Tampa Bay staff should test White Sox’s newfound contact abilities

It’s hard to establish trends after six games, especially when they’re the only six games we have to work with, and the lineup quality keeps fluctuating due to one suspension and multiple injuries.

That said, one of the White Sox’s most persistent features through the first two series should be put to the test this weekend, when their lineup’s low strikeout rate goes up against the staff that piles them up, and rather indiscriminately.

The White Sox came into this game with baseball’s fifth-best strikeout rate at 17.4 percent. To show how precious and fickle these small samples are, the White Sox had the best K rate in the league before Thursday’s game (15.6 percent), during which Andrés Muñoz and the fastest fastball the White Sox have seen outside of Aroldis Chapman struck out the side.

We can call it an encouraging start if nothing else, because the reduction in strikeout rate from 2021 only has one team topping it at the moment:

But we could have a better idea of whether the increase in contact is a feature of the White Sox or the pitching staffs they’ve faced after the weekend, because the Tampa Bay Rays come rolling in with the second-best strikeout rate in baseball …

1. Mets, 28.9
2. Rays, 28.8
3. Giants, 27.9
4. Padres, 27.1
   White Sox, 27.1

… and it’s because they get whiffs both inside and outside the zone. They have baseball’s lowest overall contact rate at 68.5 percent, and no other team is below 70 percent.

But the Rays have small sample size concerns of their own. They opened their season against the Orioles and Athletics, neither of whom have designs on making tons of contact this season, so they might be seizing a stat-padding opportunity of their own.

Then again, the Rays might’ve been able to pad their stats early by facing the Orioles and Athletics, neither of whom have designs on making tons of contact this season.

Conversely, the White Sox come into this weekend with baseball’s highest contact rate at 80.8 percent, which is a product of both conscious additions and gradual internal improvements. They didn’t look intimidated by last year’s Cy Young winner in Robbie Ray, and while Logan Gilbert pushed White Sox righties around by commanding both sides of the plate, he only struck out four over five innings himself. That’s when Muñoz came in and showed everybody what overpowering truly looks like.

That said, the Rays have bullpen arms of their own. If the White Sox were further wrestled down to average by a deep Tampa Bay pitching staff, nobody should be surprised by regression this early. If they somehow get through the weekend running their streak of single-digit strikeout games to nine, we’ll have a slightly better idea of how sticky this improvement might be.

Of course, if the lineup is still missing Josh Harrison and Eloy Jiménez on top of A.J. Pollock’s absence there may be only so much to glean one way or another. This is why most people try not to extrapolate an entire season off the first 5 percent of games, as tempting as it may be. This is also why I’m avoiding detailing Leury García’s season-opening confidence crisis for a second consecutive season.

Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon