Nicky Delmonico’s starts stir White Sox-specific fears

If I’ve learned anything unique from the first two days of the coronavirus-shortened season, it’s that the manager risks catching hell for treating the last week of July as the first week of the season, even though it’s the first week of the season.

Normally, a manager would use all his position players, starters and relievers over the course of the first series or two, and while some fans tear their hair out over every lineup, most everybody else would understand the reason for choices that aren’t optimized.

From the backup catcher taking the day game after a night game to a rookie batting in the bottom third during his first swings in the majors, Rick Renteria trotted out a pretty normal Game 2 lineup on Saturday.

It’s harder to contextualize the natural instinct to get everybody’s feet wet when the first week of the season accounts for 10 percent of the schedule, rather than 3-4 percent, especially after a sample of 1.

Leury García showed what a difference a day can make when “a day” also counts as “half the season to date.” On Opening Day, García flubbed multiple plays and went 0-for-3 with a walk on Opening Day. Nick Madrigal could’ve done all that.

A day later, García handled all chances without incident and belted two homers in Game 2. It’s safe to say Madrigal couldn’t have done the same.

García is undoubtedly a major-league player, and a fascinating one. Through age 25, he owned a career line of .188/.225/.237 over 153 games, and he was almost as much of a pitcher as he was an outfielder. That he’s become a second-division center field starter who can get by on the contact he makes registers as a triumph, even if it results in really goofy full-season numbers. A guy with a sub-.100 ISO shouldn’t strike out 130 times in a season. A guy with a .310 OBP probably shouldn’t have been on pace for 100-plus runs over 162 games. Nobody who looks as frequently in over his head as García redeems himself as often as García.

García is a fine example of why the finer points of Renteria’s lineup choices for the first week or so should be ignored. The first two games are the first two games, regardless of whether the season has 100 fewer games this time around.

* * * * * * * * *

But … I don’t think Nicky Delmonico’s two starts count as a finer point, because he’s the guy Madrigal would actually be replacing. To me, that point looks as thick as his eye black, perhaps because it shares traits with several different real-time disasters during my blogging career, such as it is.

Dewayne Wise, leadoff man: In 2008, Wise came out of nowhere to give the White Sox some outfield versatility as the Sox navigated the worst of Nick Swisher and Carlos Quentin’s wrist injury. He hit six homers and stolen nine bases in limited regular-season action, then did what he could in the Sox’s four-game ALDS loss to Tampa Bay (2-for-7, a homer and 5 RBIs in three games).

His .293 OBP suggested that the Sox shouldn’t ask much more of him, but the Sox guaranteed him a roster spot. More than that, he led off for the White Sox in their first two games. He went 0-for-8 with four strikeouts, received a surprising amount of boos for a player who hadn’t done anything else wrong two games into the season, and Ozzie Guillen relegated him to the bottom third of the lineup for the rest of his starts. He finished the year with a .262 OBP.

The Mark Teahen extension: Back in 2010, before Teahen played his first game for the White Sox, I wrote about Teahen registering as a bad idea because he fit the description Earl Weaver cautioned against. Bill James summed it up in his Guide to Baseball Managers by saying, “What Weaver NEVER used were the guys who didn’t do anything specific, but looked good in the uniform, the .260 hitters with 10 to 15 homers, a little speed and so-so defense.” Joe Posnanski had pointed to that excerpt in a recent post at the time, adding:

I put Bill James’ thought about Earl Weaver up there because Weaver always had a point to everything he did. That was his strength. That’s what made his teams great. Every move had a specific purpose. This guy played because he was sensational defensively, and this guy played because he got on base at a very high rate, and this guy played because he destroyed right handed pitching, and this guy played because he never walked anybody, and this guy played because he was magical on the double play, and this guy played because he stole bases at a very high percentage, and this guy played because he destroyed left-handed pitching. And so on. There was always purpose to the moves. Earl didn’t want guys who could “play baseball.” He wanted guys who could “do something.”

Delmonico did something in 2017, when he was an above-average hitter from the left side. The last two years have wiped out the head start to the point that he’s a .226/313/.390 hitter lifetime. He does look good in the uniform, but what else?

September 2012: After his steady hand helped the White Sox hold first place for the majority of the first five months, Robin Ventura became overwhelmed by the expanded rosters and spent September calling upon guys who spent the year in Charlotte for the highest-leverage situations.

Those pulls might seem like they’re from the distant past, but the White Sox haven’t been in a pennant race since, which is why examples of individual roster and lineup decisions looming so large dry up. Here’s where they’ve sat in the standings with 60 games to go the last seven years:

• 2019: 16 GB
• 2018: 19.5 GB
• 2017: 16.5 GB
• 2016: 8.5 GB (5.5 WC)
• 2015: 11.5 GB
• 2014: 10 GB
• 2013: 18 GB

Also, the same guys are still in charge, and had Dioner Navarro and JB Shuck getting starts the last time they were even close to fighting for October.

In this context, it’s great that Delmonico’s first two starts have frustrated White Sox fans this much. The Sox haven’t had a chance this late in the season for most of a decade, even if it required a pandemic to make it so, and fans don’t want to see them blow it. And when they see Madrigal’s service-time manipulation lead the White Sox into one of their old bad habits — getting wrapped up in the idea of a guy, and not what he actually is — it looks a lot like a relapse from here. (And that’s double if the White Sox played themselves by falling too hard for what Nomar Mazara has never been.)

The night-and-day difference between García’s first two games show the folly in gnashing teeth right now, even if “early” came late this year. The last decade-plus shows that the White Sox still have to prove they’re past playing guys who impact no areas of the game in measurable ways. Not everything is overreacting, and for what overreacting there is, a lot of Sox fans have been waiting for small decisions to loom so large.

(Photo by Robin Alam/Icon Sportswire)

Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon