White Sox: Analyzing Rick Renteria’s Lineups and Other Strategies
White Sox manager’s lineups and bullpen selection have come under scrutiny lately from fans. Here’s an analyzation of the team’s current manager.
Through 35 games into the season, White Sox Manager Rick Renteria has made some puzzling decisions that have raised a few eyebrows.
This includes, but is not limited to, the batting order, the use of the bullpen, and the calls for excessive bunting. We’ll go through each one and see how Renteria’s strategy is affecting the White Sox.
To break it down, let’s start with the batting order for the last two games.
- Yoan Moncada
- Nicky Delmonico
- Jose Abreu
- Yonder Alonso
- Welington Castillo/James McCann
- Charlie Tilson
- Tim Anderson (what the heck???)
- Yolmer Sanchez
- Ryan Cordell
In the leadoff spot, you want a hitter who can get on base, but doesn’t hit for power. You want your power hitters saved until at least the two spot, so they can drive people (who are on-base) in. In the leadoff spot, Renteria placed Yoan Moncada, who does in fact hit for power.
This is a mistake, both given that it wastes his extra-base hit abilities, and that Moncada statistically has hit the best in the two spot for his career. Out of all the players in the lineup, the guy most suited to bat lead-off is probably Charlie Tilson, and Leury Garcia fits the mold as well. Moncada is probably best suited to bat second where they have…
Delmonico? The two spot should go to one of the best, if not THE best hitter on the team, and there’s no way that’s Delmonico. Nicky does have the ability to get on via walk, so if anything I’d rather have Delmonico first and Moncada second.
However, Delmonico really isn’t good enough to even bat in the top five in this lineup, and until he proves otherwise he shouldn’t be batting there. To be fair, he’s just keeping left-field warm for injured Eloy Jimenez, and I would like to see what Jimenez could do in the two-hole. Couldn’t hurt, right?
Lineup Management
Third is Jose Abreu, who’s tied for leading the American League in RBI’s. Clearly, he is getting the chance to drive in runners and doing so, so I can’t really complain here. He’s fine in the three hole, but I wouldn’t mind him batting cleanup so we can get Anderson-Moncada-Abreu all bunched up next to each other.
The cleanup spot is just the absolute worst. The cleanup hitter is one of the most important spots in the lineup, and there’s just no way that Yonder Alonso should be batting there given his current rate of production. He should be batting seventh or lower based on his current stats. Literally, anyone would be better in this spot, but to be fair the White Sox don’t have enough good hitters to have an obvious answer to the question. I’ll go with anyone-but-Alonso. Just because he’s a lefty doesn’t mean he should be batting behind Abreu, Rick.
In the five-hole, we have Castillo followed by Charlie Tilson. Typically, these spots are reserved for guys with power, and I’m not sure how they fit that description. To be fair, some evidence suggests that your six through nine hitters should go in order of descending speed, and Tilson is pretty fast. I’d rather use him in the lead-off spot, or put him ninth and use him as a sort of second lead-off man.
Seventh is Anderson, which makes no sense other than that he wears no. 7, and players used to be given a number based on their batting order position. Even if he is in a slump, there’s no way that Anderson should be batting lower than fifth or sixth in this lineup, he’s too important to this team for now and the future.
There’s no way that the 2019 White Sox lineup is good enough that the American League Player of the Month for April should be batting seventh. This is inexcusable. Renteria’s justification? “He was doing pretty good when we batted him there early this season”. So does this mean if the Sox call up Luis Robert and bat him in eighth or ninth and he hits well, they should keep him there? Explain that logic. That he was doing well (and his stats are still good), means he should be moved up in this sub-par lineup to get as many at-bats as possible.
How Lineup Should Be Constructed
With Adam Engel demoted, Yolmer Sanchez is now the worst hitter on this team, so he should probably bat ninth or not play at all.
The fact is that batting order doesn’t matter that much, and even a bad one will probably only cost a team a few wins over the course of the season. But given that the White Sox will never spend the money necessary to have a dominant lineup, they need to be doing everything they can to squeeze as many wins out as they can, and Renteria is just not doing it, and the batting order is another example.
If he were to just simply do the batting order based on-base percentage that would, per FanGraphs, leave them with 1. Tilson CF 2. James McCann C 3. Anderson SS 4. Abreu 1B 5. Leury Garcia 2B 6. Moncada 3B 7. Ryan Cordell RF 8. Delmonico LF 9. Castillo DH.
While I would make a few tweaks here and there, the fact that the White Sox are so far removed from this makes me wonder if the team even believes in on-base percentage at all. When Rick Hahn or Renteria are interviewed someone should ask them if they do. If they haven’t even caught up to 2002 Moneyball era understanding of how to win then this rebuild is just not going to work out.
What’s even worse than the batting order is the fact that the right guys aren’t even playing at all. Garcia is one of the best players on this team, yet he hasn’t started in either of the last two games. Based on the quality of this roster he’s more than good enough to be an everyday player and he needs to start being one.
