A week and a half ago now, Sam Antonacci led off the bottom of the first of a game against the Mariners with a single, stole second, tagged up and raced to third on a medium-depth Munetaka Murakami fly out to right-center.
And still he wasn't done.
"Colson [Montgomery]'s hitting," bench coach Walker McKinven recalled. "The third baseman’s in left field and Sam’s more than halfway down the line and he’s jumping around, trying to distract the pitcher. An open side for a left-handed hitter and Will [Venable's] like, 'Hey, stop,' and calms him down so he’s out of Colson’s vision, and Colson hits a homer on it. So credit to Will on that one, that was a cool moment."
"We want to just give him that feedback" Venable said. "But at the same time, don't want to take away who he is at all, what he does out there and his intensity and focus on the basepaths and on defense and at the plate is what makes him special. Definitely want to support that and support him doing his thing. But yeah, when the big shortstop is at the plate, we don't need fake breaks from third base."
If only every example of the White Sox handling Antonacci's game colliding with the majors had such clean resolutions, but the guy who walks up to the plate to Ozzy Osbourne's "Crazy Train" has seen his fair share of baserunning gambits go off the rails thus far.
Monday night's galaxy brain attempt to take third base -- from first, on a walk -- by catching fellow rookie Colt Emerson napping was registered as Antonacci's fourth caught stealing of the year in seven attempts. He's also been picked off first twice, and has two other miscellaneous outs on the bases. Per Baseball-Reference.com, the average MLB player has four outs on the bases per 600 plate appearances, but at 112 PA, Antonacci isn't even a quarter of the way there.
That's theoretically unrelated to the Tripp Gibson-led crew ruling that Antonacci intentionally dropped Julio Rodríguez's liner to second to try to start a double play in the third. Which was swiftly followed by the Mariners seemingly targeting him for a baserunning obstruction call, with catcher Jhonny Pereda intentionally initiating contact and still being rewarded a run despite Venable's protests.
It's just that Antonacci's quest to one day nab an extra base while the ball is being lazily returned to the pitcher, and seeking out baserunning obstruction calls of his own, were foreshadowed by his own comments in spring training, or by his WBC teammates anticipating his transition to the majors.
"He's playing the game hard, but him and I would have conversations all the time about what it looks like in the major leagues versus what it looked like in college," said Vinnie Pasquantino. "He'll adapt the same way the league will adapt to him, and it'll be awesome."
The White Sox have issued fair warning on how Antonacci plays the game, repeatedly offered pre-emptive endorsements of it, and even as he's run into the learning curve of which of his aggressive tactics do and don't get results at the highest level, affirm they'd rather deal with the learning moments as they come, than lose what makes Sam Antonacci so ... Sam Antonacci.
"We like the way Sam Antonacci plays baseball," McKinven said. "You coach little things, but overall we want Sam Antonacci to play baseball the aggressive way, and we will live with an overaggressive mistake here or there. But you do not want to take any of that away from him, because it’s different the way he plays. Every single opponent notices it. He stands out in a good way. He’s aggressive, he plays harder than anyone, and that’s pretty awesome."
As Sox coaches often reference, a conversation with Antonacci will often include him readily acknowledging the tighter windows of opportunity he's encountering in the majors, and the adjustments, or simply factors he must account for, in his anything for an extra base mantra.
"It's a lot easier to get away with stuff at the minor league levels," Antonacci said. "A lot of times, organizations aren't really evaluating how well they can pick someone off. They're evaluating pitches, so all they're really worried about is what their spin rates are and stuff like that in the minor league levels, not really worrying about keeping runners on. But I'm up here now and it's a whole different ball game, definitely."
But at the same time, Antonacci has well-defined theories behind a lot of his caught stealings and pickoffs, and the takeaway usually isn't to play more cautiously.
"Feel like I've made some more mistakes early on, rather than being too aggressive," Antonacci said. "The two times I got thrown out [at second] were really bad jumps. And then got picked off the other night and I was just not trusting myself, honestly, just not getting the proper lead of what I usually do. So right now, looking to just run the way that I've always ran and just continue to be aggressive no matter how many times they throw me out. They continue to give me the green light, so I believe they trust me."
There have clearly been moments where Antonacci's individual gambits gone awry are addressed by coaches and teammates -- the Venable intervention above, during the Royals series where he got picked off trying to get a huge jump off first with Murakami up at the plate, and if someone had gone over it with him or not, Antonacci was pillorying his own mistake on the obstruction call when speaking to reporters Monday night in Seattle. But overall, the White Sox sound more concerned about not breaking their wild horse than adjudicating any individual mistake.
After four games in the majors, Antonacci was 1-for-15 with just a bloop single in his first at-bat. He's known for his ability to work walks and control the strike zone, but his initial plate appearances would often see him take hittable pitches early in the count in the name of trying to have disciplined at-bats.
If you like the fact that he's hitting .298/.391/.426 now, the White Sox would argue that's a product of the same let Sam be Sam initiative.
"It was 'Be yourself, don't get to the big leagues and try to be someone you're not,'" said hitting coach Derek Shomon. "All too often guys get to the big leagues and try to be someone they're not. 'Oh I'm in the big leagues, I have to be different.' Who you are is who you are. It's who you have to be, everyone else is taken.
"The game is going to tell you what you have to refine. Do your thing, be a little psychopath and get your swing off. That's the best behavior we've been encouraging. Take a shot, try to hit balls hard, and then be that nasty, grimy, gritty bastard when you're behind in counts."
Previous attempts by the White Sox to channel the 2022 Cleveland Guardians have drawn poor reviews, but with personnel like Antonacci, Chase Meidroth and Miguel Vargas, the Sox feel a team ethos of pushing the envelope to the extremes is more organic now, and inextricable from the same commitment that has fueled 11 come-from-behind victories in their surprising 24-23 start.
"He's a guy that shows up and he plays hard and he plays with an edge," Chris Getz said of Antonacci. "He's just as excited about taking a walk as getting a base hit. Love the way that he runs hard; his 90s, his turns, he loves to put pressure on the other team. We knew we were going to see that. We knew that we were going to sense this competitive edge. Now he's been able to put together quality at-bats, get big hits for us, get on base when we've needed it and we expect that to hold."
And even after a rough night in Seattle, expect Antonacci's approach to the game to hold; certainly if the Sox have anything to say about it. Expect some small adjustments, some increased situational awareness with experience. But don't expect punitive benchings for unwise aggression, or even calmer turns around first base on obvious singles.
"I'm just looking for that opportunity to get that extra base," Antonacci said of his turns. "It's going to happen at some point. It's not going to happen often. But I've got to continue to do it so when that time does come, I'm ready to get that base.
"It's a little hard on the body for sure, but we've got resources here to take care of it. Definitely something I had to look at last year and thought about toning it down a little bit to be able to withstand a long season. But then again, you never know when the game is going to be your last, so I threw that idea out the door and decided to keep going as hard as I can."
