LOW POWER

Hunting the Elusive Dinger

The Sox just absolutely ate the Royals for Mothers Day Brunch, knocking hit after hit all over Kaufmann Stadium. Even Yasmani Grandal, who has an anti-baseball bat in his hands these days, was getting on via the walk. The thing that wasn’t happening? Those hits weren’t going over the fence. Only Zack Collins and Danny Mendick managed to hit homers during a 21-run weekend.

As a team, the Sox have 27 homeruns total. Jose Abreu leads the team with 6, Yermin Mercedes has 5, TA has 4 and the remaining 13 are spread between 6 players, including 1 for Luis Robert. Of the regulars/frequent starters, three have not hit one out. Predictably, that includes Nick Madrigal; unsurprisingly that includes Leury Garcia; and alarmingly that includes Andrew Vaughn.

At the MLB level, the loss of Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert is going to reduce the HR totals. It remains to be seen how many Yermin can hit at this level, but his career everywhere AB/HR is 26.18 while Eloy put up a dinger every 15.1 ABs the last two years. Robert, after really finding his power swing in 2019 and 2020, averaged a tater every 16.4 ABs. That’s going to be hard to replace, especially since the Sox haven’t drafted and developed a power hitter on that level since…uhhh…hmmm…

The current Homerun hitters on the team are Abreu, an international signing; Eloy, traded for as a near-ready prospect; Yoan Moncada, traded for as a near-ready prospect; Robert, an international signing; Grandal (when he’s right), a free-agent; and Yermin, a Crash Davis-esque minor-league free agent. Adam Eaton, Billy Hamilton, and Leury Garcia are not really power guys, and Jake Lamb was once but hasn’t been in years.

Home-grown talent on the roster includes TA, Vaughn, Madrigal and Zack Collins. Danny Mendick has been up and down and there are likely others on the way. For the sake of wondering why the Sox can’t draft for power, we can ignore middle infielders Mendick and Madrigal, as they were not intended to be homerun guys. Really, neither was Anderson, and his career 30.4 AB/HR ratio is less impressive than the fact he’s hit between 10-20 HR every year since 2017. Collins is on the fringes, a catcher with homerun ability, but including college he averages a HR every 23.9 ABs. Catcher is not a “premium power position”, and if Collins got 531 AB, his expected 22 HR would be a real nice total from the catcher slot. But that’s not Eloy or La Pantera replacement level or even really close.

Andrew Vaughn is still looking for his first MLB homer. Jason Benetti and Len Kasper opined all weekend at Kaufmann that Vaughn is very close to breaking that seal. And when he does, hoooo boy you better watch out. Right? Hard to say. In college he average a dong every 11.9 at-bats. Professionally in a very small sample, it’s fireworks every 45.7 at-bats. He has 6 total in 274 professional ABs.

So who’s next? In 2019 the team leaders at Charlotte were Daniel Palka and Matt Skole, two AAAA guys that were signed as MiLB free agents and are now gone. The next two were the aforementioned Zack Collins and his backstop timeshare Seby Zavala, who has a nice career 23.5 AB/HR but a really iffy .222 BA in 2019.

Birmingham is harder to hit out of, but in 2019 Gavin Sheets was the only guy in double digits. He hits one out every 41.9 ABs for his minors career. And for reference, had Luis Robert met Sheets’ number of at-bats in Birmingham, he would have hit 16 homers as well, but also had 33 doubles to Sheets’ 18. Sheets represents maybe the best hope for the next power hitter to come up, but so far he hasn’t shown it.

Jake Burger and Micker Adolfo are also not the answer, at least statistically. Burger has 6 HR in 206 pro at-bats, much like Vaughn. Too hard to tell yet on Burger, but he wasn’t as good as Vaughn in college (1 knock every 15.1 AB). Adolfo hits one every 33.8 for his career, though he’s now in the void in Birmingham so those numbers are likely to get worse even if he gets better.

So who is the last decent homerun hitter the Sox developed? From the standpoint of a guy that actually had a decent career, it’s El Caballo. In Carlos Lee’s prime with Milwaukee and Houston, he reached the Eloy/Luis levels twice and stayed around 19 AB/HR otherwise until his career declined late. Joe Crede’s best ratio was 2006, at 18.1 AB/HR when he hit his career-best 30. Josh Fields, in the one season he played as a near-regular (2007), hit one every 16.1 ABs. It is possible that had Crede and/or Fields been healthier, he might have continued to produce at their best. With Fields, he played so little it is hard to say whether 2007 was real and with Crede it feels like 2006 was still a possible high water mark.

So are there any former prospects running around that fit the bill? Fernando Tatis, Jr. comes to mind. I would argue he is a product of the Padres system, since he never appeared for a Sox affiliate. Marcus Semien? He hit 33 in 2019, and 27 in 2016, but those are the biggest totals in his career and he needed 727 at-bats in 2019 to get there.

It is a strain to think of the last time the Sox produced a viable major league 1B/3B, DH or corner OF that had a career marked by decent power numbers. Going back to 2005, Paul Konerko, Jermaine Dye, Jim Thome, Joe Crede, Carlos Quentin, Adam Dunn, Jose Abreu, Todd Frazier, and Eloy Jimenez have all topped the 30-HR mark for the Sox. Only Joe Crede was a product of the White Sox system.

The lineup needs a jolt of legit power right now and it will need to come from the outside. History suggests that the farm system isn’t going to produce that much wattage for the cottage at 35th and Shields.

The Sweat Meter, a system to manage your White Sox Worries.

As the Sox season carries on, concerns will pop up. Here, weekly, Sox in The Basement and Mismatched Sox will measure the concerning stuff, big and small, and determine whether to sweat it at all. The range runs from five Sweaty Freddies to one, five being sheer panic and one being nothing to worry about at all.

Shower Fresh: Vaugh hitting doubles instead of dingers. He’ll get some out.

GLOW: Too much Billy Hamilton will get sorted out eventually. TLR isn’t blind. Umm, I don’t think.

Collar is getting wet: Liam Hendriks really relies on a medium. Cool…that’s…cool.

Swampy: Well..

Call Family Waterproofing Solutions, its a flood: it remains worth the panic over whether they can overcome the losses of Jimenez and Robert in the same season. They got hot against the Royals but can they sustain that kind of attack with an above-average BABIP as a team? They are really, really going to rely on two rookies, Vaughn and Mercedes, to make this happen in 2021.