Yoán Moncada’s slow fade from White Sox still lingers
If you only looked at the 40-man roster listed on the official White Sox website — and nobody would blame you for going straight to what should be the source — you’d be led to believe that Yoán Moncada was still a part of the team well after they should have declined his $25 million club option for 2025.
Here’s the screenshot as Monday, 11/11 at 11:11 p.m.:
There’s no need to panic. The White Sox did indeed document the declining of said option in an official press release, also on the team site, 10 days earlier. The Sox went 1-for-2 in clerical tasks here, but at least they completed the one that counted.
Still, it’s fitting that Moncada’s White Sox career died as it died: being around and not around at the same time, semi-existing as Schrödinger’s Bat. During the last two weeks of the season, he was still on the roster, but he might as well been out of the organization entirely, given that the White Sox only called upon him once, and under the most extreme of circumstances (a 12th-inning pinch-running appearance). Now he’s out of the organization entirely, but his name remains as a ghost image, burned onto a screen that stayed the same for too long.
That wasn’t what Rick Hahn had in mind when he traded for Moncada as the headliner in the Chris Sale trade that kicked off the Second Rebuild, which now gets both letters capitalized to denote the confirmed end of a historic era.
It also wasn’t what Hahn had in mind when he extended Moncada for five years and $70 million about a week before world shut down in March 2020. When spring training resumed in the summer, Moncada had contracted the novel coronavirus, and he’d never come close to matching the career year in that inspired the extension.
COVID-19 played a part in it, at least initially. Moncada’s admission of the virus taking a toll on him merely confirmed the numerous scenes where he looked detectably depleted. When normalcy gradually returned and Moncada still didn’t come close to reaching the power he showed in 2019, when he hit .315/.367/.548 with 25 homers in 132 games, long COVID remained a possibility, especially when a similar-sounding malady identified as a sinus infection dragged him down the following June.
But the fact that the White Sox committed to Moncada after the specific season of 2019 probably did more to warp expectations, because time revealed it to be a particular perverse power environment, That was the year in which the Twins (307 homers), Yankees (306), Astros (288) and Dodgers (279) each cleared the previous MLB single-season record for homers by one team, which the Yankees set with 267 one year earlier.
When you go through the leaderboards from 2019, Moncada has plenty of company in posting home run numbers that he’s never approach in his next-best season. Here’s an incomplete list:
| Player | 2019 | After |
|---|---|---|
| Yoán Moncada | 25 | 14 |
| Eloy Jiménez | 31 | 18 |
| Cody Bellinger | 47 | 26 |
| Joc Pederson | 36 | 23 |
| Max Kepler | 36 | 24 |
| Mitch Garver | 31 | 19 |
| Gleyber Torres | 38 | 25 |
| Alex Bregman | 41 | 26 |
| George Springer | 39 | 25 |
| Trey Mancini | 35 | 21 |
| Kole Calhoun | 33 | 16 |
| Christian Yelich | 44 | 19 |
| Jeff McNeil | 23 | 12 |
| Michael Conforto | 33 | 20 |
And that doesn’t include other strange career highs, like Eugenio Suarez and Jorge Soler making runs at 50 homers, Miguel Sanó blasting 34 dingers over 105 games, or Brett Gardner popping a .503 slugging percentage at age 35. It turned out the ball was rocketing over fences due to a considerable loss of drag, and in 2021, Major League Baseball announced plans to deaden it.
The quality control at Rawlings still leaves a lot to be desired, but the league generally accomplished its mission, and a lot of careers followed the shape of Moncada’s. Moncada’s just happened to unfold in one of the more frustrating fashions, for reasons in and out of his control.
Scouts who watched Moncada in the minors consistently documented his flat bat path, which made peak home run totals in the teens less of a shocking result than 2019 suggested. Health played a huge part, which is apparent when someone who once stole 49 bases in 81 games for Class Greenville in 2015 goes on to nab 32 bags total across parts of nine big league seasons. And while Moncada gamely played at less than 95 percent through sustained stretches, his detached affect didn’t generate a whole lot of sympathy when everything started slipping away. This is where we get into perilous territory involving aesthetic choices, language barriers (body and spoken), and stereotypes that reduces a lot of the conversation to armchair psychology and phrenology, but even if you did your best to transpose Moncada’s injury history onto, say, the reputation of Yelich, you’d still have trouble squaring up some episodes.
The “anticipated soreness” shutdown this July, for instance, followed by the team’s handling of him at the very end of the season, indicated some disconnect in desire that brought the concerns about his makeup during his prospect days full circle. I just wouldn’t pin everything on him, either, because the dominant recurring theme from the last two seasons is the White Sox being so convolutedly run as to render success on any level a happy accident.
