Based on conversations here, with friends, on Twitter, on the radio, so on and so forth, I think I have a more favorable opinion of Rick Renteria than 75 percent of those watching. Could the White Sox do better? Sure. Could they do worse? We saw it the six or seven years prior. On good days, I'm impressed that Renteria got through three rebuilding years maintaining a high effort level from his players without doghousing a single one. In more jaded times, I still trust Renteria more than I trust a Jerry Reinsdorf team replacing him with a better option.
I'd like to think the gruesome context of White Sox manager experiences informs my perspective more than it skews it. In the late Ozzie Guillen era and the back half of Robin Ventura's tenure, we saw what it looks like when a manager has checked out on his team and vice versa. I've also seen the checkered track records of other teams' attempts to get progressive through that role, and after watching the Gabe Kaplers and Brads Ausmus of the world fail to reach the heights of a Ron Washington despite impeccable pedigrees and documented forward thinking, one shouldn't take successful communication for granted.
I've also held onto the idea that bad rosters created Renteria's bad habits, be it the overmatched left-handed hitters he placed in the middle of the order for an attempt at balance, the overactive bullpen managing, or, yes, bunting.
Let's go back to last week, when some members of the White Sox beat pulled a rope-a-dope with the idea of "minimizing giving away outs" -- he was talking about defense -- I read the rest of what Renteria had to say and saw a guy who wants the lineup to relieve him of even considering bunting. And then I looked at the lineup and couldn't imagine him wanting any of them to bunt for the sake of avoiding a worse outcome.
Based on what Renteria says about actually bunting, it seems like he's primarily interested in seeing them used for hits.
Their .615 average on batted balls that were bunts -- excluding sacrifices -- in 2019 topped all of baseball, edging out the Padres (.610), Royals (.571), A’s and Giants (.556). But with the change in the lineup also comes a change in approach.
“Do I still want all my guys to be able to do it? Absolutely,” Renteria said. “I want my players to know how to do all things in the game. But I’m hopeful that that won’t have to be the case, and when we end up ultimately doing it that everybody will be surprised.”
I suppose if this were a perfect quote, Renteria would regard himself as the ultimate arbiter for whether it "has to be the case," especially since some bad bunts were an unwanted result of the culture he created. For instance, when Luis Robert says something like this during SoxFest ...
... I'm thinking he's regarding it as a chaos agent to pair with his high motor in an attempt to throw defenses off his scent, but nobody can say for sure due to the litany of awful examples.
Still, I'm willing to give Renteria the benefit of the doubt given the whole new context. Nick Madrigal might struggle to hit the ball over the fence on the Fundamentals Deck, but Renteria has eight power threats in the batting order otherwise, and finally a front office that thinks winning games is actually important. I don't think he's going to take any of this for granted.
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After releasing its PECOTA Projections, Baseball Prospectus is previewing each team in the league using the spectrum of outcomes as the structure.
For the White Sox, it looks something like this:
- 90th percentile: 101-61
- 80th percentile: 95-67
- 70th percentile: 91-71
- 60th percentile: 87-75
- 50th percentile: 83-79
- 40th percentile: 79-83
- 30th percentile: 74-88
- 20th percentile: 70-92
- 10th percentile: 65-97
The path forward for the White Sox doesn't entirely rely on every great break, because Michael Kopech, Dylan Cease and Reynaldo López all have thoroughly beatable projections. Turning the offense into something less reliant on BABIP is a bigger task.
We'll circle back to this once BPro writes up the Indians and Twins, giving us a better idea of how much fortune is necessary for the White Sox to disrupt the order of the AL Central.