I can sort of understand wanting to get at-bats for Delmonico/Tilson/Cordell to see what they have there, but if that’s the case they should play Garcia at second base. I’m not sure if he’s a good enough fielder to be an everyday second baseman, but they should give him a chance and use Sanchez as a defensive replacement if he isn’t.
McCann is leading the team in WAR, so while he can’t catch every day he should be at least DH-ing when he’s not catching, at least until his bat cools off. Alonso can grab some bench.
Rick Renteria’s Handling of Pitching
Moving away from the batting order, Renteria should also reconsider how he manages pitchers. While its important to limit the pitches of a young staff, he needs to stop over-managing and taking guys out of the game when they’re doing fine and not showing signs of slowing down.
This was best (or worst) exemplified in Wednesday’s game where he took out Jace Fry (a lefty), and put in struggling Kelvin Herrera to face Jose Ramirez with two outs in the ninth. Herrera threw four balls outside the strike zone, and instead of just putting Ramirez (one of the few good Indian hitters) on-base with first base open, Herrera though a pitch right down the middle that was crushed for a walk-off home run from the left side of the plate.
His reasoning for this was likely that Ramirez had only TWO hits in 17 at-bats in his career against Herrera. Has he not heard of a thing called small sample size? There’s little evidence to suggest that certain hitters own certain pitchers or vise versa. And if that is the case, it’s probably hard to know that until you have at least 50 at-bats to go off of.
Defenders of Renteria will say that the White Sox “played the percentages” and it just didn’t work out, but the fact is they didn’t play the percentages, they played the small sample size, and that doesn’t work out. If they wanted to play the percentages, they shouldn’t have put a 5+ ERA guy in to preserve a tie game in the ninth.
Or better yet just have the guys who are doing well stay in the game, and quickly remove the guys who are struggling and clearly don’t have their stuff (like when Manny Banuelos was left in to give up nine runs against the Red Sox in one inning). Stop over-managing, and stop obsessing over whether guys are righties or lefties. It isn’t working.
The last but probably most important instance of Renteria’s managing is his bunting. To his credit, he has been a little bit less bunt-happy this year than his first two years as the Sox manager, but this has been less true for the past ten games or so. With Engel demoted, there’s no one bad enough at hitting on this team where they should bunting. A bunt is literally giving an out away to the other team, one of only 27 you get per game to work with, and can kill your chance to have a big inning.
If a pitcher is letting people get on base, chances are he is struggling and you’d be better off swinging the bat against him than just giving an out away for nothing other than 90 feet of advancement. In the case of a suicide squeeze the White Sox should have players on their team who are at least good enough to hit a sac fly, which is a safer and better play.
The weirdest thing about the team’s overusing of bunts is that they aren’t even good at it. Maybe if they want the team to bunt so much, their guys should at least look like they’ve practiced it? Better yet, don’t bunt at all, ever. If they want that extra 90 feet so badly then they should try to steal a base, as there are plenty of fast guys on this team. They should never give an out away for free, but this goes back to not believing in on-base percentage…
The unfortunate fact is that no matter how badly the White Sox play, they won’t have a new manager until after the start of 2020. I’m not actually sure if this is actually a bad thing though, as it’s hard to name the guy that would be an obvious replacement. Joe Girardi? Word is he didn’t get a long with some of his young players in New York, leading to his termination. Omar Vizquel?
If he manages anything like he played the game, he will be just as bunt-happy as Renteria. Ozzie Guillen? Burned too many bridges for a reunion to happen, especially with Kenny Williams still here. A.J. Pierzysnki? Some day this might work, but for now he has no coaching experience, and he may be better suited to being the White Sox next radio guy (if he’s wants to be). Joe Maddon? This would be funny, but given how the Cubs are playing he’ll probably be extended.
Renteria’s Potential Replacement?
Given how the White Sox run things it wouldn’t surprise me if the guy they replaced was somehow worse than Renteria. Similar to when the Chicago Bears fired Lovie Smith, many Bears fans who called for this were shocked to find that the two coaches that followed him were significantly worse. Until the White Sox find their Matt Nagy version of an MLB Manager, I wouldn’t fire Renteria just to do it.
The point is for the time being, Renteria is going to be the White Sox manager. Unfortunately he is an old-school guy who manages the way the games was played when he was a player in the late 80’s and early 90’s, and doesn’t follow the new strategies of 2019 or even 2009.
The White Sox are running things like it’s still 1999, which is pretty disappointing given that when the rebuild started they claimed they were going to do things differently from now on, and dispel previous notions about their team. The only thing they have really done differently is make their team younger, which I think is a good idea, but it’s time to start employing other new strategies as well.
Next. White Sox Need More Quality Starts from Lucas Giolito. dark
Baseball decisions aside, I have no reason to believe Renteria is a dumb guy, so I would recommend he take a course in statistics or at least do something to learn about sabermetrics, beginning with reading Bill James.
This isn’t personal as I want Renteria to do a good job and help his team win more games, but unfortunately, he’s doing the reverse so something has got to change.