What Should the White Sox do with the Andrews (Vaughn & Benintendi)?

The White Sox are off to a goddamn awful start. There’s no sugar coating it. There is no running queries on the B-Ref database to show how X, Y, Z team battled back from a bad start to make you and I feel better. This team is just bad, we won’t know whether truly historically bad or just regular ole bad until we get deep into the summer, but for now, they BAAAAAAD! For me, one of the worst parts of this putrid opening to the 2024 campaign is THE ANDREWS. Andrew Vaughn. Andrew Benintendi.

The fellas are sporting equally terrible 37 wRC+ (that’s 63% below league average). The tandem are nestled tightly towards the bottom of all qualified hitters in MLB through a little over one month’s turn of the calendar.

And while Vaughn has (absurdly) been homerless through 137 plate appearances, at least Benintendi gave us a thrill with his unlikely power barrage. A game that was not only the most exciting victory of the season (with only 8 it’s pretty easy to choose), but started the WST Schriffen Wars!

The frustrating thing for me personally is that these two chuckleheads reverting to their career norms would likely dig the White Sox out of this hole. It wouldn’t make them GOOD, per se, but much more watchable. I don’t want to eschew blame from all of the places that we normally throw it, but I gotta place a big chunk of it right at these two dudes feet. Regression back to the mean might not be coming though as you can see their Baseball Savant heat maps don’t look so good, so this might not be just “bad luck”.

BLUE IS BAD!!!

What Should The White Sox Do With the Andrews??

For my money, our fearless leader Pedro Grifol needs to start treating these guys as entities that line up closer to their numbers and less to their contract (Beni) and pedigree (Vaughny). Play them only when they end up being the best option that day given the set of variables and circumstances. That might mean a lot more Gavin Sheets at the cold corner and much more Rafael Ortega and Robbie Grossman adorning leather in the vast pastures of big league stadiums. And that’s fine! Getting these guys out of the fucking lineup when they are in the least optimal situations should be worth a little bit of value. I don’t think you can count on them to return to the “BACK OF THE BASEBALL CARD”, those days are probably over. So let’s do what we can to maximize the minimal value we might have removing them when necessary.

This past Monday night I had Nick Schaefer on The Au Jus (Powered by Punky’s Pizza) and I asked him this question. You can watch the ENTIRE EPISODE HERE. He had a novel response for each of the guys. The video of his response is below. It is a little over 7 minutes and worth your time.

I’d love for you to watch it and then comment back to me on twitter or in the comments below on what you’d like to see the White Sox do with the Andrews!

-BeefLoaf