Lawrie bringing needed energy to Chicago White Sox
With the explosion of sabermetrics, baseball has really become a numbers game.
Be it WAR, WHIP, UZR or FIP, there seems to be a statistic for everything that happens on the playing field these days.
That's all fine and good — especially if you have a major-league fantasy team — but baseball is never going to completely stray from unmeasurables like grind and grit and energy.
Focusing on the latter quality, the Chicago White Sox have been severely lacking in that department, and an absence of energy was particularly noticeable last season.
During most of their 86 losses, and many of their 76 wins, the Sox looked like a lethargic group that failed to understand baseball is a game better played in a loose, relaxed manner.
That's the main reason Sox general manager Rick Hahn acquired second baseman Brett Lawrie in a Dec. 9 trade from the Oakland A's in exchange for minor-league pitchers Zachary Erwin and J.B. Wendelken.
“If (Lawrie) can't get you pumped up to play baseball,” ace starter Chris Sale said, “you probably shouldn't be playing.”
The White Sox matched the best start in franchise history with an 8-2 record, and Lawrie was the engine sparking the impressive rush out of the gates.
“Oh man, he's the best,” designated hitter/right fielder Avisail Garcia said. “Brett Lawrie, he will always say something to you. He's like a brother. He cares a lot about this team. He's the best. I love him. This is a family, and you have to support everybody through the good times and the tough times.”
Just about everything's been good for the Sox through the opening two weeks of the season, and that's what winning does for a team.
Lawrie set the tone before the April 4 season opener at Oakland, blasting music in the clubhouse before the game and making sure the energy spilled out to the field.
“I'm just being myself,” said Lawrie, who was batting .263 with 1 RBI in his first 11 games with the Sox. “That's all I'm in here to do. I don't need to be anybody but myself. We're in here, we see each other more than we see our families, so we need to pick the energy up a little bit in here, make that apparent and have some fun.”
Looking to beef up an offense that ranked last in the American League in runs scored and homers in 2015, Hahn traded for Todd Frazier and signed free agents Austin Jackson, Jimmy Rollins, Dioner Navarro and Alex Avila.
Lawrie is an offensive upgrade at second base, but he also brings some needed edge.
“When things aren't working you need to change it, and that's part of the reason why some of the players who have been productive in various roles for the club over the last several years aren't here anymore,” Hahn said. “Simply, we felt we needed to make some changes in terms of that environment. Something had to change in terms of the mix in there. We wanted to improve our production offensively, obviously we wanted to improve some of what we were doing from a defense and baserunning standpoint, but we also needed more energy in the clubhouse.
“We need guys who were strictly focused on winning, and that's what we feel we have with this group. We feel we're well positioned with the makeup of what's in that clubhouse to contend over the next several months.”