In his second season, White Sox hitting director Ryan Fuller expected the offense to be improved.
He would not have promised the highest-scoring unit (4.74 runs per game entering Wednesday) in the American League, even when hitting coach Derek Shomon was foretelling top-10 production in spring
“At the time, it was man, we’ve got a ton of talent, but it’s going to be a lot of things coming together the right way to achieve that,” Fuller told the Sun-Times.
Fuller refers to Shomon, assistant hitting coach Joel McKeithan and major league assistant Tony Medina as the “boots on the ground,” rallying Sox hitters through day-to-day challenges, and reinforcing larger initiatives. Broadly, the White Sox are scoring more this year because they are hitting for more power than anticipated.
Colson Montgomery, Munetaka Murakami and Miguel Vargas all posting 30-homer campaigns lead an offense that is sixth in MLB in home runs, and looks primed to clear the 200-homer threshold for the first time since 2012. The raw pop of Murakami and Montgomery was previously established. For others, it had to be developed.
“Last year, 30th in bat speed; we don’t want to be last in any meaningful category, so obviously that was a focus,” Fuller told the Sun-Times. “It’s the fifth highest year-over-year bat speed increase in the big leagues, so a lot to be proud of.”
With Chase Meidroth, Sam Antonacci, and Vargas being the largest beneficiary, Fuller says the increased capacity for hard contact is three-pronged. Vargas is also the best example of a player that was challenged to add strength and explosiveness in their offseason training, and Fuller credited the coaching staff and biomechanists for cleaning out swing inefficiencies. But the most prominent addition is a regimen of weighted bat training, using branded equipment from renowned private training facility Driveline, a practice mirrored throughout their minor league system.
Though developing power provided the biggest White Sox’ offensive gains, Fuller extols the importance of contact-oriented hitters like Meidroth and Antonacci for balancing out the lineup on nights where home runs don’t come. Unlike some analysts, Fuller values a pesky two-strike approach and swing, after hunting for damage early in the count. And the Sox wouldn’t hit at all if they weren’t utilizing simulated at-bats off their Trajekt machine to chase out of the zone less than any point of their recorded history.
Some of the White Sox offensive identity is simply personnel. They have the fourth-lowest contact rate in the league because their roster is full of loose movers, long levers and uphill swing paths. Their runs come in huge chunks, as do the whiffs and inconsistency, especially with the roster’s youth.
“It’s not like we’re the Dodgers, where guys have been in the league for five-plus years, and you really understand their profiles,” Fuller said. “The adjustments they’re going to make, understanding how pitchers are attacking them better. We believe that those are going to get to a spot where they’re going to be stable.”
That extends to the White Sox’ currently most embattled hitter and for most of the year, their biggest revelation in Murakami. On Wednesday, Murakami’s brutal slump took another bleak turn, as his streak of consecutive plate appearances with a strikeout reached eight until he was hit by a pitch in the sixth.
Murakami said in Houston that he felt his swing path had become too uphill, requiring his timing and pitch selection to be letter-perfect to make contact. Fuller echoed those sentiments, saying the first baseman’s batting cage work is focused on returning to the baselines of his All-Star caliber start. That he and Sox hitters are ahead of schedule, never assured that there wasn’t more work to do.
“If it were any other rookie, we would be saying it’s part of the learning experience,” Fuller said. “For these guys to be as successful as they have been in their early part of their careers, learning lessons, making adjustments, and then coming back productive, that’s the goal.”