The Sox rise and fall with Jose Abreu

I actually had a completely different post in mind and nearly written before I wrote this.  I was just looking over Jose Abreu's splits where I noticed something that brought my dour instinct right back.

That's right.  If Jose Abreu goes 0 for 4 on the night, and you can expect the White Sox to lose.

Yes, a team should struggle when your star isn't having a good night, but really shouldn't other players be able to pick the team up?  I remember Juan Uribe would turn into a Hall of Famer and carry the team for a week or so.  Does this team have this?

Maybe not.  Adam Dunn's OPS is actually about 130 points higher in Sox losses.  Adam Eaton and Marcus Semien do have positive OPS splits like Abreu, but not anywhere close to the 742 point difference in OPS that Abreu has.

But, then I looked at Frank Thomas's split for 1994.

Why do I torture myself by looking at 1994?

OK, I'm back. So even with a pretty solid cast of surrounding players, Frank Thomas's performance really correlated with the wins and losses even if most teams would kill for a player with a .879 OPS OMG THE STRIKE!!!!!!!

Sorry about that. So, I didn't really have anything really analytical to go with this, but it certainly looks like something to follow up with something more substantial.  Or maybe I'm just a knucklehead for not realizing how much one offensive star can make a difference.  For now, this just shows me yet again how important the addition of Jose Abreu really is.