The White Sox acquired Ivan Nova on Tuesday while the Phillies signed Andrew McCutchen, reminding everybody that teams can solve other roster spots while the world revolves around Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.
The White Sox still have gaps to go, including one they created when they moved Omar Narvaez to open their offseason. They still need another catcher to complete their backstop built for two, and it's not going to be Seby Zavala or Zack Collins. Zavala first has to show he can handle Triple-A pitching, and Collins' to-do list is far longer.
Castillo is under contract for at least one more year and has seasons worthy of starting in his past, which gives the Sox a lot of flexibility in the kind of second catcher they can pursue. I evaluated the field earlier this month, and only Robinson Chirinos has found a home since. Ken Rosenthal spanned the spectrum in one tweet:
In order, he presents:
- Grandal, who does just about everything well and would start.
- Maldonado, who has defined strengths (defense, basically) and weaknesses (offense, basically) for complementing.
- McCann, who wasn't good enough for the Tigers.
McCann makes sense as a third catcher/Triple-A caddy, because he's been around the block and has shown flashes of adequacy. His best case for a backup job is more speculative -- that maybe he's overexposed making 100-plus appearances like he's done in each of the last four years, but 60 would fit him better.
But again, the Tigers were in a position to benefit from anything McCann could contribute, and had no interest in finding out. (More on this later.)
The Sox should set their sights higher, and likely will. Of the three catchers Rosenthal listed, Grandal is the only one with a second source:
For what it's worth, Dan Hayes wrote a story in August 2017 about the relationship between Grandal and Collins ...
Grandal likes what he has seen from Collins since the outset. He liked how much effort Collins, who was 15 at the time, put into training sessions as he attempted to match the pace of Grandal’s rigorous offseason conditioning program. Collins could only manage to do part of the training and said he always felt like he had run a marathon afterward.
“I put him through a lot of hard work,” Grandal said. “I had a vision for him, and I needed to get him to where I see him (being) in a short period of time. He needed to put the work in. I think we made lots of strides toward that goal.”
... but as I mentioned in the Nova post this morning, it'll be refreshing when any mentor/leadership value is secondary to the addressing of a talent shortage. That's the appeal of a Grandal, whose talent would be front-and-center with any signing. The lesser suggestions are wearing on me a little:
And that's especially the case if it so happens that Detroit GM Al Avila is closer to the truth. When asking about the void left by the non-tendered McCann, Avila didn't really wax poetic (emphasis mine).
“You always want good strong leadership in your clubhouse,” he said. “We are going to have to have other guys step up. Other guys have to be prepared. It’s just like, if you are running a company and you have a guy in charge of something, you better have another guy coming up behind him, because the guy in charge now might move on.
“It’s no different in a clubhouse.”
Here, though, was the kicker:
“I think in our situation right now, that leadership part can be overstated,” he said. “There is value to it, but we just have to weigh everything out.”
I think there's something to that, because even with James Shields' guidance, the White Sox still walked a ton of guys, necessitating a move like the Nova trade.
The whole point of this rebuild is to benefit from players growing together -- leaders emerge, personality clashes are worked out on smaller stages, and, hopefully, as Rick Renteria suggested in his media conference on Tuesday, the whole accountability angle stops being so performative:
"But I will venture to say this, I've said it enough publicly, they know how we want to play the game here. I think anybody who is thinking or contemplating becoming a White Sox, they know we go about it a certain way. I think the beauty of it now is that I can have players deal with players, which is what we've been trying to get to. Ultimately, they're going to be able to police themselves."
Hopefully the White Sox clubhouse will take a cue from its Red Sox counterpart in this regard. If the White Sox get the on-field leadership structure right, that might be the way to soften Renteria's rougher edges, and not just with all the benchings.