There are a lot of players on whom the fate of the White Sox’s Second Rebuild seemed to hinge. When Tim Anderson stopped being able to stir the drink, when Jiménez wasn’t able to take the middle-of-the-order torch from José Abreu, when Yasmani Grandal’s body remembered it was that of a catcher in his mid-30s, all were felt and felt acutely.
Big picture, however, Moncada’s ability to hit right-handed pitching, play strong defense, draw some walks and steal some bases probably meant the most to the roster having any semblance of well-roundedness, and as 2019 faded further into the rearview mirror, Hahn and the White Sox front office couldn’t produce a countermove to restore balance.
Now, the onset of Moncada’s post-Sox chapter resembles that of Anderson, in the sense that he’ll have to settle for a one-year prove-it deal and consider learning multiple positions. He’s not even a consensus top-50 free agent at this point, showing up at No. 40 on Keith Law’s list and No. 46 at CBS Sports. I wouldn’t be shocked if he benefited from a change of scenery and resembled his useful 2021 form, and I also wouldn’t be stunned if he didn’t last a spring training.
The sky is no longer the limit, but the range of outcomes remains pretty wide. It’s just that because he played for the White Sox, that range just happens to expand into some pretty depressing territory.
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The most appropriate outcome is he signs a minor league deal or 1 year deal, looks good in spring training and makes the team and comes out blazing but then gets hurt in the middle of April and the usual happens.
I probably defended Moncada more than Eloy but I truely don’t know which one I’m more disappointed in. When Eloy got hurt it was (usually) doing something usually stupid while Moncada it was usually something innocuous but never seemed to go away.
Eloy had the big personality while Moncada came off reserved so you cheered more for Eloy.
That and Eloy was more likely to hit a 430-ft bomb. I’m disappointed in both about equally. Robert, until this year, at least regularly produced at roughly a 5WAR/162 pace. Don’t know what happened this year, but any bounce back could make a three-game difference in their fortunes.
What happened was probably the same thing as the previous times Robert looked like crap – they brought him back from an injury before he was healed and he settled into bad compensatory habits when he shouldn’t have been on the field in the first place.
Eloy got hurt a lot doing innocuous things, like running or swinging the bat. You know, minor baseball things.
Eloy and Moncada were frustrating for same but different reasons. Eloy would get hurt doing something baseball related, comeback when healthy and right as it looked like he was starting to get locked in again suffer another full stop injury. Moncada would suffer a pulled hamstring in May and it felt like it would linger till August.
Eloy is the sadder of the two for me just cause of how fun he was in 2019 before the injuries completely took his power away by 2023. I will always believe that the reason the Cubs gave him up for Quintana even though it looked like a heist by the Sox at the time is they saw him playing/practicing every day in the minors and even with the big power and personality knew he was just never going to be healthy cause of how awkward he made everything look.
Eloy is sadder because he looks like he is already out of baseball at 28 (I can’t believe he is that young). Moncada looks more capable to stay in the game for a bit longer. Additionally, Eloy’s problem is no only that he gets hurt easily, but he is just not a good hitter anymore. He has troubles lifting the ball up in the air, and for an slugger with zero speed and zero glove, putting the ball into the air is kinda essential.
Moncada, Eloy and Anderson should all be in the prime of their careers. It is amazing how far each has fallen.
Will Robert be next?
What in the heck happened?
Well, the one thing they have in common…
Getting paid before they were proven players?
They all got coached by White Sox coaches for way too long. At this point, that’s pretty much proven to be bad for you. Ask Fernando Tatis. Or Miguel Vargas. Or Kopech.
I think a lot of us thought that Andersons career would end quickly when things started to turn from age/injury cause even at his peak his numbers were very unsustainable looking that he made work cause of the talent.
Anderson’s game depended almost entirely on his legs being in good shape with almost no margin for error. Once his legs started to falter, the margin of error became too big and his hitting skills disappeared almost instantly.
Who exactly was saying that when he hit the walkoff homer in Iowa?
That list harkens back to post-Steroids era home run totals drop off. Live ball, dead ball, isn’t there a happy medium in there somewhere?
I’m not sure if I should refer to Hahn’s tenure as ‘The Demise’ or ‘the demise’.
Sign guys who walk and don’t expand the strike zone only to strike out or make weak contact. Power is great, but it does little good if you can’t get to it in games. It’s also expensive, and we know ol’ Jerry isn’t shelling out any real money this off-season. So let’s go the Guardians route and just get guys who know how to get on or move the runner over.
Magnificent article I decided to read as my accompany lunch activity. Well worth the wait. Thank you Jim.
Moncada and Kopech are exhibit A on why they should not trade Crochet. These were two of the best prospects in baseball back in 2016, and it doesn’t equate to playoff appearances or wins. Tarik Skubal is proof that the White Sox are closer to a playoff series win with Crochet than without him. You don’t trade players that can single handedly win playoff games, this is the whole point. Extend Crochet because its impossible to get equal value back.
