José Abreu set his sights higher during his best week ever

In a 60-game season, one week can make a world of a difference for a season’s body of work.

In the P.O. Sox bag for Monday’s podcast, Mark asked:

Does José Abreu get a statue and/or his number retired if his career ended this year? If no what does the rest of his career need to look like in order for either of those to happen?

When Abreu was hitting .247/.289/.412 through the desultory doubleheader against St. Louis, this question could have been treated as “How much does Jerry Reinsdorf’s affection dictate how much the next two years play out?”

Now that Abreu is hitting .322/.365/.669 with league-leading totals in the homer and RBI columns after eight crazy days and nights, that question can be presented without cynical trappings.

Abreu pulled himself from one extreme to another with a week unlike any other. He went 17-for-33, and 11 of those hits went for extra bases. Of those 11 extra-base hits, eight of them left the yard. Of those eight homers, four were hit in consecutive plate appearances at Wrigley Field Saturday into Sunday.

On FanGraphs, you can sort league leaders over a certain date range. Doing so for Abreu over these eight days shows him astride the leaderboard in the following categories (accompanied by runners up).

  • Home runs: 8 (three-way tie with 5)
  • RBI: 16 (Randal Grichuk, 14)
  • WAR: 1.3 (Kyle Lewis, 1.0)

We’d talked earlier this month about Abreu’s defense, and how the defensive penalty for first basemen makes it hard for them to register an impressive WAR. Hitting .515/.556/1.333 is the easiest way to solve that problem.

But how did Abreu get in the position of doing so much damage? He’s been able to resist more of the pitches he’d been beating into the ground. Here’s his swing chart through the St. Louis doubleheader compared to what he’s offered at since.

If you’d rather see that in heat map form, with pitches below the strike zone highlighted:

This is mostly a product of better selectivity, but it also happens that he also hadn’t seen a whole lot of those tempting sliders. Here’s a chart of all the pitches he’s taken over the last eight games:

The hyper-aggressive swing chart above made me look for yellow and blue dots on this chart, and there aren’t many of them that are both low and over the plate. It’s probably easier to hit when he isn’t seeing many of the particular pitch giving him fits. Some of Abreu’s successes came on flat-out pitcher failures, none more pronounced than this 0-2 curveball from Rowan Wick for Abreu’s second homer on Saturday.

But he can’t control the pitches he’s seeing, just what he does with the ones he gets (looking at you, Nomar Mazara). And that leaves one to be heartened with the walk Abrew drew from Craig Kimbrel in the eighth inning. He fouled back the only damageable pitch, then resisted every breaking ball that followed. As cool as it would’ve been for Abreu to deliver a game-changing hit, Kimbrel only offered him the opportunity ground out or strike out. Abreu passed.

* * * * * * * * *

Abreu’s selectivity fluctuates over the course of the season along with the quality of competition, and I’d imagine another wave of fastball-slider righties to be accompanied by a dip in production. That said, I’m open to the idea of a real revival, if only because enough variables in this season have changed, including more pitches poorly executed. Keeping it only to elements in the White Sox dugout, we’re looking at…

Lineup support: When Abreu expands the strike zone, it’s usually explained away as a desire to be The Guy. With the White Sox outhomering opponents 27-2 over their seven-game winning streak, perhaps that’s ample evidence that there are other Guys abound.

Hitting coach: It’s too soon and weird to expect Frank Menechino to make a detectable difference over Todd Steverson, but his general level of irritation even during upswings suggests a different voice at the least, and maybe higher standards for the process beyond that.

“Everybody’s starting to barrel balls, guys are starting to hit balls out of the park, and I’m over there bitching, saying, ‘We’ve got to stop striking out,’” hitting coach Frank Menechino said. “That’s the tug and pull that’s going on here. Sometimes I’m the killjoy.”

Physical condition: Fully aware of the Best Shape of His Life trap, Abreu is playing leaner than usual.

