Had Eloy Jiménez not decided to hang his pectoral tendon out to dry on Camelback Ranch's left field wall, Andrew Vaughn would've been the White Sox's Plan A at DH to open the 2021 season. It struck me as a strange bet, especially after a winter where credible-to-excellent bats like Michael Brantley and Kyle Schwarber on the market. In a way, the soft spot on the roster was a luxury, in that the White Sox didn't necessarily need to pursue an ace defensive outfielder in order to add balance and lift to the roster. They could just focus on getting a strong lefty hitter, and if it looked like they were blocking Vaughn, well, good. Vaughn hadn't logged any minor league experience above High-A, so the Sox could let him force the issue for a year.
But Jiménez indeed injured himself, which added "play left field on a regular basis" to "face angry MLB pitching" on Vaughn's list of tasks he'd never performed before. It also opened the White Sox's DH job to a cast of leftovers with Yermín Mercedes getting the first cracks.
It could've been a disaster, and it probably should've been a disaster.
Instead, it was a massive improvement.
| Year | PA | XBH | HR | RBI | BB% | K% | AVG/OBP/SLG | OPS+ | fWAR |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 2019 | 622 | 47 | 17 | 75 | 9.3 | 25.4 | .205/.285/.356 | 65 | -.3.6 |
| 2020 | 253 | 19 | 13 | 25 | 9.1 | 28.5 | .148/.238/.350 | 61 | -0.8 |
| 2021 | 638 | 48 | 26 | 100 | 10.3 | 22.4 | .250/.334/.430 | 105 | 0.9 |
This year's menagerie of White Sox designated hitters only needed to be able to lift their feet in order to clear the bar set by the previous years, but they exceeded it by plenty, fitting snugly into the middle of the pack. Here's where they've ranked in OPS the last three seasons:
- 2019: Last
- 2020: 14th
- 2021: 6th
But while I was compiling the list of the White Sox's longest homers of 2021, I itemized the production from the principal players involved, and that's how I realized just how lucky the White Sox were to avoid having the DH collapse on them for a third straight year.
They got the best month of Yermín Mercedes' baseball life early, and the best month of Gavin Sheets' baseball life late. In between looked a lot like the previous years:
- April: .392/.433/.660
- May: .214/.297/.316
- June: .186/.271/.256
- July: .195/.276/.414
- August: .189/.294/.347
- September: .310/.417/.560
Or to group them:
- April and September: .350/.424/.609 over 224 PA
- May-August: .197/.285/.333 over 414 PA
Ironically, the White Sox might've lucked out for 2021 by sticking with Edwin Encarnación through most of the 2020 season. If the league figured out that Mercedes couldn't turn around fastballs the year before, he's probably neutralized from Opening Day in 2021. Then what?
Well, you could say the butterfly effect would mean Jiménez doesn't see a similar fly ball that leads him to maim himself on the fence, so Vaughn would've been waiting in the wings at DH in a world where Mercedes flops as the Plan A in April. But in that world where Mercedes saw meaningful time in 2020, maybe the White Sox advance a round deeper into the postseason, they spend more money over the winter, and the DH is neither Mercedes nor Vaughn. It probably pays to be proactive more often than not, even if this sliding door opens to a world where Jiménez instead separates his shoulder riding a mechanical bull or something.
* * * * * * * * *
One lesson is that the White Sox shouldn't cordon off DH to a declining hitter who can only play first base, if that. The White Sox made Adam LaRoche and Yonder Alonso their first moves of those winters, and while Encarnación was a more reasonable why-not signing after heavier lifting had been accomplished, it resulted in the same dead end, and all rather predictably.
The other lesson involves the White Sox taking proper inventory with Sheets, who provided that stretch-drive/postseason muscle that Mercedes wasn't given the chance to offer the year before. The difference is that Sheets received two cups of coffee instead of one. The first was successful, but the White Sox cut it off before it sagged into "unsuccessful," because Sheets had a hard time adjusting to heavier doses of slower stuff down in the zone.
The second was a triumph, and there's not yet a catch. He hit .282/.363/.535 over 80 plate appearances in September, then went 4-for-12 with a homer and a double in the postseason. He became a lot better at fending off breaking pitches while still being able to cover the fastball, as you may remember from his battles against Sonny Gray.
In serendipitous timing, James Fegan wrote about Sheets' emergence this morning. Sheets wasn't willing to get into the mechanical adjustments that video sessions with Yasmani Grandal helped refine, perhaps partially because it's more about more frequently accessing a swing he already had in his bag than any wholesale changes. He describes it as reducing his fear of breaking balls so he can't be so easily lured away from his strength.
“The biggest thing for me is just getting on time for the fastball and then working off that,” Sheets said. “It was something that I wasn’t doing early when I got up here. I was getting in between pitches because I knew guys were starting to use a lot of breaking balls, and then I was missing pitches to hit.”
There's something to that, whether it's because Sheets faced too many two-strike counts in the second half of July, or because Mercedes shows how turning around fastballs remains a vital skill for a bat-first hitter, even if pitchers are throwing them less than ever.
But is it enough for Sheets to be given the primary DH job without a more established veteran? I think, as I did with Vaughn entering the 2021 season, it'd be cool if a key offensive position didn't rely so heavily on a player who still might have some necessary struggling ahead of him, especially since there isn't much behind Sheets in the system from his side of the plate. Unlike Vaughn, at least Sheets has established years of multiple years of high-floor production in the high minors beforehand. Now he's raised his ceiling by showing the ability to adjust at MLB adjustments even once.
I could buy into a staunch belief in Sheets if the Sox thought he was really ready, because you had to like what he showed. But until the Sox actually invest to solve at least one of the multiple recurring position-player issues, when the Sox do something that looks like corner-cutting, it's going to be a little difficult to distinguish faith from prayer.
(Photo by Matt Marton/USA TODAY Sports)
