White Sox set to explore life beyond Leury García

Leury García was an unorthodox candidate to become the longest-tenured White Sox, which was extended by a most unusual three-year contract, partially driven by the fact that he's the unexpected owner of the team's most significant postseason highlight since 2005.

That career seems to have come to an untimely end, although the specifics are still unsettled at this point. As Josh relayed on Sunday, Daryl Van Schouwen said García is not on the Opening Day roster, and James Fegan said García's locker was cleared out. Further news probably won't arrive until the White Sox officially settle their Opening Day roster, and that might wait until the next report on Yoán Moncada's back, which is expected on Wednesday.

It's a somber end to a winding journey that started way back in 2013, when García came to the Sox in an August waiver-wire deal for Alex Rios. Rios is a name from four managers ago, and such post-deadline trades are now prohibited.

When García first tried establishing himself after that ancient trade, I feel comfortable saying that he had the worst bat control I'd ever seen for somebody who got as many chances as he did. He hit .166/.192/.207 with 48 strikeouts to just five walks over 155 plate appearances in 2014. It was the product of terrible plate discipline and an unreliable swing path that often put the barrel nowhere close to the ball even on pitches in the zone.

That 2014 season was the only time in White Sox history a player received 150 plate appearances while posting an OPS below .400. If you use adjusted OPS to account for the era, he has two peers for that kind of playing time, but both occurred before Franklin D. Roosevelt's second term:

So the fact that he survived that season to be a trusted backup at a half-dozen positions a half-dozen years later speaks well of him, albeit in a zero-sum way. It took hard work, perseverance and personality on his part. It also took a lack of initiative and ability from the front office, because most other teams probably would've cycled him out in the process of looking for more promising options.

Not the White Sox. No, they're apparently cutting him while still owing him $11.5 million.

As a person and teammate, García didn't seem deserving of The Jeff Keppinger Treatment, but his career collapsed under the weight of Tony La Russa's love and the club's financial overextension. La Russa traveled strange lengths to defend his decisions to play García, to not pinch-hit García, to bat García third, by saying he watched García's at-bats. Yet he was exceptionally slow to notice that García's legs buckled in the batter's box due to back problems, so when it came to his favorite role player, he saw only what he wanted to see.

Most everybody else saw impending doom when the White Sox signed García to that three-year contract. That deal was done the day after my son arrived, so I had bigger things to think about, but I circled back to it when the Sox signed Josh Harrison after the lockout.

Look at this way: García is a decent choice to start a week’s worth of games, especially when he elevates his play to emulate the player he’s replacing. He’s just not an ideal choice to start a week’s worth of the season’s most important games, especially lower on the defensive spectrum. That’s exactly where the White Sox have found themselves. He’s a security blanket, but sometimes of the false-sense variety. [....]

García has speed on his side and the Sox would lose his outfield abilities, but his absence might indicate the desire to improve the outfield in such a way that rendered those skills unnecessary. Should the Sox stand pat in right, they’ll have two guys who are great for situations where Tony La Russa needs somebody, and less so for situations where La Russa needs something. Doubling down on guys who don’t offer a something means you could be one wrong turn from getting nothing times two.

And that tension nagged at me well before then, too. I floated the idea of non-tendering him in 2018. I didn't like that he ended up starting in a corner outfield spot with a busted thumb in the three-game series against Oakland in 2020. Another warning flag went up when he played every game of the 2021 ALDS, because while he was the hero of Game 3, he was as woeful as the rest of the offense the other three games.

It was nothing against García personally. He just fed into the White Sox's tendency toward complacency. Because he could cover second, short, third, left, center and right, they never seemed to try that hard to upgrade the depth. Sometimes he carried the bench by himself, like when he filled in for Tim Anderson and pre-Jr. Luis Robert without skipping a beat. But because he struggled to clear 1 WAR, he also endured extended stretches of mediocrity. And when the Sox found themselves in the unfortunate position of having to replace two starters, well, that's how García ended up playing in six of the White Sox's seven postseason games and going 3-for-21 with 10 strikeouts.

I was always OK with the Sox moving past García just because it might nudge them to find more helpful skill sets from more players, rather than counting on one rather ordinary talent to fill in damn near all the gaps.

After five years of wondering about what life looks like on the other side, we'll get a chance to see it play out. I'm not confident that Hanser Alberto and Romy González will offer meaningfully different production, but González has offered six spring homers as a compelling argument for opening the season in Chicago, and he can be freely swapped out if he's not working. As for Alberto, if he flops in a similar fashion, at least we'll learn whether Pedro Grifol is as susceptible to getting attached to players who just aren't getting it done.