Miguel Vargas' power surge is all the rage right now for good reason, but he's actually behind Andrew Benintendi for home run rate (3.6 percent, compared to 4.9 percent). The only White Sox hitters above them -- Tim Elko (9.4) and Austin Slater (6.7) -- have had even smaller windows to establish their norms than Benintendi's two stints on the injured list have afforded him.
On the surface, the diminutive outfielder is an unlikely candidate to keep operating at a 30-homer full-season pace. He has never quite hit a ball 110 mph in a game since debuting in 2016, and his 90th-percentile exit velocity, average exit velo, bat speed and hard-hit rate all scan as someone with at most, average raw power or a tick below.
But it turns out that baseball is about skill, not just brawn. Any reader who has found themselves gawking at little Jeral Perez's power production at High-A Winston-Salem should be familiar with the ability to pull and lift the baseball allowing players to homer more than their exit velocities would suggest. More to the point, Benintendi seems fully committed to it.
"I don't think it's a secret: I'm trying to hit it to right field in the air," Benintendi said. "Teams notice that trend and they go soft away, things like that. It's different each series to see how teams will attack you. It's a cat-and-mouse game."
His pulled triple on Wednesday was on an outer half left-on-left sweeper, so he has the means to fight back against this approach, which is good since his results are stark enough to betray his intent. It's a smaller sample, but Benintendi is averaging by far the highest launch angle as a big leaguer, and his current 26.2 percent ground-ball rate would be the first time he's come in at under 30 percent in his career.
This was all part of Benintendi's stated goal upon arrival to Chicago in 2023, having just transitioned from the spacious environs of Kauffman Stadium to the inviting short porch of Yankee Stadium. Lingering wrist discomfort prevented him from showing it much in his first year, and by his description, just playing poorly kept him from accessing his pull power in the first half of last year. But now there's a 26-item sample of what Benintendi was envisioning, and it's pretty consistent.
In the coming weeks, or maybe not until next July given all the money involved, a fancier version of this graph could be used by Chris Getz to convince a rival GM that Benintendi has crafted his game to thrive in their ballpark.
For now, and also relevant more broadly than the strange regional fascination that is White Sox baseball, a player who had scouts slapping 70 grades on his hit tool in the minors, whose one All-Star Game appearance was directly related to batting .300 for a full season just three years ago, now thinks that chasing batting average is for the birds. He cites multiple reasons, and scholars can debate which ones sound more like a 10-year major league veteran grousing about the game evolving around him, but he speaks with the perspective who has already resolved himself to evolve alongside it.
"The game now is different and I feel like batting average has gone out the window," Benintendi said. "It's all OPS. That's about the only thing I feel people pay attention to anymore is OPS. Regardless of how you get a high OPS, I think that's where the game is going. Do I like it? No. But that's what guys chase now and it gets you paid better. That's the priority. It's not what I'd like to do, but that's where the priority is."
Substitute OPS for simply objective offensive production, in a game where competitive teams have learned to stop caring about the aesthetics of how they get it, often at the cost of the most entertaining version of the product, and this is pretty much a mainstream baseball opinion. Benintendi just also feels that pitching has evolved in a way that maximizing increasingly rare opportunities has become the smarter approach. Pitches to hit are too rare to take satisfaction in low line drives.
"I forget who we were facing, [but I had a game] where I didn't get one pitch in the middle of the zone to hit," Benintendi said. "Everything was either edge or just off. When you get a pitch over the middle, you have to do something with it. If you don't, you might not get one for another game or two."
"There's so much information you get now with hitters and pitchers. And honestly I think pitchers have a bigger advantage in the game than hitters do. Guys are throwing harder, they know where your cold zones are. Even if you get a pitch in a hot zone it's not a given you're going to do anything with it. Of course everyone is throwing harder offspeed and I think use of the fastball is going down, too. The arms were facing now, it's a lot different that it used to be."
Benintendi's resurgence over the final two months of last season was tied to his adoption of a quicker toe tap rather than the leg kick he employed upon arrival in Chicago. At the time, he said it was necessary more so to give him time to adjust to offspeed and breaking pitches that are 90 mph and harder, rather triple-digit fastballs. Even as he works to restore his ability to lash outer half offspeed for singles to left field, that remains the centerpiece of his case for why prioritizing contact isn't the most realistic route.
"Every year it gets tougher," Benintendi said. "I've never seen so many 103 mph fastballs. Guys are throwing 95 mph splitters. [Jhoan] Duran from the Twins is throwing 100 mph splitters. It's crazy."
Benintendi has been batting third or fourth in the White Sox lineup this season, and with the dearth of power in the batting order, he'd stand out as a necessary contributor of thump despite his two separate 20-homer seasons representing the peak of his potential. But even if a power-oriented Benintendi wasn't what the team needed, it looks like the more efficient option when he's stroking his best contact to the hitter-friendly right field porch at Rate Field. And that's what the game demands.
