Chicago White Sox outfielder Tommy Pham (Nuccio DiNuzzo/Getty Images)
Not to beat a dead horse, but the Chicago White Sox are a miserable baseball team. If you are looking for a silver lining, they have actually made some good decisions. Most of them involve not bringing back bad players even though those players had enjoyed some success with the team. Sadly, the best offensive player the Sox have had this season is the recently signed Tommy Pham. It would have been nice to bring in more bats.
The White Sox dodged a couple of bullets.
Jose Abreu was one of the more popular Sox players in recent memory, gut the Sox opted not to bring him back after the 2022 season. And while not universally popular, that decision has played out well. Jose had a decent 2022 season, hitting .304 with an OBP of .378 and a slug of .446 for an OPS of .824. Sounds good, right? But what wasn’t good was the 13 home runs and 75 RBIs. So, the Sox let him go.
The Astros signed him for three years at $60 million. Jose was bad last year, putting up an OPS of .680. This year his production has fallen off a cliff. His OPS was at .269. No, that’s not a batting average of .269, that’s an OPS of .269. Abreu took a minor league assignment to try to regain his stroke. The odds are against him.
More recently, the Sox said goodbye to Tim Anderson. Anderson was dreadful in 2023 in both the field and at the plate. While Anderson/s 2022 overall stats didn’t look bad, he suffered from a severe drop off in the second half of the season. More disturbing than his low OPS was the steep decline in power. Anderson hit only one home run in 2023.
During the past off season, some hailed Anderson as a potential bounce back candidate. If you actually saw very much of Anderson last season, that was a hard sell. He looked like a guy who was toast. Not only was his power gone, but his speed was also diminished. And Anderson was never a strong defender.
The Miami Marlins signed Anderson on a one year, $5 million deal and has a WAR of -0.6. That number could well be even worse if he hadn’t spent time on the IL.
White Sox ordered a Burger to go
Jake Burger was a power source for the Sox in 2023, hitting 25 home runs in just 294 at bats. Late in the season he was dispatched to the Marlins for left-handed pitching prospect, Jack Eder. Berger went on to hit .303 with nine home runs in 198 at bats with the Marlins.
Burger has also hit a wall in 2024, hitting .164 with an OPS of .469. And Jake, like Anderson, is not a good defender. As for Eder, he’s toiling in AA with mixed results. Still, Jake. despite looking like the quintessential Chicago guy, probably wouldn’t help much.
And then there’s Bummer
The Sox return for Aaron Bummer looks more and more like a bunch of bobbles. But then again, Bummer isn’t exactly Manhattan Island either. While Bummer’s initial stat line for the Braves doesn’t look bad, his loss to the Cubs on Tuesday is typical of what I remember about him. He wasn’t hit hard but lost the game on a high infield chopper.
Bummer seems to have a knack for finding a way to lose. But he does look good doing it.
