Scouts, coaches and executives all get paid to recognize trends in player performance before they reach the point of being as obvious as Andrew Benintendi's two-homer game Saturday night. So I asked Pedro Grifol what were some earlier indicators that the left fielder he has watched on multiple teams was starting to coming around.
With how frequently coaches and players slip back into safe concepts like hitting the ball the other way or just using the whole field, it always perks the ears up to hear something different. Also, Grifol's answer sparking a press box debate about how to spell "filleting." We later discovered that it's just on dictionary.com.
"He stopped filleting balls to right field and he’s trying to hit the ball where it’s pitched," Grifol said. "It’s hard at this level to get inside-out a ball at 97-98 mph and try to hit the ball to left field. I know that over time, at times, it keeps him closed and it keeps him using the other side. But he’s just letting it fly now and he’s letting his eyes do the work, which is wherever the ball is pitched, that’s where I’m going to try to hit it. And if they’re pitching me in, I’m going to try to pull."
Another thing coachers and players echo often is the dangers of flying open early or pulling off the ball, so it's not like Benintendi should ignore his instincts to keep his front shoulder closed. But as he entered the Rays series slugging .188 on the young season, it was clear he had reached a point where he could let it loose a bit, if the timing was there for him.
Luckily, as Grifol referred to, there was already recent evidence that he was getting primed to turn on inner-half velocity.
Benintendi is definitely of the baseball player school of thought that an even keel is necessary to navigate a sport whose season-length and small scale randomness often challenges our ability to see reason, even if he wouldn't place it in exactly those words. But with a healthy wrist and a healthy offseason, Benintendi has leaned into that mentality, noticeably more than when his frustration with his offense grew gradually more apparent last season.
"Most of my career, other than maybe one year I've been a slow starter," Benintendi said. "I think '22 was the one year I started hot. The small sample size doesn't look pretty. No one wants to in the .100s or anything like that. But I think I've been playing so long and have been through it a couple times, I'm not panicking. Maybe some guys do, but I've been through it so many times and I'll go through it again."
It's not to the extremes represented presently with him hitting .206/.236/.284, but April is historically Benintendi's second-worst month. A normal offense could more easily tolerate the spiky exterior of his early-season search for timing in anticipation of the sweet nectar that is Benintendi's .289/.356/.466 career line in June. But if anything, by then the Sox commitment will have already faced a big test.
When Luis Robert Jr. returns around mid-May, the White Sox will have two corner outfield spots to divvy up between Benintendi, Tommy Pham, Gavin Sheets and Robbie Grossman. With little deviation from Eloy Jiménez and Andrew Vaughn as everyday options at DH and first base, Grossman's role has already begun shifting toward part-time in this current layout. But while Sheets and Grossman's usage aligns pretty firmly to platoon matchups, Benintendi's appeal as a left field fixture is rooted in being an effective all-around player, which brings things back around to his defense.
"I think it's fine, I don't see anything wrong," said first base coach Jason Bourgeois, who is also tasked with coaching and plotting out the outfield defense.
This can seem apart from Grifol and Chris Getz, who have more open acknowledged Benintendi's struggles as Statcast has rated his left field defense in the bottom quartile of the league. But Getz referred to it as "some plays here recently where he didn’t get to balls that perhaps he had gotten to in the past," which aligns with Bourgeois' assessment.
Looking at Benintendi's capabilities, the outfield coach has asked the 29-year-old to err on the side of getting beaten by bloop singles, and guard against being beaten over his head. And in his view, Bourgeois has gotten compliance from his left fielder.
"Most fly balls right now on the average flight are probably around 280-plus [feet] on competitive plays," Bourgeois said. Benintendi plays a touch over 290 feet out on average. "It's all about the timing in the game for where we can play and let the bloops fall where they may. I feel like we've only been beat a couple times over our head that cost us the game. If a single beats us, it's like [how a pitcher thinks about] a solo homer, you know what I mean? That double if we're off or if we have a misread or we're out of position, that kills us even more. A single we still have a chance, relative to the situation."
After touting an improved defense, with Robert injured and Dominic Fletcher in Triple-A, suddenly Pham and Rafael Ortega are the only outfielders with meaningfully superior fielding range than Benintendi on the roster. Such an outfield mix should still present a situation where Benintendi has to hit his way to continued everyday middle-of-the-order status, regardless of having over $50 million still due on his contract, but he clearly won't lack for opportunity to build off the last few days.
"We did some things in the outfield that will help him tremendously," Grifol said. "He’s done some things at the plate that have helped him already and will continue to help him. Those are not things that he’s doing for the first time. He’s done them before. He’s just getting back to them. Sometimes you just get away from those things and our job as coaches is to dig up situations on how he looked before when he was winning Gold Gloves, how he looked before where he was a threat at the plate, and try to get back to that spot. That’s what he’s done with our coaching staff in the last four or five days."
Garret Crochet's deliberately lightened workload
First order of business: Crochet went back to his traditional changeup grip as he threw the pitch a season-high 18 times on Monday night, and felt he commanded it better.
"The one I was throwing in spring that I had worked all offseason kind of just turned to crap," Crochet said.
But when Grifol and Ethan Katz were talking to Crochet after the fifth inning, they were not actually consoling him for the loss of his cool changeup grip that also slightly hurt his hand, but informing him that they were pulling him shy of 90 pitches for the fifth time in seven starts. Postgame, Grifol made this sort of move sound like it was both enabled specifically by Brad Keller being available for multiple innings, but also just part and parcel for the whole season-long project of Crochet in the rotation.
"We’re treading in uncharted waters, I say that all the time," Grifol said. "We’re not going to be irresponsible. We’re just not going to do it. I thought he did a really good job, in between starts. I thought he did a really good job today, 70-something pitches already. We had Keller so it was kind of the perfect storm for us."
You wouldn't look up "respectful disagreement," in the dictionary because it's two words, not one. And they don't really put pictures in dictionaries that I've seen of recent. But other than that, here's Crochet disagreeing respectfully.
"I feel like they are looking out for my best interest," Crochet said. "In my mind, it’s a 'cross that bridge when we come to it.' I understand they are protecting my best interest so I’ve just got to have faith in them in that regard. I’m just going to keep pitching until the ball is taking out of my hand. That’s all I can do as a player."
Crochet has not reported any ill effects of his change in role, and given his determination to pull this off, he probably won't until his arm is flying onto the Dan Ryan Expressway. But his velocity has held strong, and was a tick up Monday night as he largely bullied Twins hitters with his fastball. It's difficult for him to accept preventative measures for a problem that remains theoretical, but he surpassed his 2023 innings total (majors and minors) two starts ago.
The Sox are operating without a playbook here, so an approach so conservative that it makes Brian Ferentz blush is probably the only thing that can be expected going forward.
