Between the Yasmani Grandal signing and the White Sox's attempts to see who they can sneak through waivers, there's a lot of focus on who else might be coming to Chicago.
But for the White Sox, their improvement as a team hinges equally upon the improvement of incumbents. Eloy Jiménez is one of them, and he could offer Rick Hahn plenty of help in team-building over the next few years simply by showing he can play a passable left field, which would reduce the mounting logjam at first base/DH and the amount of outfield vacancies.
Jiménez is taking the challenge seriously, even if his goals register a little outside the realm of reasonable.
I'd throw Jiménez's Gold Glove into the same box of misbegotten predictions along with Jerry Owens' 65 stolen bases, because that's asking a lot of a guy who often found himself on the ground at the same time as the ball, but not in the same area.
— Jim Margalus (@SoxMachine) June 5, 2019
Then again, in a world where Tim Anderson of all people just won the batting title, I'm willing to suspend a little bit of my disbelief.
Jiménez's defensive woes can't really be overstated -- he finished outside the top three for Rookie of the Year despite hitting 31 homers -- yet I wouldn't call them unsolvable. He spent the first half of the year turning left field into a game of Electric Baseball, but by September, his most noticeable issues concerned throwing, not fielding. A discussion of his arm has legs of its own, but let's assume that getting to routine flies in a routine manner is more than half of his battle.
There are signs that he improved, although they're not readily apparent. When I recapped his hazardous series at Comerica Park, I included his Statcast numbers, small sample as they might be, to see if the rest of his season reflected progress:
The Baseball Savant chart to the right shows the start of Jiménez’s weaknesses. He’s bottom-three in the league in Catch Percentage Added, with a 10 percent deficit between his expected and actual catch percentage (Adam Engel is 7 percent above expected).
His season-ending Statcast numbers still aren't kind. The pessimist will say he's bottom-five in baseball instead of bottom-three in Catch Percentage Added. His catch map shows he still had major problems coming in and toward the line. His jump stat shows that he was slow to react and accelerate.
But there are also some reasons to think he got better, and can continue to do so. The optimist will say that he closed his CPA deficit from 10 percent to 5 percent by the end of the year. His sprint speed was 33rd among 79 qualifying left fielders, so foot speed alone isn't holding him back. His arm? OK, that's bad, but again, this isn't the time. When it came to closing on flies before they hit the ground, his problems seemed to stem from a lack of initial confidence, followed by not wanting to make a bad situation worse. That might sound ironic, but Galileo will tell you that sometimes precautionary measures can be the leading cause of disasters.
He won't solve these issues without lots and lots of chances to improve, which is why he's playing winter ball. Rick Renteria told reporters on Tuesday that he thinks Jiménez might benefit equally from some time off, but he respects the drive.
“I would rather he just have a little break, get himself ready for the next season,” Sox manager Rick Renteria said Tuesday. “But this kid’s not going to stop until he reaches what he wants to be.”
[...]
“This young man is going to be a really, really outstanding major-league baseball player on both sides of the baseball,” Renteria said. “It’s just continuing to stay sharp, get experience and play. You don’t usually have a lot of guys play winter ball. But he’s a guy just loves playing.”
Should Jiménez play a full slate in the Dominican, Renteria might want to file away his concern and revisit it during the regular season, when the leaguewide interest in load management is back within his purview.
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Regarding the aforementioned roster maneuvers, FutureSox said the White Sox designated Ryan Burr for assignment. The team won't make an announcement until he clears waivers, just like they haven't made an announcement regarding Yolmer Sánchez's fate. In this case, they might think that now is the time to try to sneak the rehabbing Burr through waivers.
Renteria isn't giving up on the idea of retaining either player, apparently.
