its 23–32 record against winning teams. And those records were mostly compiled with a healthy Anderson.

If the White Sox had displayed more urgency before the trade deadline, they would have been better prepared to withstand an injury to Anderson. Perhaps the front office felt all the players returning from injury would provide an organic boost from within, and maybe that belief will be rewarded over the next eight weeks. But there’s a fine line between faith and ignorance, and it seems the White Sox have long since crossed it.

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