The flip side of this is that the teams with the prospects value playoff appearances over playoff wins. BAL/MIL/TB/CLE love their prospects and won’t give their best guys for Crochet, even though he’s exactly what they need. Instead they are shopping him to watered down systems like LAD/Yanks/BOS/Philly where we most certainly get a weaker return.
LAD and Yanks I agree. Boston is loaded with hitters, 3 in MLB top 10, 5 in top 54. Philly has 4 in top 55.
I extended Crochet in my OPP. Moncada and Kopech, sure, but what about Q for Cease or Eaton for Giolito & Co? When you’re team is filled with holes, you sometimes have to take some swings to try to fill them.
Crochet is no Juan Soto, obviously, but both Soto trades are a blueprint for how to pull these off well. Two separate teams have set themselves up for the future at multiple positions because they traded Soto. Nats got Gore, Abrams, and Wood; Pads got King and Thorpe (who they flipped for Cease).
I hope they extend him, not least because that will show at least some version of seriousness about winning in the next three years. But trading him—although a gamble—makes some sense, too….. if Getz can get fair value.
His next chapter is obvious: a duet with Jose Iglesias.
Schrödinger’s Bat
Another good one, Jim!
I love watching healthy Yoan Moncada play baseball. I hope he catches on somewhere and has a few seasons with good health. It would suck for him to go out like this.
Your point about the ball being juiced in 2019 is a good one. Still, Yoan was really good that year. He had an OPS+ of 140, good for 14th in the majors, and he played a well-above average 3B by all measures, including the eye test. Boy, was it fun to watch him throw. I’ll always remember that Yoan, and wonder what might have been if he hadn’t caught COVID.
In a very small sample size last year, he looked pretty good before he got hurt, and a reasonably healthy Yoan Moncada probably would have kept the Sox from losing 121 games. Of course, the Sox didn’t have one of those, and questions about his makeup understandably persist. But his performance in 11 games in April of 2024 would lead me to take the over on his 2025 season, although it certainly should take place somewhere else.
Still curious as to what exactly Moncada did to make the Sox punish him in September. I actually can’t think of another recent situation where a team chose to publicly embarrass a player like that.
I don’t remember where I read it, but there were rumors that Moncada’s languid effort was apparent and that he didn’t apply himself enough during his rehab assignment.
That sounds likely – but they were just rumors and I’m not sure there was any official reporting acknowledging this.
During the “anticipated soreness” shutdown, the Sox pivoted to saying “it’s up to him” for when Moncada would be ready. That came along people with the team saying off the record that they didn’t really understand what the holdup was. He had hit the performance benchmarks they wanted but was reporting discomfort.
Taking off my reporting hat and putting on my speculation visor, even after a lengthy rehab, players are going to feel a little weird for a while coming off a major injury like the one Moncada had. Most players are trying to push the envelope on their return anyway, because you get paid–now and in the future–for being on the field (see any interview Tim Anderson gave about his knee during the 2023 season).
The team’s grievance seemed to be that Moncada wanted to feel absolutely 100%, since he certainly had his share of poor experiences trying to grind through. That approach was never going to happen on a timeline that was helpful to the White Sox, who were banking on his return after the All-Star break to keep them from doing things like rushing up Brooks Baldwin or signing Nick Senzel. Also seemed like Moncada wasn’t in some big hurry to return to a team chasing historic infamy under a manager who was about to get fired, for a franchise that was going to cut him loose at the end of the year no matter what. So when Moncada was ready by the time they were giving Miguel Vargas and Bryan Ramos late-season run, the Sox weren’t really feeling the idea of moving things around to give him a send-off.
Thanks for this perspective, James.
The White Sox did very well overall with the core when considering the total amount paid and production over their entire White Sox career. The Sox failed because Hahn couldn’t put together a solid roster beyond them, and TLR brought in guys he had relationships with that were at the end of their careers.
Contracts over $10M + Total Paid by the White Sox:
($ per bWAR = Total $ Paid vs. Total White Sox bWAR)
Hahn 2013-2023
$2.3M Tim Anderson (2016-2023) ($37M / 16.2)
$3.6M Jose Abreu (2014-2022) ($115M / 31.9)
$3.6M Mike Clevinger (2023) ($12M / 3.3)
$4.2M Luis Robert Jr. (2020-2024) ($58M / 13.9)
$4.4M Yoan Moncada (2017-2024) ($66M / 14.7)
$6.8M Kendall Graveman (2022-2023) ($13M / 1.9)
$7.5M Eloy Jimenez (2019-2024) ($38M / 5.1)
$9.7M David Robertson (2015-2017) ($28M / 2.9)
$14.2M Liam Hendriks (2021-2023) ($54M / 4.2)
$14.2M Leury Garcia (2022-2024) ($17M / 1.2)
$24.8M Yasmani Grandal (2020-2023) ($62M / 2.5)
$39.1M Dallas Keuchel (2020-2022) ($43M / 1.1)
$55.0M Welington Castillo (2018-2019) ($11M / 0.2)
Neg bWAR Kelvin Herrera (2019-2021) ($13M/ -0.5)
Neg bWAR Andrew Benintendi (2023-2024) ($28M/ -0.6) – Through 2024
Excludes players signed for over $10M that the Sox paid less than $10M total due to a trade and/or reductions on 2020 pro-rated contracts. All amounts obtained via Spotrac.
