During the White Sox's 1-5 Texas road trip, Will Venable was asked about his team's 2024-esque struggles in one-run games; a 4-20 mark so extreme it suggests an issue beyond misfortune. The answers to these questions are usually vague and existential, and there was the requisite amount of that, but Venable made the decision to slide in a concrete critique.
"You look at this past series, and just point to maybe our aggression at the plate, runners in scoring position getting some hits," Venable said. "So that'll be a focus as it has been before, and just making sure we're ready to go at the plate and taking good swings and getting ready to go early in the count."
These can scan as a series of descriptors that equate to we need to hit better, but Venable's comments became more direct as the Sox averaged 3.1 runs per game over their last 15 contests, and you can see him expanding on the bolded terms.
"They were really aggressive and I just think we didn't match their aggression," Venable said on June 13 after a Rangers bullpen game kept the Sox hitless until a Luis Robert Jr. infield single in the fifth. "It was like the fifth inning before we had a 2-0 count and to me that's just a function of us not forcing them out of the zone. We just have to be aggressive in the zone there a little more early."
It crescendoed in the first two games of the Diamondbacks series, as opposing starters Eduardo Rodríguez and Ryne Nelson combined for 11 innings of one-run ball, striking out 17 while both operated with a more fastball-oriented attack than their season averages.
"We did an OK job controlling the zone, but he just beat us all day with fastballs in the zone," Venable said on Monday, before postgame Tuesday found a similar tone. "These last two games it's really shown up where they've been very aggressive in the zone with the fastball and we just haven't responded in the way that we need to, to score runs. That's going to be something that we continue to talk about, continue to train and focus on and hopefully we can buck that trend."
The Sox offense has commendably improved to the ninth-lowest chase rate in MLB, and since they haven't been out of the bottom 10 in that category since literally DeWayne Wise was on the team, it's no small feat. They're 11th in walk rate, and the prevalence of professional-looking at-bats have given the Sox a more competitive feel than their 26-55 record. But the end-goal benefit of not chasing balls is that it's supposed to coax pitchers into having to come back in the strike zone with hittable fastballs, and it's when those fastballs have arrived that the White Sox have found themselves with these big, scary claws, but unable to kill the bunny.
"We've been getting attacked with fastballs and haven't been able to do much with them," said Andrew Benintendi on Wednesday. "We saw yesterday too, Nelson was bringing a lot of fastballs and we were late on them."
Per Statcast, the White Sox have the worst run value against four-seam fastballs in the American League. Only Mike Tauchman, Miguel Vargas and Chase Meidroth have generated positive run value against them. It's not breaking news to say that the White Sox lack premium offensive talent, but this is also specifically not where their skill sets lie as a unit. The Sox have the lowest average bat speed in the league, again per Statcast, after being 28th last year.
There is hardly a one-to-one correlation between bat speed and production against fastballs, as Tauchman, Vargas and Meidroth's commendable years are all testaments to. But it does tend to open up the highest-ceiling outcomes, such as Luis Robert Jr. -- owner of easily the highest bat speed on the team -- and his 2023 season where he slugged .691 against four-seamers. And between his struggles and the sudden erosion of Vaughn's career-long history of producing against velocity, the White Sox have operated without much help from their two most established fastball hitters entering the season.
Robert has struggled against fastballs for now exactly a season and a half now, just as his plate discipline improvements correlating with the worst hitting in his career has baffled onlookers.
"Sometimes you confuse being patient with letting pitches in the strike zone [go by]," Robert said via interpreter. "That's probably the hardest part, to balance it. But you need to remember that you need to kill the pitches that are your pitches."
The White Sox are treating it like that balance can be found, ideally through day-to-day emphasis, with the relative outburst that was the seven runs they scored on Wednesday serving as a hopeful template. Lenyn Sosa is another rare owner of plus bat speed on the roster, but has historically performed poorly against velocity and is turning in another such campaign in 2025. Only two of the three hits in his career-best performance on Wednesday were against fastballs, but Sosa indicated he was told to be looking for it all day.
"There are days and at-bats where you know that the pitcher's going to throw you the breaking balls and then you're ready for that, but our data today, I was just looking for a fastball," Sosa said via interpreter. "I was looking for a fastball all day and that was my approach in those two at bats. I was trying to lay off the soft pitches, and then when he threw me the fastball. I was ready for it. I think it's a good sign that I'm closer to my timing, and a game like today definitely helps."
"You've just got to be ready from the get-go to hit your pitch," Benintendi said after homering off an elevated four-seamer himself. "Whether it's fastball or offspeed, it's whatever your approach is that day. I don't think it's hard to do both, it's just staying on the hunt and trying to get your pitch."
As Ron Washington might say, it's incredibly hard to do both. But ideally it's no harder than hitting in the majors is already, and not a specific box the Sox have to remain locked in all year, if they can help it.
In some ways, this is all pretty low-stakes. Team approaches undulate series-to-series, week-to-week, and the Sox might find themselves getting attacked by spin again if they produce another couple of games like Wednesday. And realistically, if the Sox are 28th in MLB in fastball run value after 81 games, there's probably no amount of hitters meetings that can make this current roster a plus unit against velocity this year.
But in the long term, the ability to reverse offensive trends, even to some degree, could inform the White Sox's ability to build competitive lineups out of spare parts, since neither their budget nor the offensive depth in their farm system suggests a big infusion of bat speed is coming next year. And just as a daily observer, Venable has been measured enough in his critiques of the team, that when he makes a point of repeatedly specifying one, it's informative what kind of response it generates.
He was pleased enough with the initial returns on Wednesday.
"I thought everyone was ready to go," Venable said. "We saw good swings throughout the lineup. Guys looked like they were on time, aggressive to the heater. It paid off today, we were able to turn some of those good fastballs around and that’s what it’s going to take, moving those balls forward."
