Andrew Benintendi’s five-year, $75 million deal — the largest in White Sox history — was made official Tuesday afternoon, with the new left fielder introduced Wednesday morning at Guaranteed Rate Field. Next to him sat new Sox manager Pedro Grifol.
When Benintendi was traded from Boston to Kansas City prior to the 2021 season, Benintendi saw Grifol putting in early work and helping players prepare hours before the game. Benintendi said it was “definitely a factor” that Grifol had been hired as the team’s manager as he went through the free-agency process. And even before he’d been hired for the White Sox job, Grifol had identified Benintendi as a perfect fit for the team.
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When vying for the gig, the former Royals bench coach bit his tongue with regard to Benintendi in his first interview with general manager Rick Hahn. But in his second interview, Hahn and team president Kenny Williams asked for his thoughts on the left fielder.
“OK, you mentioned it, not me,” Grifol recalled from that interview. “He fits perfect. He fits perfect on this ball club, he fits perfect in the ballpark. He’s exactly what we were looking for this offseason.”
On Tuesday’s video conference with local reporters, Hahn detailed why the fit is so ideal.
“A guy who, obviously not just left-handed, but gives you a tough (at-bat), can grind it out, put up solid on-base numbers towards the top of the lineup and as well as improve ourselves from an outfield defense standpoint,” Hahn said. “He really fit in a lot of different ways that we were looking to improve ourselves.”
Benintendi was strong against righties last season (132 wRC+) and for his career (116). In 2022, the White Sox had a 93 wRC+ against right-handed pitchers as a team (23rd in baseball) while crushing lefties to the tune of a 119 wRC+ (fourth in the game). They also had the lowest walk rate (6.3 percent) and were 18th in OBP (.310), both areas where Benintendi should help.
Grifol confirmed the obvious, that Benintendi would be their full-time left fielder. But Grifol didn’t go so far as to say Eloy Jiménez would be relegated solely to designated hitter, as he’s told Jiménez to continue working on his glove and to add right field to his to-do list as well. Last season, the team’s outfield defense was 27th in both Defensive Runs Saved and Outs Above Average, and if you’re less inclined to go with the advanced metrics, they led all of baseball with 20 outfield errors. Benintendi will be a clear upgrade to the group.
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But what about the power? Expected to be a team that would lean on its slug, the White Sox finished last season with an ISO of .131, 26th in the game. Part of the desired improvement could come from Benintendi.
“For me, playing at Kauffman in 2021 I got pretty frustrated just flying out to, we joked about it all the time, these long flyouts,” Benintendi said. “I’m not the biggest guy, it’s going to take everything I can to hit a ball out of that stadium. So going into last year, I was thinking let’s just hit for higher average and higher on-base and hopefully this works, or I’m going to be in a world of trouble. I’m trying to be a complete hitter.”
Benintendi slashed .320/.387/.398 in 93 games with the Royals last season. In 33 games after being traded to the Yankees, where their short porch in right entices lefties to get a bit pull-happy, Benintendi nearly doubled his ISO to .149. It’s not a tremendous power output, but it’s more than he showed in Kansas City, something Benintendi says was by design.
“Playing in (Guaranteed Rate), a lot of those long flyouts will turn into doubles and home runs without even trying to change anything,” Benintendi said. “Whatever player they need me to be, that’s who I’ll try to be.”
Benintendi said at Kauffman he’d just try to hit an opposite-field, line-drive single to beat the shift. In New York, he was looking to get extra bases to the pull side. The lack of shift, he expects, will help his slugging as well because he won’t be looking to try to beat it. Benintendi seems to fashion himself a sort of an offensive chameleon based on where he plays.
“When I played at Fenway until ’17, I pulled everything,” Benintendi said. “In ’18, I tried to use that wall and realized, why would I not do this every time. You get traded to Kauffman and now I don’t have that wall and I’m not the biggest guy. That’s when it became let’s knock it down, line drives, there’s a lot of ground to cover out there. In New York, just pull the ball more.”
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The clearest example of the data backing up what Benintendi is saying is simply comparing his numbers between Kansas City and New York last summer. His pull percentage jumped 9.8 points with the Yankees and his ground-ball rate dropped 13.1 percentage points. He’s unlikely to be an elite thumper, but Benintendi clearly has shown he can be more than a singles hitter.
But to be a strong team in the power department, the Sox can’t rely solely on Benintendi.
“When you talk about power, I think it’s more about accessing the power that these players on the roster have shown in the past,” Hahn said. “There’s always a desire for more pop and more thump throughout a lineup, but I think Andrew helps diversify the ways our offense is capable of beating you on a given day. It’s not just going to be power-based. But I think going forward, for a variety of reasons, I think we are going to produce a little better from a power-output standpoint from the guys who have done that in the past.”
Health is a big key for nearly every player that can help the Sox get back to being a power-hitting club. Jiménez has the upside to be one of the best sluggers in the game, but the only season in which he’s avoided significant injury was a shortened 2020. Tim Anderson can’t repeat his rough .093 ISO performance from this past summer. Luis Robert’s ISO dropped by nearly 90 points from 2021 to 2022. Yasmani Grandal had an abysmal .067 ISO, an incredible 144 points below his career mark entering last season. None of those players appeared in more than 100 games in 2022.
A ball that’s no longer juiced could just mean those numbers won’t return to previous levels, but there has to be a middle ground with these players. Benintendi is a nice addition, one the White Sox believe fits well and addresses a few needs. It was a slightly surprising move since Hahn seemed to indicate a tighter budget that would force them into the trade market, but a welcome surprise nonetheless.
Still, more can be done to improve a team that went into 2022 as a World Series contender and ended as one of the biggest disappointments in the game. Will Hahn look to upgrade second base? He indicated they were comfortable going into the spring with Romy Gonzalez and Lenyn Sosa as the primary contributors there and Leury García as capable depth. Is catcher an area they can look to add as they try to limit Grandal’s time behind the plate? Starting pitching depth behind a rotation with some health questions? A right-handed fourth outfielder to mix in with their new lefties in Benintendi and Oscar Colás?
“We’re always going to look to get better,” Hahn said. “It’s a cliché but I suppose a cliché for a reason, that you’re never satisfied with what your roster is and we certainly know there’s ways we can improve, both from a position player standpoint as well as from a pitching depth standpoint. So we’re going to continue to look. What happens over the course of the next six weeks leading into camp and then the six, seven weeks we’re in camp is impossible to predict. But certainly the way we perceive ourselves is not as a finished product at this time.”
(Top photo: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today)