The White Sox Offense BLOWS, Let’s Shake It Up!

Last night’s White Sox game in Los Angeles was a typical somber affair for the 2023 squad. Lance Lynn buries them in the 1st inning giving up 4 runs on 2 dongers and you know the game is pretty much out of reach right there. However, you stick with it because watching is cheaper than methadone and you need your fix. Anywho, while we were lighting up the big bastard on twitter (and deservedly so) many of yous were pointing out how crappy the offense has been.

Entering today’s play, the White Sox pertinent MLB Rankings are………

21st in HR with 70

20th (tied) in Stolen Bases with 41

25th in Slugging Percentage at .383

29th in On-Base Percentage at .294

All of this after being promised that the new regime was bringing in a hitting guru to fix our deficiencies. Now, grabbing the parts of a horrible offense and shuffling them up isn’t likely to be an effective long-term solution, I know that. But my only other ideas are convincing the GM he’d be the next Marc Andreessen of venture capital or digging up incriminating evidence on the 87 year old owner to force an LA Clippers style sale. Both potentially worthwhile angles, but for now, Iet’s just do this

Shake It Up!

Leading off and playing Left Field is Andrew Benintendi. Look, I know he sucks, but he leads the team in OBP at a meager .336 (although .360 over the last month). He has zero power, and he runs okay, this is his highest and best use. I just wrote about Tim Anderson and his struggles, and I’ve always been fine with his unorthodox lead-off profile, but until he’s back to being him, we have to move him down.

Hitting 2nd and playing Center Field is Luis Robert. I remember when the two hole hitter was a squatty non-hitter that put the ball in play a lot. Well, fuck that, those days are over. Get the home runs higher up in the line. Luis leads the team in Home Runs, Runs Scored, Extra Base hits and he’s a BMF besides. I don’t care if you cry about him being inconsistent or if Jordan Lazowski hates his plate approach, he gets the most results, he hits high in the order. Set it and forget it.

Hitting 3rd, the Designated Hitter, Eloy Jimenez. The best natural hitter on the team hits in the 3rd spot. This is only temporary as this chucklefuck will likely pull a hammy playing hop scotch and be out for a week (without an IL stint). However, 75% healthy Eloy in the 2nd half of 2022 was a got-damned monster, posting a 169 wRC+ over that period. So let’s cross our fingers (and legs, you whores) and hope we get a couple months of health and production.

Hitting 4th, and playing Third Base is Jake Burger. Jake has the highest wRC+ on the squad at 131, he’s 2nd on the team in homers with 13 and third on the team in RBI with 32, even though he didn’t start with the team. I get that he’s not exactly a dream on defense over at the hot corner, but you’ll just have to deal with that, scraping runs together is the priority. This is a no-brainer.

Yoan Moncada? Straight to the bench. Over this last month, Yo-yo is slashing .187 / .253 / .264. Since the start of 2022, he’s slashing .217 / .275 / .375. I know our GM’s rebuild reputation is at stake, but Yoan needs to grab some bench. He can’t hit and we can’t afford to watch him not hit.

Okay, Let’s See Who Hits Starting off the 2nd Inning 😉

Hitting 5th and Playing First Base is Andrew Vaughn. I’ve been pretty hard on Vaughn and although he started red-hot as an RBI man this year, he’s cooled significantly (still tied for 25th in RBI in MLB at 40, meh). Still he’s an above average major league hitter (111 wRC+, includes .331 OBP, 2nd on the White Sox) and that’s a scarce resource at 35th and Shields, but since he lacks the thump of the three hitters proceeding him, we land him at 5.

Hitting 6th and Playing Right Field is Clint Frazier. I don’t know if he’s any good. I do know he had a pedigree before concussions swallowed up a couple of years on him. I know he has a hand cannon in Right Field (not the point of this exercise). His 43 Plate Appearances so far have been a big plate of WHATEVER (85 wRC+), however contained in that small sample is a 16.3% walk rate and the lowest chase rate on the squad (per Baseball Savant). So, if you are like me and ready to gamble on basically any non-Gavin Sheets option, then LFG!!!

Hitting 7th and Playing Shortstop, Tim Anderson. I land here with Tim. Until he’s out of his slump, I think the optimal spot is at the back of the lineup. You can say it’s for motivational reasons. Or psychological reasons. Or whatever. It’s production based. If you are making this and want to swap Benintendi and TA, I wouldn’t be upset at you, but I am trying to make the most volatile, run friendly lineup and I think this is it. I detailed Tim’s struggles already HERE. No need to re-hash.

And the Rest…

Hitting 8th, Catcher. Both of these dudes have been quite stinky the last month plus, save for Seby’s hero game in Nueva York. Put either of them here, they’ll either make an embarrassing out or get ahold of one. You can throw in the oft lusted for but never proven Carlos Perez. It don’t matter. This is the spot in the lineup where you go refill your drink or grab a snack out the fridge. But hurry up, because it might not last too long.

Hitting 9th, playing Second Base, Romy Gonzalez. At this point in his career, Romy gives a much worse plate appearance than Elvis Andrus, but with a much higher upside. He also runs like the wind, so in some of the approximately 20% of the time that he gets on base, he could be useful. Plus he’s the manifestation of a long time BeefLoaf ideal

FINAL THOUGHTS

I made some improvements to this lineup. However, you can easily see why I want the White Sox to buy, instead of being sellers. They got holes in this offense that need fixing and it really shouldn’t cost a ton to bump a bunch of these craters up to just under league average.

One note on this list, I don’t want Pedro fucking with this lineup. No platoon advantage splits, etc. Sheets has been bad, Moncada has been bad, Andrus bad. You only use them dudes for days off. Ride with this crew for a couple tree weeks and see where we stand. Lotta ball left to play and if the White Sox don’t start taking it seriously I’ll be writing trade blogs in a few weeks.

Got some thoughts on what you’d do??? Hit me up in the comments or on Twitter

-BeefLoaf

FromThe108 Giveaway Central