Andrew Benintendi said the White Sox should try to use the All-Star break as a mental and physical reset from a difficult first half. As a collective, the results of those efforts literally got the manager and three other coaches fired in less than a month's time.
But as an individual, Benintendi really tried to practice what he preached.
"Hung out with all my family, went out on a pontoon boat, and yeah, didn't think about it at all," Benintendi said of his break, which doubled as his effort to push away his own career-worst first half.
Benintendi managed just 15 extra-base hits in 75 games before the break, whereas he's had 11 in 21 games since, including six homers--all dead pulled to right field. It's created a strangely backloaded .247/.286/.562 batting line in the second half, atypical for an undersized player signed for all his all-around game, but any sign of life for the 30-year-old outfielder is welcome.
"It's a little easier to sleep at night," Benintendi said after his two-homer night on Friday. "You enjoy it while you can because it's such a tough game. You could go 4-for-4 tonight, and you could go 0-for-40 the next week. You enjoy it while you can. It's never as good as it seems, never as bad as it seems."
Before the recent power surge began, Benintendi was trying to assure that things were not quite as bad as they looked.
"I don't feel bad up there at the plate," Benintendi said right after the All-Star break. "It's kind of weird to think that I'm at where I'm at, because I don't feel any different. There's some bad luck in there. Yeah, I don't know. Just keep working."
White Sox fans have heard league-worst struggles minimized enough that this sort of talk doesn't really register as meaningful, but any check-in with Benintendi during a 2023 season addled by wrist pain or the early portions of this season was met by a matter-of-fact self-appraisal that he was struggling, treading water, searching for it, etc. A couple multi-hit performances at the end of a long drought would provoke a hopeful question that he was start to feel better, and the veteran outfielder would assure that such notions were premature. For him to provide any sort of self-endorsement should have been a clear sign a uptick was coming.
In clocking seven of his 13 home runs on the season in his last 22 games, Benintendi is not piling up the impressive exit velocities that would portend a long power surge. He left Guaranteed Rate Field at the rippling speed of 95 mph on Friday night, and "wall-scraper" would be an apt description of more than a few of his blasts. But it does line up with the left fielder's plainly spoken pre-2023 goals to restore his ability to pull and loft the ball when the opportunity strikes; something he felt was missing from his game even amid productive seasons in Kansas City, and now that his home environs are better suited to reward him.
By his own description, Benintendi is a feel hitter. Sometimes that's a moniker for a hitter who simply would prefer not to discuss mechanics or dive into data, but the nature of Benintendi's approach is that he could tell you all about his loading mechanism one day--like say, a leg kick--and his highlight reel of his recent extra-base hits could all be with a toe tap by the time you sit down and start to write about him.
"I feel I've got seven different stances; I've got a toe tap, I've got a leg kick, so it's whatever is working at the time," Benintendi said, allowing that he tends to ride what's working until it stops. "There's a swing where with the leg kick where I feel like my timing is better, and I guess if you go back and forth a lot, you mess with your timing a little bit. Maybe I got too much into that in the first half but it's two of the same things I've done for a couple of years now. I'll probably just try to stick with one for timing."
Benintendi considers himself a long strider, a logical methodology for generating pop from a smaller frame that wouldn't suggest it. But he talks about timing so much because he views his primary enemy as "drift," when his lower half moves too far forward before contact, reducing his power to only the hand-speed he can generate. At its worst, Benintendi feels it all he can do to just fillet singles to the opposite field (surely this sparks some memories). If you re-watch that reel above, you can see how Benintendi's toe tap is holding his body back for an extra fraction of a second before he explodes forward alongside his hands.
For now, it's working. He's feeling more on time, and Benintendi's self-assurances that he is "way too good of a hitter" to play like the worst regular in Major League Baseball indefinitely seems right on. A player talented enough to put together his past few weeks is surely too good to produce at that bleak, earlier level.
So why did he? Benintendi has repeatedly downplayed the effect of his Achilles tendinitis on his offense, and Pedro Grifol aligned his playing time allotment around absolute trust of his player's self-assessment, even if ceaseless determination to post is supposed to be one of Benintendi's enduring qualities. Acknowledging that his wrist was an issue in 2023 was also something that really only took shape in retrospect.
But part of why interim manager Grady Sizemore has come off as less tight-lipped about acknowledging underlying issues is his tendency to speak frankly, and by openly drawing from his experience, about why he thinks players are underperforming
"He looks dialed in right now," Sizemore said. "It’s tough, when you play this long you’re going to have some up and down years. He’s been battling injuries and not saying much about it. Just trying to fight through it and that makes it hard when your lower half is hurting, it’s hard to hit. I know that better than anybody having injuries is hard. We’ve been putting him out there every day and he hasn’t complained. He’s grinding through it, putting the work in and I’m happy to see it’s starting to click right now and he’s feeling comfortable. Just hoping he can keep it going and finish strong."
On a team that largely seems like it should just be focusing on prospects at this point, Benintendi finishing strong has undeniable relevance. Neither the White Sox season, nor Benintendi's, can be redeemed from a statistical standpoint, but his contract is such that you can probably still more easily project him on the 2025 team than several rookies.
It's probably a bit more easy to dream on Jonathan Cannon or Brooks Baldwin, but Benintendi is also working to realize the player people think he can be.
"I think I can always resort back to hitting the ball on a line the other way which I'm trying get back into a little bit," Benintendi said. "But I'm also wanting to pull the ball still."
