The Chicago White Sox were not good defensively especially their infield last year. It was one of the biggest factors in losing over 100 games. Injuries and ineffective play held the White Sox infield back from being a better defensive unit. They had to do something this offseason to bring the defense back to up to a major league level.
Enter the infusion of talent they brought in this off-season. Guys like Paul DeJong, Nicky Lopez, and Mike Moustakas appear to be poised to help the Sox defense succeed. Throw in some good hitting to go along with an improved defense and you have a team that’s capable of proving their doubters wrong this season.
So as was mentioned, the defense last year was abysmal. This was due to injuries to shortstop Tim Anderson and third baseman Yoan Moncada. And when Anderson was in there, sometimes he didn’t perform as well as you would expect from an All-Star. Anderson is gone and Paul DeJong is likely to take his place. We can only hope DeJong has a better year than Anderson did last year.
With all the new faces, we don’t know what the White Sox have going for them in 2024.
They are going to have three new faces, at the least, in the infield. Second base will likely have Lopez starting while at shortstop it will be DeJong. At catcher, we will see either Max Stassi or Martin Maldonado.
These new faces should help the White Sox on the defensive front as well as in the batter's box. We can only hope that the Sox can quell their opponent's offenses more in 2024. If they can’t then it’s going to be a long season and a repeat of 2023.
I believe that the players and the coaching staff will finally have grabbed ahold of the philosophy that Pedro Grifol has imparted to this club. The philosophy of giving your hardest on every play and going all out, all the time has come to the Sox and so far, this spring, minus one incident, it looks like they are living Grifol’s philosophy.
Good defense is a philosophy that all major league baseball teams need. Teams must have a good defense to survive and win in the league. This year needs to be “the year of defense” for the White Sox.
Just how good is the White Sox defense going to be in 2024? We are about to find out but we know that they should be better than they were last year. They have the talent, albeit not as top-of-the-line as some teams have and they have the coaching to get them through the season. If things start to falter, one would look for the Sox to start calling up guys from the minors to give them a shot.
There is still the off-chance that the White Sox could execute a trade and get an excellent infielder or two. They kind of missed it with the Dylan Cease trade where they could have gotten a good infielder, or two to help them. That would’ve been great. Perhaps even some minor-league depth would be attainable for the White Sox if they wanted to execute another trade in the future.
Chicago is not going to do all that well this season, but there must be at least some improvement. If the improvement comes on defense, especially in the infield, that would make things even better for the Sox in 2024.