To be fair, this is Jr’s 3rd full season. Dude was one bad call on an SB attempt from going 30/50 last year, and his game is leaps and bounds better this season. He’s a superstar.
In addition to Fedde, Pham, and Kopech, the Sox traded away SS Paul DeJong (to the Royals, just before their game against the Royals this evening), and OF Eloy Jimenez (to the Orioles). P Garrett Crochet and OF Luis Robert Jr. remained with the team.
Skenes was a superstar on day 1.
In his first game with the Cardinals, Tommy Pham pinch hit a grand slam.
In spite of their 16-game losing streak and being 39.5 games off the division lead, the White Sox’s winning percentage of .245 would still give them 40 wins on the season, no worse than the '62 Mets.
I still think they’ll Crochet enough wins to surpass the magic 40 mark.
*with Pham gone, the highest batting average in their lineup tonight against KC was .241. I didn’t bother to calculate it exactly but it looks like the team average would have been about .220.
Best as in being the best baseball player. Yes, Judge and Soto are better hitters (though the difference with Soto is really small right now) but Witt is a shortstop, and there’s a huge contribution in that.
Henderson is a shortstop but not quite as good a hitter.
A measure, of course, which is at least somewhat subjective. If I ask five people “Who was the best baseball player of all time?”, I’m likely to get five different answers, all of which could be backed by strong arguments.
Witt’s current batting average is 38 points better than Soto’s and he has one less RBI. Soto has 8 more home runs, but based on the numbers, it’s safe to say that right now Witt is a better hitter than Soto.
Yes, a shortstop who can make incredible plays, but one who’s also just 7th in the AL in fielding percentage, and tied for third for most errors committed this season.
FWIW, Judge leads the AL in WAR at 7.6; Witt is second at 6.8.
Once again, back to topic: Sox blew it again last night in the 8th inning. They took a 2-1 lead into the top of 8th, but KC scored 3 runs and hung on to win 4-3. As already mentioned, they now have lost 16 in a row.
Batting average and home runs aren’t a great metric. As hitters, Witt has a wRC+ of 168 and an xwOBA of .413. Soto is at 189 and .471, Judge at 215 and .478. These advanced metrics would say all 3 are having incredible seasons, but Witt lags the other two by a good margin.
And fielding percentage is maybe the worst metric in baseball, since it’s foundationally dependent upon the error being consistently applied both in plays attempted, and plays not attempted. All 3 are adequate defensively - but a defensively adequate shortstop doing what Witt does at the plate is more valuable than an adequate RF doing the same.
Witt Jr.might be the best all around player in the league. Among his other talents, he’s also tied for fastest in MLB in sprint speed, according to Statcast.
Not only that, but he didn’t collapse holding his knee or hamstring. LOL
In case anyone’s wondering, the modern record is 23, by the 1961 Phillies. If anyone can break that the White Sox can.
The Sox are now on pace for 40-122. I can’t be the only person rooting for them to win fewer than 40 games. 47-115 would be so boring. Hell, Detroit lost 119 games in 2003. I want history to be made.
Another possible factor in how the Sox play down the stretch: now that Garrett Crochet is going to be with them for the rest of the season, for how long do they keep starting him every fifth day? At what point do they shut him down, with an eye to his future health?
2024 has been the first year that Crochet has been a starter since he was playing at the University of Tennessee (2018-20). He’s thrown 114 1/3 innings so far this season, which is more than he threw in 2020-23 combined (73 innings), bearing in mind that he missed all of 2022 and much of 2023 recovering from Tommy John surgery.
After today’s loss, 39-123! YOU CAN DO IT!
They’re also threatening the worst run differential in history - not quite on pace to match it but they’re in range. It’s -349, by the 1932 Red Sox.
It should be noted that that was a much higher scoring league than MLB today, so in terms of how it translates to winning, the White Sox are actually worse.
A fun fact, so to speak; prior to this year the longest losing streak the White Sox had ever had was 13 in a row. They’ve exceeded that on two separate occasions this year.
In doing a little more research, this is how many innings Crochet threw in college:
- 2018: 63 2/3
- 2019: 65
- 2020: 3 1/3
In other words, he’s now pitched at least 50 more innings this season than he has in any season since he left high school. Given that, it’s no wonder that his own agents were concerned about load for the rest of the season, and wanted a contract extension if he were to be traded to a team where he would be expected to pitch into the postseason.
Yes, but how about 122-40 instead of 40-122? LOL
So, would you say that, after all the trades and bereft of stars, this team is pretty much a AAA team at this point? I can’t imagine one of the better AAA teams doing a whole lot worse than we are at this point.
If, Og forbid, the entire team was in a plane crash that broke everyone’s left foot, Oklahoma City (Dodgers) AAA could take their place and better their record tremendously.
The Charlotte Knights are the AAA team of the White Sox. Unsurprisingly, they finished last in the International League East in the first half of the season.
However, in the second half, they are in fifth place in their ten-team division.
What’s the worst thing you can say to a Charlotte Knight?
“Congrats! You’ve been called up.”