Adam Engel returned to the White Sox on Wednesday, which theoretically patched up the last remaining hole for the White Sox offense -- the right-handed element of the right field platoon.
If only he didn't fit right into the current White Sox offense. Returning from shoulder and groin problems, Engel went 1-for-4 with a double and a strikeout, but sequencing bedeviled him as much as everybody else in the loss to Detroit. The strikeout came with a runner on third and one out with the game tied. The double came with two outs and nobody on with the Sox trailing by three.
Engel has served three stints on the injured list, and the Sox might really appreciate if this one was his last, because he's the most obvious choice for a primary right field candidate, with a .248/.336/.505 line that's counterintuitively better against righties:
- vs. RHP: .284/.380/.582, 10.1% BB, 19.0% K over 79 PA
- vs. LHP: .190/.261/.381, 4.3% BB, 21.7% K over 46 PA
Since injuries have kept those samples small, it might be more useful to lump them in with last year's splits:
- vs. RHP: .287/.358/.549, 7.3% BB, 22.6% K over 137 PA
- vs. LHP: .240/.296/.400, 3.7% BB, 16.0% K over 81 PA
Independent of any debate over which kind of pitcher he hits better, he's a marked defensive upgrade over any option outside of Billy Hamilton, as evidenced by a nice running grab to take a bloop single away from Jonathan Schoop in the ninth inning.
If Engel can get back to the form he'd shown from the past two seasons by the end of September, I don't think Tony La Russa has to overthink it. Neither Brian Goodwin nor Gavin Sheets are worth establishing a platoon for handedness' sake when factoring in the defensive component. Throw Engel into the bottom third of the order and hope he can be on base when Tim Anderson comes back around, and save the bench threat for whatever's happening at second base between César Hernández and Leury García.
That assumes Engel can get all the way back, but I'm assuming the White Sox will give him as much playing time as his body can tolerate in order to use the rest of the regular season as a runway into October. Perhaps a healthy Andrew Vaughn changes the calculus, but that depends on whether 1) Vaughn can actually get healthy, and 2) how much his back problem contributed to the weeks of struggles before it was identified. I'm taking the more skeptical approach to either question.
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Give Engel right field and let second base sort itself out, and the White Sox's offensive issues are done being a matter of absent personnel, which is a blessing and a curse. It's great to have all hands on deck. It's less great to lose that convenient excuse for a sputtering offense.
Likewise, the good news is the bad news, in that a lot of the White Sox's hopes for offensive transcendence ride on Eloy Jiménez's currently slumping shoulders.
It's usually not worth mentioning that a player has worse splits in losses, because of course teams succeed when their players step up. There are exceptions to the rule, but it usually takes 1) a very losing team and 2) a player with a low offensive ceiling to make it happen. Paul Konerko and Alejandro De Aza both hit better in defeat than victory for a 99-loss 2013 White Sox team, and Yolmer Sánchez did the same for the 100-loss 2018 edition. Those players lacked the necessary juice to swing games for those clubs.
Sometimes the size of the split can be illustrative, especially across equal samples. The White Sox happen to be 23-22 since Jiménez returned, and Jiménez's presence/absence is a driving factor:
- In 23 wins: .289/.354/.600 over 99 PA
- In 22 losses: .209/.242/.267 over 91 PA
The couple regulars performing worse than Jiménez in losses (Goodwin, Hernández) don't come close to his contributions to wins. Just like Engel, Jiménez suffered from subpar sequencing on Tuesday. He went 1-for-5, but he stranded six in his first four trips, and the hit came with two outs and nobody on in the ninth inning. The math supports your feelings.
The solace is that with Jiménez, the White Sox are waiting for a good hitter to find his stroke, which is superior to praying that mediocre hitters can become threats. It's just hard to sit through in the interim because the characteristics of a struggling Jiménez feed into the White Sox's chief issues elsewhere in the lineup -- right-handed, too many grounders, not enough plate discipline.
In another way Jiménez and Engel are kindred spirits, Jiménez's season-long issues are mostly contained to lefties (.156/.255/.244 over 51 PA), while righties haven't fazed him too much (.282/.317/.504). The relevance of that disparity is tabled for the moment because Jiménez has been the same guy against either kind of pitcher in September. He's not covering the outer third of the plate, and that's where every pitcher can attack him.
La Russa describes Jiménez as somebody who's searching for a swing that matches up with the particular pitch.
“He’s kind of in-between, take a pitch and then chase a pitch,” La Russa said of Jiménez. “It happens to everybody, his timing’s a little off, his swing gets a little long. I think to expect him to not show the effects of all those at-bats he missed is unfair. Also you put him in the fourth spot, that’s my fault, that’s unfair. So now he’s in the fifth spot. He should hit fourth again before the season’s over.”
But moving him down to fifth only seems to result in more walks for Yasmani Grandal ahead of him. Jiménez's struggles can't really be avoided unless José Abreu starts hitting homers (he just missed one on Tuesday), or the Sox bat every other credible hitter ahead of him. It seems like opponents are content to prolong threats until they can get Jiménez to extinguish them, and he's playing into their hands until he can prove them wrong.
It shouldn't be like this forever, and Jiménez is a more comforting sight with runners on than the mish-mash of cleanup hitters the White Sox used in his place. There's just less and less satisfaction in playing the long game and comparing him to Nick Williams or the post-pumpkin Yermín Mercedes when he's currently resembling them, and the postseason is just two weeks away.
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Postscript
The White Sox won't be able to clinch in Detroit, as today's game has been postponed due to the system that forced Wednesday's game to be moved up.
(Photo by Kamil Krzaczynski/USA TODAY Sports)
