Whatever Elvis Andrus did during the All-Star break, it's working.
Andrus went 2-for-4 with a bases-clearing double on Wednesday night, raising his second-half line to .304/.327/.565 over 16 games. I don't want to say he had a terrible first half -- OK, I'm fine doing so, but it's just a rhetorical device -- but that .304 average is higher than any of his slash numbers at the break (.208/.286/.266).
There's just one small problem: There isn't really a reason to care.
I suppose it's nice to know that Andrus still has some life in his bat, if only because I didn't expect him to be this bad when the White Sox signed him at the end of the offseason for $3 million. If he salvaged his numbers to end up at 1 WAR or so, the Sox will have more or less received what they paid for, albeit in the least helpful way.
But he's a free agent at the end of the year, and since he's spent the whole season on the 40-man roster, he can't be sent to another team. He can merely be placed on waivers for another team to pick up, which they might, given the negligible remainder of Andrus' modest salary. The White Sox just won't receive any special benefit from doing so.
Unless or until that happens, there just isn't a whole lot of consequence riding on his performance no matter how well he swings. And for fans wanting something to watch over the last seven weeks, what's the point of Andrus getting run?
(There's a similar dynamic at catcher with Yasmani Grandal, although with Seby Zavala on the 10-day injured list with an oblique strain and Korey Lee coming back from his own 'blique tweak, I can understand if the Sox want to make sure all options are fully operational before casting things like game-calling into the wind. Let's just stick with second base for this discussion right now.)
Pedro Grifol tried to explain his reasoning, and if you can look past one unfortunate sentence ...
It’s all but certain catcher Yasmani Grandal, 34, and infielder Elvis Andrus, 35, will not be with the team next season, but they continue to get playing time in part because manager Pedro Grifol will “never compromise a major-league win for development.”
... the rest isn't that bad:
“We are in discussions about that, but today is not the right time,” Grifol said.
And Grifol said “it’s really important for us to finish strong as a team” as a springboard into next season, and Andrus has 10 hits in his last 23 at-bats.
Grifol wants a strong finish where “everybody can go back home and have a good, healthy offseason and get back ready to play.”
“Elvis will play his share. Remillard will play his share. And then we’ll see what happens moving forward,” Grifol said. “But Elvis is playing good baseball right now. Him and Remillard will split some time there, and then when Timmy [Anderson] gets a day off, Elvis will go to short.”
I don't think it's particularly smart for Grifol to say "he'd never compromise a major-league win for development" for a team that's been a couple dozen games under .500, because that leaves him no room to spin all the losing. On the other hand, he did say "We've had discussions about that," which is way better than his habit of saying that a popular subject of debate hasn't even crossed his mind.
Isolate Grifol's present choices from his annoying tendencies, and I get why he'd want Andrus around and playing. Zach Remillard has punched above his weight, but he still looks to bunt whenever there's a sensible opportunity to do so. Lenyn Sosa is hitting for power at Triple-A, but the rest of his offensive game has slipped backwards, raising alarms about his hit tool and pitch recognition. Hand the position over to him right now based on the previous experiences, and seven weeks could feel like seven years.
Everything about the White Sox's present situation invites nihilism, but there are people involved. Even if you're not inclined to empathize with Grifol, Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams, there's still the matter that the White Sox lost half of their pitching staff at the trade deadline, and they're replaced with largely unproven arms. If I'm trying to learn what Jesse Scholtens or Touki Toussaint or Lane Ramsey might possibly contribute to the 2024 White Sox, putting rookie catchers in front of them and fringe-at-best infielders behind them blurs the line between testing and torturing.
It'd be easier to trust this kind of balancing act if Grifol wasn't in the strange position of looking every bit like a lame duck despite having two years remaining on his contract. If the White Sox fired Hahn and Williams, then the writing on the wall would be Grade-A legible. If the White Sox fired Grifol, the "interim" label for his successor would make it easy to set aside concerns about the record.
But since it's unclear whether everybody or nobody will return, it's easy to wonder if Grifol will forsake the team's big picture in order to have the shiniest possible turd on his resume at the end of the season.
I'm not at that level of concern yet, if only because the White Sox can wait for some immediate issues to subside. There's the health of the catchers, and if Anderson has to serve most or all of his six-game suspension, any manager would rather have Andrus around to weather that temporary absence.
Beyond the detectable depth chart arguments, there are probably some intangibles to consider. The White Sox still have less culture than Gatlinburg, so if Andrus helps maintain some sort of order or confidence after such a crisis, that can't be completely discounted. It'd just be far easier to accept that argument if Grifol hadn't spent months professing the progress of a culture and a foundation that never actually existed. As it stands, I don't trust what Grifol sees and neither should you.
Either way, I think the Sox have another week or two where playing veterans makes some sense. The last week of August is when I'd expect a turnover to take root, because four or five weeks of regular play still leaves enough time to know whether anybody looks like a potential Plan A, without having cascading effects that result in giving D's and F's to feasible Plan B's.
