José Abreu makes his return to Chicago tonight, and the White Sox will catch him in the worst slump of his career. His .218/.265/.261 line shocks even by his long-established slow-starting standards, and he hasn't homered in 151 plate appearances, extending the drought to 223 PA when incorporating his last 17 games with the White Sox.
It's been a dreadful way to introduce himself to a new fan base, especially since he's in the first year of a three-year, $58.5 million deal. Then you realize that he's starting that three-year contract at age 36 after all the lumps, bumps and bruises he's taken along the way, and suddenly you wonder whether everybody should've been bracing for it all along. Hindsight is only doing some of the talking here.
That's one thing the White Sox don't have to worry about this weekend. They'll play a video tribute for Abreu, and fans will get a chance to give him the standing ovation that Abreu dodged during the final game of the 2022 season. (They should keep doing it, just to see if they get any pitch-timer violations from him.)
The Sox still have full plates of panic even without Abreu's decline. I mentioned this a few weeks ago when talking about Andrew Vaughn's appreciable progress, but Andrew Benintendi is largely replicating Abreu's struggles for the White Sox. He's faring a little better at the plate (.263/.318/.321), but he received a similar-sized investment for the same amount of homers, and while his track record suggests he can flip a switch at some point, the contact quality is so shoddy that we shouldn't expect him to break through anytime soon. Their Statcast rankings profiles could be confused for one another at a glance were it not for the "outfielder jump" category giving it away.
(Abreu's is on the left, Benintendi's on the right.)
Benintendi's success a White Sox was predicated on the idea that he could shape his batted-ball tendencies to his environments, and Guaranteed Rate Field is one of the friendliest environments possible for a hitter like him. He's instead posting the highest ground-ball rate and lowest hard-hit rate of his career.
With nothing new and exciting to point to, the most consistent and striking throughline of his six months with the White Sox is how a franchise-record commitment has resonated so little.
The signing merited shrugs from the analyst community, Rick Hahn wasn't in attendance for Benintendi's introduction, and I didn't get around to writing about him in spring training until the final week because nothing about his production stood out.
And even though Benintendi is hovering around replacement-level as the first quarter of the season comes to a close, his struggles aren't commanding attention. Abreu's slow start has generated all sorts of material from local and national media over the last few weeks. A sampler:
- José Abreu, struggling at the plate, gets a day off -- Houston Chronicle
- José Abreu's Texas-sized power outage -- FanGraphs
- José Abreu's April was worst month of his career. Can Astros expect a rebound? -- The Athletic
- José Abreu working on timing while having his usual slow start -- Houston Chronicle
Benintendi's unimpressive first impression has generated no such interest. He briefly made news when he delivered the walk-off single against the Twins back on May 2, but that's it.
Benintendi's anonymity makes sense considering the sheer scale of the disaster that is the 2023 White Sox. If the dry cleaners on Main Street burned down, you'd probably get a push notification about it. If the entire downtown caught fire, including the library and city hall, you probably wouldn't be demanding content about the state of the dry cleaners.
That Benintendi rates as dry cleaners is a problem in and of itself, and Pedro Grifol's compliments after the walk-off don't do him any favors here:
“We’re not going to really, really appreciate everything he can do until Game 162,” Grifol said, “and then everybody’s going to see how much he really brings to the table.”
It makes it hard to appreciate what Benintendi brings over the course of 162 games when the White Sox are on pace to finish those 162 games with a record of 54-108. And while it's too early to draw conclusions about Benintendi's viability over the course of one to five years, it's appropriate to dread the immediate future of the franchise, which drains any enthusiasm from Benintendi's presence if he can't establish any kind of measurable impact in short order.
Whether the White Sox tear down their payroll or simply let it run its course, Benintendi shouldn't be expected to accelerate the timetable of whatever happens next. He gave the Royals one decent season and one good one, and the Royals lost 88 games in the former, and 97 in the latter. Grifol meant to praise Benintendi, but it's but it's very, very White Sox to commit a franchise-record amount of money to a player who doesn't stand much of a chance of defining them on the field.
