Back on April 25, the White Sox thumped the Rangers 8-4. Michael Kopech picked up the win by dominating in a spot start, racking up 10 strikeouts over five innings of one-run ball. Nick Madrigal went 2-for-4 with a double, two runs and two RBIs from the ninth spot, which raised his average to .308. Yermín Mercedes went 1-for-4 with a walk, which lowered his season slash line to .429/.474/.671, but was still enough to sustain his Rookie of the Month mojo.
Andrew Vaughn ... did not play, but that was the part of the season where Tony La Russa limited Vaughn's exposure to mostly tailor-made situations, to the point that every lineup tweet that didn't include Vaughn's name prompted its share of irked replies.
For the final P.O. Sox mailbag of the month, Steve submitted the following question:
In what order will these guys finish in the ROY voting: Mercedes, Madrigal, Vaughn, Kopech? I can see all 4 getting votes.
I changed my answer probably three or four times over 10 minutes because I could make arguments for at least three out of the four based on likely playing time post-regression, which stats they'd be the likeliest to accrue, so on and so forth. It was a good question to which I didn't have a convincing answer. I'd look up what I actually settled on if it actually mattered.
Alas, smash-cut to Monday when the Baseball Writers Association of America released its Rookie of the Year voting, and the exercise remained theoretical.
On the surface, the White Sox getting frozen out of ROY consideration doesn't mean a whole lot. I remember that Luis Robert finished second in last year's race with Kyle Lewis, but I had to look up where Eloy Jiménez finished in 2019 (fourth).
It's a little troubling that the White Sox had three different rookies set up perfectly for ROY consideration, and none of them even merited a reflexive thought. Mercedes had a supernova start and a supernova finish. Madrigal tore his hamstring then got traded. Kopech's own hamstring injury limited him to the quiet medium-leverage life over the last three months of the season. Vaughn had the toughest set of adjustments to make, and he ultimately had to settle for treading water.
The lack of award-worthy rookie seasons contributes to the undercurrent of unease beneath what should be an otherwise solid 93-win roster. While runner-up votes don't result in any kind of official recognition, they do symbolize the settling of a position. Jiménez's fourth-place finish signaled that left field was his, and Robert's silver medal cemented his spot in center. Meanwhile, an outfield corner, second base and the back end of the rotation all remain on Offseason Plan Project shopping lists because Madrigal got hurt then got dealt, and nobody else authoritatively staked their claim.
The best is probably yet to come, but everybody involved was probably hoping that the Sox would have at least one candidate on this list. A full season of Madrigal might not surpass Wander Franco for a spot on the podium, but it'd free up bandwidth and resources to tackle other problems. Instead, everybody's going to have to think a little deeper or hope a little harder when it comes to figuring out how much the in-house solutions can actually solve.
(Photo by Frank Jansky/Icon Sportswire)
