In the Blink of an Eye

Well, that didn’t take long.  This White Sox fan went from complaining about the dog days of November to wondering why exactly his team spent $73 million on switch-hitting, free-agent catcher Yasmani Grandal.  I know what Sox GM Rick Hahn and sportswriters are saying, but that’s not the same as a good reason.

The now 31-year old Grandal hit .246 for the Brewers in 2019, with 28 home runs and 77 RBIs.  Those stats are eerily similar to what Yonder Alonso put up the year before the Sox signed him: .250/23 homers/83 RBIs.  If you really want to push the weird factor, Grandal and Alonso were part of a package of young players the Reds sent to the Padres for…Mat Latos.  Two bad ex-Sox.  What are the odds for three?

Don’t get me wrong, I want Grandal to do well on the South Side, but that career .348 OBP comes with a career .241 BA.  As for being one of, if not the, best pitch framer in all of baseball, so what?  I’m supposed to get all excited about some stat purporting to measure how many runs his pitch framing has saved, and yet no one I’ve read or heard has brought up this stat: Grandal has led the NL in passed balls not once, not twice, but three times since 2014.  Career wise, he’s also one percentage point below average throwing out base stealers.  So, we’ll see.

But, hey, I’ll take the hot stove over the dog days anytime.