Can the White Sox interest you in some general competence?
General manager Chris Getz has touted “raising the IQ” of his team as one of the central accomplishments since taking over, and the vision for how that could present itself to fans can resemble a cleaned-up version of a comment written on the Sox Facebook page the night Adam Engel and Yoán Moncada ran into that triple play.
"It’s players playing a cleaner style of baseball," Getz said during Wednesday's workout day. "Nine-plus innings of focused baseball, understand certain situations, being able to execute, and standing in the right position defensively and throwing the right pitches at the right time, throwing the baseball to the right base."
These can seem like ... humble goals to open the season with, but perhaps the deepest moments of connection Getz has achieved with the fan base since his hire is when he's spoken to why past versions of the White Sox were so infuriating, and identified detestable traits that really date back to even the division-winning 2021 club.
If Getz mentioning "standing in the right position defensively" and "throwing the right pitches at the right time" doesn't trigger memories of no one covering second base last year when Lenyn Sosa and Elvis Andrus converged on a popup in shallow center, or Reynaldo López throwing four-straight curveballs (his fourth-best pitch) to Yasmani Grandal as an inning spiraled out of control in Toronto in 2022, well, lucky you. The Opening Day roster that the Sox announced on Wednesday can't match up with those teams on talent, but Getz describes a team that can out-execute their way to victories on nights where their opposition is slipping or sleepwalking.
Surely, we all know what those nights look like.
"We’ve got a roster that can go out there and beat any club on any night," Getz said.
Pedro Grifol pushed back against talking about the team being in developmental mode, since it runs counter to the emphasis on establishing team standards for execution and detail. But the Sox are openly trying to figure out who can be long-term contributors this season, since the fact that they're also trying to cultivate a lot of trade deadline flip candidates is something teams tend to be less open about.
The better baseball they play, the more resources they have for each effort. But since the ambitions for win totals don't get more specific than "perhaps win more games than people believe," Grifol suggested that maybe the standards for a successful 2024 season are in Bill's house, and Fred's house...
"That's a question for each individual fan," Grifol said of what would define success for this team. "Every person that comes to watch us play is going to have their own evaluation and their own style in how they see us and what they want to see from us. I think the most important thing from our end is that we have to improve on a daily basis. We have 26 guys here that love to play with each other. They love to play for each other and we've just got to go out there and prove something."
Bullet points
-- Getz and Garrett Crochet probably spent more time than they anticipated pushing back on the notion that the Opening Day starter is actually a glorified opener. Crochet said he is confident in his new cutter and having the secondary pitches to turn over a lineup multiple times, and feels like reaching 80 pitches in his last outing means that his start length Thursday can just be dictated by success level. And Getz added that a nine-man bullpen to open the season is just about utilizing their off day and holding off on adding a fifth starter (Nick Nastrini), rather than a special level of protection for a short Crochet outing.
“There’s a general framework that we have in mind," Getz said when asked if Crochet has an innings limit this season. "But this is a really talented pitcher in our game. He was so convicted in wanting to be a starting pitcher for us, so I certainly want to give him a runway to do that. And what he’s shown so far is he can work multiple innings. And we’ll continue to build from there.”
-- Max Stassi opening the season on the injured list for inflammation in the same left hip he had operated on last year is not particularly encouraging for anything but Korey Lee's service time accumulation. But Getz termed it as more a byproduct of Stassi's ramp-up process than a setback.
"We don’t think it’s going to be too significant in regards to time being missed but we felt like considering we didn’t get consistent runway to the regular season, to put him on the IL and build him out appropriately so hopefully we avoid any hiccups for the remainder of the year."
Obviously it still merits watching despite that assurance. There were not any specific timelines for Corey Knebel nor Joe Barlow either, who combined for a single inning of Cactus League work.
-- Getz touted that Michael Soroka is back to relying on his sinker, which was his dominant fastball during his 2019 All-Star season with the Braves, before his Achilles injuries. With a more traditional three-quarters release point after injury rehab, Soroka threw more four-seamers than sinkers last season to limited success. How he'll throw his old pitch out of his new delivery is essentially the thing to watch for in the larger Soroka revitalization project.
-- Kevin Pillar is likely the Opening Day starting right fielder over Dominic Fletcher, in response to the Tigers throwing left-hander Tarik Skubal, because that's what being the short side of a platoon is all about. Grifol didn't want to map things out much beyond that, and Robbie Grossman ramping up on a minor league deal definitely lends some uncertainty to this arrangement.
Despite that baseball reason threatening Pillar's spot, no one is obligated to see the saga as much more than a cost-cutting move. A White Sox front office that was already tasked with cutting payroll released their fourth outfielder out of a minor league deal that could have upgraded to a reported $3 million upon making the majors, and swapped it out for a guaranteed deal for meaningfully less. The timing lined up for them to do so.
"He was a XX-b free agent and there was a group of players on minor league deals that had a window in spring training, for one they were looking for clarity on whether they were going to be on the opening day roster if we had plans for that," Getz said. "When it came to Kevin, at that particular time we were not ready to commit to putting him on the Opening Day roster. I encouraged him to see what else is out there and he did that, with the understanding perhaps there was a desire to still have him here after that window closed. And it happened to be the case. We reconnected after a couple days and I was very happy to work something out and have him be part of our Opening Day roster."
