Holy Sheets! The Padres are loving having Gavin on their team.
You cannot blame San Diego for giving Gavin Sheets a lot of love. He is off to a great start after the Chicago White Sox left his career for dead by non-tendering him in the offseason.
He had a great spring training to earn a spot on the Padres. Sheets even managed to get a measure of revenge against his former team on his way toward making the Padres' roster when he hit a walk-off home run.
His legend grew when he came up with a huge hit to break the game against the Chicago Cubs wide open.
Petco Park is rocking as Gavin Sheets extends the lead 😤 pic.twitter.com/wada1Td05I
— MLB (@MLB) April 15, 2025
Sorry, Padres fans, but you might want to pump the brakes on thinking this start is sustainable.
That's because Sheets got off to a hot start last year, too. He had a .279/.376/.465 slash line with three home runs in 101 plate appearances for the White Sox last season.
That month, he was crushing the ball much like he is doing right now after finally getting some at-bats after Eloy Jimenez went down with his traditional injury. Sheets' OPS on April 15, 2024, was .932, which is better than his current .907.
Once the calendar flipped to May, Sheets turned into a figurative pumpkin when he hit .190 with a .658 OPS. He was even worse in July when his average was .147 with a .348 OPS and no home runs.
However, maybe the Padres have finally unlocked the power in his bat that the White Sox could not.
Gavin Sheets had a 141 wRC+ last year for the White Sox in April, then he proceeded to drop all way down to a 88 wRC+ to end the year.
— Julian (@Julian4948) April 15, 2025
He’s at 151 rn for the Padres, will history repeat itself? Or is he actually “fixed”?
It would not be the first time a player escaped the South Side of Chicago and produced to have a successful career elsewhere.
Reynaldo Lopez made the NL All-Star team with the Atlanta Braves last season after he was unable to develop into an effective starter at 35th and Shields. Although, to be fair to the White Sox, he did have some good seasons as a reliever for Chicago's American League team.
The other reason Sheets' start might make White Sox fans jealous is that Andrew Vaughn is off to a horrific start.
It makes you wonder if the Sox non-tendered the wrong player, especially since Sheets was projected to make a few million less than Vaughn.
Sheets is hitting .316/.357/.526...Vaughn is hitting .113/.175/.208.
— Sean Anderson (@Sean_W_Anderson) April 14, 2025
Vaughn got tendered for $6m, while Sheets would have cost $2m. Sheets has one fewer walk but out hits Vaughn in every other category.
VAUGHN HAS A wRC+ OF 7!
You can wonder if Sheets' wRC+ of 157 is sustainable, but it is looking rough for Vaughn to raise his current wRC+ by 90 points just to get to league average.
Vaughn needed a ninth-inning single on Sunday just to get his average back over .100.
Since the White Sox were pinching their pennies this offseason, getting this type of production from Vaughn, the team's second-highest-paid player at $5.8 million, looks like money wasted. We are talking about $5.8 million, which feels like what the Los Angeles Dodgers pay the 26th man on the roster.
To top it off, Sheets is making just $1.6 million this season.
Although the better move would have been non-tendering both and just having Tim Elko on his cheap, not eligible for arbitration pay at first, and use the $5.8 million to get some bullpen arms to be flipped at the deadline.
It is not like the White Sox gave a 28-year-old Sheets a runway to prove he could be a slugger. He got 435 games and produced just 46 home runs, so you can see why the team decided to move on.
This is not meant to bash Sheets, who was a solid citizen in the White Sox clubhouse and someone you wanted to see succeed. It is just a warning to eager Padres fans that there is a chance he will disappoint them, much like how his career panned out in Chicago.