Here Is My Formal Apology To Jose Abreu

So last week I wrote a blog on Jose Abreu and why I thought he was struggling so much out of the gate.  You can read that here:

He was objectively awful the first 15-18 games of the season or so.  I thought there was a chance that it was a decline in physical ability, as his K rate had skyrocketed and he wasn’t catching up to fastballs like he typically had over the course of his career.  I also thought he was “cheating” on fastballs which opened him up to being all the more susceptible to offspeed pitches.

I was wrong.  He was just cold.  Really cold, but it was a mere slump.  Every hitter in baseball goes through them.  But what changed?

Well, everything.  But let’s look at his numbers over the last week plus:

and compare that to his horrid start:

Simply put, the dude’s been on fire.  And his numbers would be even better if it weren’t for his boneheaded base running gaffe that literally cost him a second bomb on Friday. He’s been the Pito we all know and love.  But how’s he doing it?

I can’t link video because MLB completely blows with their video sharing policy, so let’s list them out:

1. He’s not missing fastballs.  If he gets a fastball down the middle, he’s finding a barrel.  And when 6’3″ of Cuban muscle finds a barrel, it’s going to get shit on

2. He’s not swinging at breaking pitches outside the zone.  Pitchers knew Abreu was cheating on fastballs for 15 or so games, so they would spin off sliders starting at the outside corner that ended in the LH batter’s box.  A (good) slider is designed to look like a fastball until the last second and when a hitter is cheating fastball only to receive a slider, simply put he’s fucked.  That was happening regularly with Abreu.  But now he’s back in a good spot mentally at the dish where he’s reacting to a given count and/or situation and attacking as each count should dictate.  The result?  The Pito of old.

And it’s fun to watch again.  The offense goes as Abreu goes.  He’s the model of consistency as a hitter in this game;  we know what we’re going to get out of him every single year.  So long as he’s typical Pito, the offense should be mediocre at worst, solid to good at best.  And that’s what it has been.

The White Sox offense currently ranks 4th in the AL in BA, 7th in OBP, 7th in wRC+, 7th in OPS, and so on and so forth.  This is with a slow start out of Eloy, and Yolmer Sanchez, Adam Engel, Yonder Alonso and Beef Castillo all hitting like they’re daring the front office to send them packing.

SO – I am formally apologizing to Jose Abreu.  He’s had slow Aprils before and this was just another one of them.  He’s #back and he’s anchoring the White Sox offense fantastically, as he always had.

The weather is shit this week in Chicago (shocker!) so I’m not sure how many games against Baltimore they’ll even get in, but assuming they play as scheduled, there’s no reason they can’t be over .500 by the end of the weekend.  And yes I fully expect the Sox to blow Chris Sale’s tits off his chest this weekend.

Let’s do it!