Grading the White Sox: Yasmani Grandal

At midseason, the SSS staff graded the 46-46 White Sox, from head of the class Dylan Cease all the way down to Dallas Keuchel. We invented a WARsss metric that could very well be just a cute way to trot out our special site grades — but really for all you know could be the product of years of research in a stats lab.

Our expanded report card will take us through everyone who saw time in uniform for the White Sox, plus some front-office types. Most of our writers will take on a couple of players, with final grades and short writeups, running through the end of November. Enjoy!

Yasmani Grandal
Catcher when possible
Midseason: -2.1 WARsss
Final: -2.549 WARsss

The 2022 Chicago White Sox were a disappointment on a level that almost no one expected. One of the biggest disappointments of this season was Yasmani Grandal.

Yaz had what might’ve been the worst season of his career. His traditional stat line for 2022 was 99 games, .202 BA, .301 OBP, .269 SLG and a .570 OPS. (In 2021, he went .240/.420/.520/.939 in 93 games.)

In 2021, Grandal had an OPS+ of 155. This past season, it was 64. For those who do not know about OPS+, an average score is 100. What changed in Grandal’s game that he went from being more than 50% better than league average to being well below league average, in around the same number of games?

Well for one, he did not walk nearly as often this season as last season, while striking out just as much. At one point in 2021, it became a whole thing about how often Yaz could draw walks.

In 2021, Yaz walked 87 times, versus 82 strikeouts. In 2022, it was 45 walks and 79 strikeouts. It did not help that Grandal did not replace some of those walks with home runs, as in 2021 he hit 23 homers and this past season, five. Sure, the team as a whole decided that home runs did not matter this season, but even in 46 games during the pandemic season of 2020, Grandal hit eight homers.

Now going into 2023, the White Sox might want to look into a potential upgrade, with Willson Contreras as the prize that they SHOULD look into deeply, but almost surely will not. Instead, the team will hope and pray that the player they signed to the biggest deal in franchise history (four years, $73 million and expiring at the end of the 2023 season) will rebound despite being another year older and with a few more injuries picked up along the way.

2022 White Sox Grades

Yasmani Grandal, C/DH, -2.549
Leury García, UTIL, -2.7
Adam Haseley, OF, -3.146
Joe McEwing, Third Base Coach, -3.167
Ryan Burr, RHRP, -3.4
Tony La Russa, MGR, -3.5
Dallas Keuchel, LHSP, -3.9