This is the 8th most important White Sox player in 2022
The Chicago White Sox has a lot of important players. Michael Kopech was ranked as the 10th most important player on the roster and Dylan Cease came in at nine. A position player is finally being named as Yoan Moncada is the eighth-most valuable player on the roster.
The White Sox acquired Moncada along with Kopech in exchange for Chris Sale. It was a huge trade for both the Chicago White Sox and Boston Red Sox as they each got something they needed at that moment in time. Moncada has turned into a very good player.
However, he is the most polarizing player on the roster by far. There are people that think he is outstanding and people that are incredibly underwhelmed. All the people that are underwhelmed need to do are look at his stats (both traditional and analytics) on both his offense and defense.
Moncada has the ceiling as an elite player. He has the floor of what he has been so far which is a borderline all-star caliber player. He isn’t as flashy or powerful as Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert which makes him seem like a lesser player but he is incredibly good.
Yoan Moncada is one of the Chicago White Sox’s very best players on the roster.
Moncada is probably going to begin the year batting sixth. That just tells you how good the White Sox are because he would be hitting much higher in most MLB lineups. With some of the studs hitting around him, he is going to be well protected which should help him as well.
The biggest critique of him is his power. We have seen him display tremendous power but not on a consistent basis. He goes in streaks with it so if he could become a bit more consistent with his power, people will see how outstanding he can actually be.
Adding a few more home runs will make Moncada’s stat line look even better. He gets on base at a high clip but we need to see that slugging percentage go up. That is going to be his goal in 2022 and he has the talent to do so.
He is a top-five defensive third baseman in Major League Baseball. When something is hit his way, you can expect him to make the play with regularity. That even applies when it is a ball that is considered to be difficult. He gets even better when he has less time to get it over to first base.
MLB dot com knows how good Moncada is as he was ranked by them to be a top 100 player. He came in at number 82 (he was number 90 going into 2021 so it was a great improvement). It is going to be interesting to see how he plays this year with all of the expectations on the team.