Chicago White Sox: Why the bats will soon heat up
By Bill Felber
There’s good news for Chicago White Sox fans. You can expect the offense to arrive any time now.
The White Sox certainly have been a disappointment to date, and not merely due to injuries. Granted, those have hurt, especially the injuries to Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez, Yermin Mercedes, and Lance Lynn. Mercedes and Moncada are both expected to return soon.
But the better news is simply that April has turned into May. That’s uplifting to at least three members of the heart of the Chicago White Sox order.
The Chicago White Sox need an offensive boost. They stand at 10-13 and stand 4.5 games behind the division-leading Minnesota Twins heading into Wednesday’s action. Chicago has only scored five runs five times this season, while being held to zero or one runs six times.
At .219, the White Sox rank 24th in team batting average. They are 22nd in slugging at .350 and 25th in OPS at .624.
While the injuries have hurt, that issue is complicated by the fact that much of what remains of Chicago’s offense, notably first baseman Jose Abreu, catcher Yasmani Grandal, and outfielder Adam Engel, has a track record of performing poorly in April. All three players ran true to form this past month.
Fortunately, all three also have established records of picking things up with the arrival of warmer weather. That’s why White Sox fans can find hope in the arrival of May.
Abreu is batting just .215 a month into the season with only two home runs, seven RBI, and a .648 OPS.
And his numbers are the best of the trio. Engel has started at .209 with no homers, one RBI, and a .579 OPS, while Grandal is a .162 hitter with one home run, six RBI, and a .501 OPS.
As bad as those numbers are, they’re not that far from the April norms for all three.
Abreu has never been a hot starter. His career .256 April average and .800 OPS are both the worst of any month. Just last season, he opened at .213 and .690 in average and OPS, but finished at .261 and .831. His batting average typically improves by 22 points and his OPS by 36 points in May alone. His season-long career averages are .289 and .861 with 33 home runs.
Grandal’s power game typically takes a while to ramp up. For his career, he has averaged only one home run every 30 plate appearances in April compared with one every 18 plate appearances in June and one every 23 plate appearances for his career as a whole.
He slugged just .235 this past April and .273 in April of 2021. Even so, his career slugging average is .447.
Engel’s slow start is also not unusual. He is a career .171 hitter in April who missed all of the first two months of 2021 while recuperating from an injury. In April of 2019, he batted just .171 before rebounding to hit .288 in May and June.
Next. What were the five longest home runs hit in April?. dark
In short, White Sox fans can take hope from the calendar that their team’s dismal offensive production will begin to turn around any day now.