Even if you’re inclined to emphasize age (33) over weight, better conditioning can’t hurt. I wouldn’t take look-good-play-good as a standalone reason for his improvement, but package it with a season that’s nearly a third of the 162-game grind with all the cold-weather games removed, and I think he has multiple reasons for being readier to combat the age curve at this juncture.

Abreu’s sluggish start was hard to watch, but it also made it easier to appreciate his season-reversing surge. Declines are a real threat. Then again, the White Sox were able to enjoy an early-30s revival from a right-handed first baseman last decade, so perhaps Abreu has his own Konerkossaince in him.

To circle back to the question from Mark at the top, I’d say Abreu is in “unofficial number retirement” territory at the moment. Nobody wore No. 79 before him, so I don’t think a Reinsdorf team would let somebody wear No. 79 after him, although they’d come short of posting his number on the wall. If he can somehow summon peak Pito powers here and there while enjoying a postseason run or three, greater honors require less generosity from the chairman than usual.

Update: I think everybody assumed Abreu would receive this honors, but it’s official now:

Take a second to support Sox Machine on Patreon
18 Comments
Oldest
Newest Most Voted
Inline Feedbacks
View all comments
Josh Nelson

I sense Eloy is next to demonstrate better selectivity at the plate and follow Abreu in having a hot week.

Willardmarshall

…and Robert?

Jason.Wade17

You mean the guy who just turned 23? Who 16 months ago was in High A ball. Who had 1.1 WAR through his first 100 plate appearances in his MLB career… Which is a pace of a 6 WAR season if he got a full season of at bats. He still doesn’t even have 1,000 at bats stateside yet.

Yeah, let’s worry about how he’s going to improve his plate approach…

Oddvark

It definitely would be “weird to expect Frank Menechino to make a detectable difference over Frank Menechino”

youhadmeatabreu

I believe the proper plural is Menichini. 🙂

asinwreck

The Sox may face Carson Fulmer more often in 2020 than they pitched Carson Fulmer in 2020.

#Pirates claim RHP Carson Fulmer off waivers from the Detroit Tigers and DFA outfielder Guillermo Heredia.

Fulmer, 26, made seven relief outings for Tigers this year and had 6.75 ERA, 1.65 WHIP and 9.5 K/9. He was White Sox first-round pick in 2015.

— RobBiertempfel (@RobBiertempfel) August 24, 2020

Milky✌️

Fingers crossed.

As Cirensica

That is a decent K/9 ratio…too bad anything else is bad. I think the main problem Fulmer has is consistency. It is like my golf. A fantastic drive is followed by an into the wooded area stroke or vice versa.

MarketMaker

It’s a great example of why we need to retire K/9 in favor of K%. The former tells you the ratio of strikeouts to outs. The latter tells you the ratio of strikeouts to batters faced.

As Cirensica

I agree with you.

lil jimmy

I’d say if nothing else, playing at 240 Lb. has improved his defense. More agile. Quicker first step. That’s been noticeable, and welcome.

MarketMaker

I was sending the before and after to folks, too:
Interesting split- from the start of the season until last Saturday, Abreu was hitting .247/.289/.412. From last Sunday to today, Abreu has hit .533/.563/1.333. So long story short, in a week he raised his season numbers from .247/.289/.412 to .322/.361/.652. His season went from horrible to elite in a week.
Curious where it goes from here.

MarketMaker

*pre-game Sunday

iowasox1971

I wouldn’t classify what Abreu had been doing as “horrible.” Adam Dunn in 2011 was horrible. Abreu was off to a relatively slow start a few weeks into the season. He had already had a few game-winning hits, or game-altering hits, but wasn’t quite locked in at the plate. If you’re suggesting that because he had a super-human week, his season stats shouldn’t be regarded as impressive, then I don’t agree.

MarketMaker

You’re quite disagreeable in general.

evenyoudorn

“Eight crazy days and nights” and nary a Hahnukah or “Hall of Famer Jose Abreu” in sight. This place is way too classy for me and I don’t deserve you.

GrinnellSteve

Nice article on 538 about the Cubanos leading the Sox into relevance. https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/cuban-players-are-powering-the-white-sox/