The White Sox already busted my Opening Day roster bracket.
Friday afternoon marked the deadline for Article XX-B free agents on minor-league contracts to trigger an opt-out clause, giving teams a 48-hour window to roster them or release them. The White Sox have six such free agents, and they've already cut two of them loose.
I expected them to release Mike Moustakas. I did not expect them to release Kevin Pillar. In fact, I just wrote that I expected him to break camp with the team.
Then again, I also didn't expect them to sign Robbie Grossman to a minor-league deal a few hours before announcing the departures, but the White Sox are built different.
Moustakas needed a couple things to break his way -- Gavin Sheets and Yoán Moncada, if we can name them -- while playing well himself. He went 0-for-3. In contrast, Pillar fit neatly on the roster because he provided a right-handed complement to Dominic Fletcher while possessing enough center field skills to spell Luis Robert Jr. After a rocky first few games, he'd hit .303/.351/.485 over 37 March plate appearances, so he hadn't played his way out of the job.
If the Sox hadn't signed Grossman, there wouldn't be an obvious Pillar alternative. The extra outfielders remaining -- Rafael Ortega, Brett Phillips, Mark Payton -- are all lefties, as are the previously optioned Oscar Colás and Zach DeLoach. Phillips' defense is strong enough to serve a purpose in some situations, but it's not like he'd be a regular late-game replacement for a starting outfield of Robert, Fletcher and Andrew Benintendi.
But Grossman is here, and while we wait for Chris Getz and/or Pedro Grifol to outline expectations, we can look at his body of work to calibrate ours in advance.
Grossman shouldn't be counted on reinforce center field, and if he's the fourth outfielder, then Fletcher looks like Robert's best backup. Otherwise, Grossman helps on paper. He hit .238/.340/.394 over 420 plate appearances en route to a World Series ring with the Rangers last season, including a strong second half until the arrival of Evan Carter squeezed him out of the picture. He's technically a switch-hitter, but he should only play against left-handed pitchers if his manager can help it, and that's what the White Sox would want him for.
Robbie Grossman: Splits since 2021
| Split | PA | BA | OBP | SLG | BB% | K% |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| vs. RHP | 1076 | .198 | .307 | .330 | 12.6 | 25.3 |
| vs. LHP | 492 | .300 | .407 | .483 | 15.2 | 22.4 |
Despite the league-average offense and above-average walk rate, he scored exactly as well as Pillar in bWAR (-0.1) because defense dragged down his grade. He's never been a sterling defender, but Statcast slagged him for coming up well short in converting plays the system said he was responsible for. He finished with an Actual Catch Percentage of 78 percent, considerably below his Expected Catch Percentage of 83 percent.
What's notable is that Grossman finished with the lowest estimated success rate of any outfielder in baseball with at least 100 attempts. Looking at some of the plays he didn't convert, there's a chance he was graded unusually harshly on the margins. There are a couple of plays he yielded to the center fielder from the start, another ball he lost in the sun, and one more he slipped on with his first step.
So it's possible that he's merely a mediocre outfielder who was dealt a tough hand and suffered the worst array of outcomes, but with Benintendi and Colás providing fresh examples of defensive disappointment, you shouldn't necessarily expect better, either.
What you should expect is plate discipline, because he's featured some of the lowest chase rates in the league (Statcast percentile in parentheses)
- 2021: 15.7% (99th)
- 2022: 19.3% (98th)
- 2023: 15.7% (100th)
And if you want to compare that to the White Sox's chase rates over that time (league rank):
- 2021: 29.3% (t-22nd)
- 2022: 32.6% (29th)
- 2023: 32.9% (Last)
That said, the events of 2022 provide a reason to keep expectations in check. The only team that chased more than the White Sox that year? The Detroit Tigers. The team that employed Grossman during the first half of that year? The Detroit Tigers.
He struggled for those four months, and it wasn't until he was dumped to the Braves that he started to resemble his old self. Atlanta reaped rewards from some immediate tweaks upon arrival, but it's also possible that it was mostly regression talking, because he finished as a below-average hitter after the trade as well.
There's also the question of how soon Grossman will be Opening Day-ready considering the White Sox announced his signing after the opt-out deadline. It feels too hastily arranged to work out smoothly, but since the Sox are facing Tigers lefty Tarik Skubal on Opening Day, you could also a picture a situation where Grossman has to deal with the world's shortest runway. Such is the state of the White Sox roster that he still probably represents an improvement on the status quo, even if you expect a ton of turbulence on the takeoff.
