Is Andrew Benintendi Just Unlucky?

Andrew Benintendi has been one of the biggest stories on the field for the 2024 White Sox and not in a particularly good way. In the early going he’s cruising towards an all-time rancid season. Coming into Monday’s action he was dead last in both wRC+ for qualified players (163 out of 163) as well as position player fWAR. It’s a ghastly scene.

However, it seems like anytime I tweet something negative about Andrew Benintendi, I get a response from this same account telling me that Beni is not bad, just unlucky.

Benintendi BA = .195
Benintendi xBA = .259
Benintendi SLG = .282
Benintendi xSLG = .401

People acting like he’s a terrible hitter, when he’s really just unlucky. Insanely unlucky.

— Mr. Mister Games (@MrMisterGamez) May 19, 2024

I don’t know if Mr. Mister Games is Beni’s dad or his goomar or maybe it’s his burner account, but tweets like this always intrigue me and so I figured I would investigate.

Is Andrew Benintendi Unlucky?

First off we must establish what we mean by luck. I am not talking about some sequence of events that caused him to stub his toe on the corner of the bed or to oversleep and miss his flight or some shit like that. What I am specifically talking about, is the quality of his performance actually better than the results?

Before we dive head first into expected stats like xBA and xSLG like mentioned above, let’s first look at the old tried and true stat of BABIP (Batting Average on Balls in Play). Benintendi’s BABIP is a miniscule .224. That has him tied for 154th out of 163 qualified players. BABIP for the league usually hovers around .300, but so far in 2024 it’s only at .289. That’s pretty unlucky at a base level.

Now let’s get to the other stuff…

This is a cut out from Baseball Savant. Try and ignore my terrible drawing skills but focus in on the 2024 line, as well as the MLB line, as that denotes the league average. Beni’s Barrel % and Barrel/PA are just slightly below league average. A “Barrel” is noted below.

It’s a key driver to “expected” batting quality and it makes sense, hitting the ball harder, gives the defenders less time to run to catch it. I know it sounds pretty intuitive. Average exit velocity is similar to league average as well, meaning that Beni is hitting the ball as hard as the average hitter in MLB.

As the original tweeter noted xBA (expected batting average) and xSLG (expected slugging percentage) are both league averagish as well and much, much higher than his actual production. Definitions below.

Knowing all of this, it would seem that I could be willing to relent that, yea, our fallen highest paid player might be a little unlucky right now with the stick. Let’s quickly look at his defense and base running value, see the red circled sections. Blue is bad. Bad. This is bad.

*Fart Noise*

Okay, so apologies to Mr. Mister Games, I am willing to admit that Beni’s bat has been a bit unlucky. So what do to next with Andrew Benintendi?

What do we do next?

I had Jordan Lazowski from Sox On 35th on the Au Jus this week. We had a wide ranging White Sox discussion, that you can watch the entire version of HERE. However, we also specifically talked Benintendi, see below for our thoughts on what to do with him even with the knowledge we currently have about his 6 weeks of “unlucky” hitting.

Now knowing what you know, what would you do? Does it change your mind from your initial thoughts? Holler at me.

-BeefLoaf