$7.6M Lance Lynn (2021-2023) ($39M / 5.1)
I don’t recall hearing these two getting dfa’d. Anyhow, I could see Nicky back on a much reduced salary or maybe he goes to a team with a chance in hell.
I don’t recall hearing these two getting dfa’d. Anyhow, I could see Nicky back on a much reduced salary or maybe he goes to a team with a chance in hell.
DFA is a move made in order to immediately clear 40-man spot, usually to make room for someone. Seems like they just quietly placed them on outright waivers
d’Arnaud gets 2/$12 mil from the Angels. Seems like C will be a little pricey this winter if that holds up.
semi-existing as Schrödinger’s Bat.
This is why it’s worth it to pay for access
If Sale, Eaton and Q were traded to kick off the “2nd rebuild”, when was the first?
2013.
1921.
If you think about it, aren’t we still in the 1921 rebuild?
This won’t be a popular post, but once again we are over-valuing our hometown players. Crochet has had one very good half year. Even though many teams are inquiring, they aren’t offering their top prospects. Good one’s yes, top one’s no. The jury is still out on his health and his ability to be a starter that can go 6 innings an entire year. Add in his ridiculous contract demands last July that prevented the Sox of improving themselves (although traded for players would have been Getz’ decision), I think Crochet’s greatest value is to sign him for the $2.9m arbitration eligible amount and the team’s control, not his potential. Don’t get me wrong, I think Crochet will continue to be a good person for life…his arm, not so much. Teams may be thinking he’s an injury waiting to happen. Signing pitchers longer than 3 years is a risk. It will be years before the Sox are good again and Crochet by that time will be taking advantage of free agency. Trade NOW!
He had a better xFIP in the second half than in the first, just more hard contact. He maintained the high strikeout rate and low walk rate. He had 14 bad innings in August, but bounced back with 17 excellent September innings.
His track record is convincing enough for Steamer to project him as the 4th most valuable starting pitcher in 2025 between Zack Wheeler and Tarik Skubal. There is not much urgency to trade him now as opposed to two months from now.
The White Sox and all other teams know there is injury risk there. Trading him now isn’t going to change that, as teams aren’t going to spontaneously discover that pitchers get hurt in the meantime.
I would disagree slightly, urgency comes from when your preferred partners are ready to deal. That may be tomorrow or 2 months from tomorrow but you need to have a sense of urgency for either.
There’s also the urgency to firm up your own roster, examples are the cost the 2 sub-optimal trades for a RF last year from panic buys had because they let Cease trades dominate their attention.
Who is “we” and how are “we” overvaluing him? Can you provide an example of what you have in mind?
For what it’s worth, sportrac sets Crochet’s market value at 6 years, $130m, or ~$22m/year. Since the team acquiring him would only be on the hook for 2 years, the AAV should go way up. But let’s assume it doesn’t for the sake of argument. Sportrac says two years of Crochet should be worth ~$44m. He’s set to make ~$3m in ’25 and let’s be generous and guess $12m for ’26, for a total of two years, $15m. That puts his surplus value at just under $30m.
Another third party opinion: see how Baseball Trade Values ranks Crochet among other young players/prospects for the Sox and O’s (only other team on the free version) in surplus value (in parentheses):
A lot hinges on how you are defining “top prospects” or “good ones.” Crochet probably isn’t going to return a top 20 prospect in baseball. But he should return something in the ballpark of two top 100 prospects. I expect something like the Cease return, except maybe slightly lighter because of the focus on hitters.
I would offer Crochet five years and $100 million for the next five seasons, with this deal replacing his current one. This would give him financial security, and we would keep an ace pitcher.
If has turned down such an offer, then he should be dealt.
I like the approach to extend Crochet.
Whatever his trade value may be, it’s hard to see it going up from here. It’s fine for Getz to pretend that he might wait until later in the spring, as he did with Cease, but other teams will surely assume that Getz wants to sell now, and he should, especially if he wants to get back a bat that can play on the Sox next year. Will the return be less than fans hope? Probably. But the Sox can’t afford to see Crochet’s value go down. So make the best deal you can now.