As of Friday night, Tristan Peters has now overtaken Luisangel Acuña for the team lead for starts in center field, and given the latter's multi-faceted struggles, his margin only figures to widen in the coming days and weeks.
Peters didn't always get the most regular opportunities to play center field when he was coming up through the minors, but the bet the White Sox made on his defense being viable out there looks like an unqualified success from a metric standpoint, thanks to what Statcast has graded out as the second-best outfielder jumps in the league.
"Ever since spring training, he's been coming out for early work," said first base coach José Leger. "He wants to be better. He wants to work. He wants to work on that first step, and he's been really good at it. Like the pre-pitch [movement], every pitch, if you watch him, he doesn't take a pitch off. He hops, and he's always ready to go, expecting the ball being hit to him. That part in the first step has been our focus, and he's done it."
While he was sweating out the final days of spring training to see if he'd crack the opening roster, the 26-year-old native of Winkler, Manitoba, said he was told upon being acquired in December that the White Sox valued him for his defense and his swing decisions, and felt pretty confident he could deliver on those. But what's missing from his current .265/.330/.313 batting line, and what Peters has been working on since the offseason, is creating more impact.
"I've been working on it for a couple of years now," Peters said of his efforts to add bat speed. "I was at Driveline this offseason and worked on it there a lot. I like their weighted bat program. It was definitely a focus this offseason. I was a little familiar already with it. It's pretty easy too. It's not so drill-based as it is just the bats, and you're swinging with them. Driveline did have some drills to go along with it, but it was pretty easy to pick up, pretty easy to learn."
His overall bat speed is still solidly below-average (69.7 mph), but that's still a 1.4 mph bump from the previous year. Like many Sox hitters looking to produce more thump, Peters also sets up his hands quite low in his stance, which is modeled after the power swing of his former Rays teammate Brandon Lowe. He does stipulate that it's as much about setting up a timing mechanism to counter his natural tendency to bring his hands up when he loads as it is about his swing path, but Peters puts the ball in the air with regularity (32.1 percent ground-ball rate).
It's just that at this point, you easily could make a sizzle reel of all Peters' hard-hit balls that found gloves, died at the warning track, or that he couldn't keep fair. So, I did.
"Just seeing that it was a hard-hit ball, what can I really be upset about if my swing is in a good spot," Peters said of trying to comfort himself by focusing on exit velocity readings. "It's definitely frustrating at first when it happens and then I go back to the dugout and it's, 'I know I did everything I could. I hit the ball hard and that's the goal.' It happened last series against the Angels; I hit the ball hard and it was right at guys."
Peters prefers not to continue the weighted bat training during the season, saying he wants his swing to feel consistent throughout once the games start. So despite his self-assurances that hard hit balls are the entire goal, it might be useful if the game offered some affirmation to his offense soon. His 32.9 percent chase rate on pitches out of the strike zone is still well above his Triple-A baselines that excited the White Sox, and he can be guilty of pressing with his mechanics as well.
"I want to get my A-swing off and I know I have a problem with almost over-swinging," Peters said. "And then my bat speed takes a hit when I do that. So for me, I think it's about thinking just [swing] nice and easy. I can't force it."
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At the time of his signing, the White Sox portrayed themselves as having more tolerance for the risk that Munetaka Murakami's profile offers than many would-be suitors, rather than having a wholly different view of his abilities than the rest of the sport. And even a recent ESPN feature surveying the level of regret around the league for whiffing on Murakami seems to nod as much, if not more to some relevant adjustments the slugger has made, rather than a conclusion that all other MLB front offices simply can't evaluate.
But the only way to fairly grade top team decision makers is by judging the product they put on the field, so Chris Getz should enjoy all the congratulatory calls and texts he gets. They're probably more fun than the types of quips he was subject to in 2024.
"I've gotten those calls," Getz said. "Matter of fact I got a couple this week, and one GM said, 'Congratulations, you beat the industry on this one.' That was nice to hear, and it's worked out and we feel really excited about having him in a White Sox uniform, and he's helping us win baseball games."
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After reaching base three more times Friday night, Miguel Vargas now has just as many walks as strikeouts (27) thanks to the third-lowest swing rate on pitches outside the strike zone in baseball. Thanks to his bat speed gains, and last year's mechanical tweak to cover elevated four-seamers, he has the power production (.203 ISO) to provide above-average production (120 wRC+) that seemed unlikely a month ago (the comments under that bat speed story linked above are deeply skeptical).
It's to the point that Sox hitting coach Derek Shomon thinks all my questions about what tweaks Vargas made to get to this level are kind of missing a larger truth.
"Good hitter, period," Shomon said. "But there's always maintenance, and I don't think many hitters are free of that. So when I say maintenance, there's little boxes we've got to check every day to make sure things are aligned, and that he's feeling sexy. Take that and then pair it with a guy that makes contact and makes good swing decisions, and a lot of good shit happens on the field."
