When Tim Anderson's apparent no-doubt blast was robbed by Tampa Bay left fielder Josh Lowe on Sunday, I chalked it up to a dead zone at Guaranteed Rate Field that had knocked down a number of promising flies during a mostly chilly homestand, José Abreu chief among them. Plus, sometimes Anderson's follow-through leaves him spinning like he got all of one even when he catches it off the end of the bat, so maybe my eyes misled me in real time.
Then I saw the replay, and nope -- he caught it square. Statcast says it was 104.3 mph and 28 degrees off the bat, which usually gets it done in that direction.
Alas, only three things are square (cheese, plates and bears), so that wasn't good enough to be a run on its own merits.
Later in the game, Gavin Sheets hit a towering blast in the other direction, down the right field line. From the swing, sound and exit velocity (105.3), he appeared to send a hanging slider well into the former Goose Island, but when it landed, it barely cleared the wall.
Usually when 100-plus mph drives don't go as far as imagined in one field, they tend to travel further to the other corner. But whether it was Anderson to left or Sheets to right, the ball just failed to soar.
It turns out the White Sox are not alone in this department. Sheets hit one of just 15 homers during the 14 games played on Sunday, which analyst Jeremy Frank noted was the lowest single-day total since 2014, and the lowest for an April day with that many games since 1993. Jason Collette of Rotowire noted that Anderson's drive was the latest example that failed to travel as far as recent history said it should, and we could be in for a major dampening in that category.
Joe Sheehan suggested that the league's inconsistent baseball manufacturing could be the culprit once again, but this time around, the reduced travel could be a result of the league's latest attempt to bring stability to this matter -- the introduction of humidors to all 30 ballparks. Meredith Wills, the astrophysics PhD who has led a lot of the research into baseball behavior, pointed to that new variable as one worth accounting.
If the conditioning of the baseball is the driving factor in deader flights, then the White Sox and everybody else might have to wait for warmer weather to dull the effects. Until then, it seems like they're going to have to weather the short-term frustration of having multiple players on the bad-luck list.
And while the baseball data might be too new to design an entire strategy around, it's encouraging to see that the White Sox are leading the American League in steals without an unsuccessful attempt this season (9-for-9). As Collette went on to note, that's one way to combat an uncooperative reliance on the long ball.
I'm guessing the White Sox's aggressiveness on the basepaths is more a result of Luis Robert, Adam Engel and Tim Anderson all enjoying fresh, functioning legs at the same time. That kind of stuff is fun to watch before knowing all the benefits, so there's certainly no reason to slow down now.
