Here’s How the White Sox batting order should go

Here is how Rick Renteria’s White Sox lineup should go if they want to produce the most runs for now and for the future of their team.

The White Sox need to structure their batting order in a way that will help them win in the future. That means that the important players need to be getting up as much as possible.

The White Sox and manager Rick Renteria are too obsessed with making the lineup go lefty/righty/lefty, and need to focus more on getting their important (for the future) players as many at-bats and good pitches to hit as possible.

With that in mind, here is how I’d structure the batting order to help the White Sox for now and the future…

1.  Leury Garcia OF – Garcia is probably the White Sox most underrated player. So far this season he has shown good on-base skills and not-so-good power skills, which is basically what you would expect from a leadoff man, to go along with his good speed. Unless his performance falls off this is where he should be hitting.
2. Yoan Moncada 3B – Moncada needs to be situated in a spot in the lineup that will allow him to hit the best. He would most likely hit the best batting second. This will allow him to see a lot of good pitches to hit as well as get a lot of plate appearances. Renteria has fluctuated between having him bat second or fifth, and he doesn’t make a lot of sense in the five spot. Batting him second will allow him to produce the most, as his performance there has shown. For his career, Moncada has a .758 OPS batting first, an .871 OPS batting second, and a .610 OPS batting fifth.
3. Eloy Jimenez LF – Jimenez is too important to the future of the club to be batting him in the lower parts of the lineup. Batting him in front of Jose Abreu (and behind Moncada) is where he will see the best pitches to hit and will prepare him best for his future role. This guy is going to be a legit no.3 hitter if he isn’t one already.
4. Jose Abreu 1B – Abreu is the best run producer on this team so he should bat in the no.4 spot where he will have a chance to drive in the most runners. He’s also pretty good at getting on base, so it’s better for him to lead off the second inning than it is for him to come up with two outs and nobody on, as he often does when batting third. Robin Ventura had him batting in the cleanup spot his rookie season and he crushed a ton of home runs, since moving up to the third spot he’s hit for more average and less power, so you’d wonder if he’d hit for more power if moved back. More importantly, batting him cleanup (and Jimenez third) will get Jimenez lots of good pitches to hit.
5. Tim Anderson SS – Anderson has above-average power and doesn’t walk much, so I’d rather have him in the middle of the order than the top of it. He’s one of the Sox best run producers after Abreu, hence he should be batting after him.
6. Yonder Alonso DH
7. Jose Rondon 2B
8. James McCann C
9. Adam Engel/Daniel Palka OF

The lower half of the lineup, six through nine aren’t really that important so there’s not much to say about them. It should be noted that Rondon should be playing second base every day at this point, as we aren’t quite sure what he is yet.

Over five years we’ve got to know what Yolmer Sanchez is, and even at his best, he’s just not that good. Also when Jon Jay comes back from injury I’d stick him in the No.9 spot as well, partially as punishment for not getting you-know-who to sign with the Sox, but mainly because he isn’t good.