Four stars: These are the guys who have helped the White Sox play better baseball of late

The White Sox have been playing better baseball.

Everything’s relative, of course, and a team that’s 11-8 in its last 19 games still owns one of the sport’s worst records, thanks to the extreme, record-setting misery of a 3-22 start.

But undoubtedly, the White Sox of mid May are in much better shape and figure to only improve once injured superstar Luis Robert Jr. returns from an injury suffered in the seventh game of the campaign.

The South Siders have bounced back from that woeful beginning without Robert, though, and others have had to step up in his absence – and the absence of the injured Yoán Moncada, as well – to get the White Sox to something that looks like what this team was expecting in the spring, even if those on the outside weren’t sold on this team exceeding last-place expectations.

They haven’t yet, and they might not. But is this better? Absolutely.

It’s undoubtedly been a team effort, with bullpen arms like Jordan Leasure and Michael Kopech falling into effective roles, Gavin Sheets continuing to make a difference in the middle of the lineup and even third-base prospect Bryan Ramos making the most of his opportunity at the big league level.

But here’s a look at four guys who have made a big impact in the White Sox’ rebound.

Tommy Pham

Is the Tommy Pham Effect a real thing?

Kind of.

The White Sox’ aforementioned 11-8 mark in their last 19 that they carry into a weekend series against a very good Yankees team spans the entirety of Pham’s tenure on the team. Signed to a minor league deal after the season began, Pham joined at the low point, with the White Sox 3-22 in their first 25 games.

He showed up, and the White Sox instantly pulled off a sweep of the Rays. That was the team’s first series win of the year. They’ve won three more since.

And Pham has played a big part in that. He’s batting .319 with a 136 OPS-plus that’s got him tied for the team lead.

When he showed up, the White Sox touted an arriving “edge” that could filter throughout the team. Whether the South Siders have gotten “edgier” isn’t obvious. But undoubtedly, Pham’s presence has made a difference.

“You definitely see it on the field. He’s a competitor,” Andrew Benintendi told CHGO this week. “He wants to beat you every single time he’s up at the plate, and he’s pissed if he doesn’t. You definitely notice that out there, and it definitely rubs off on guys.”

“I just think having him around and having the guys watch him on a daily basis has helped. How can it not?” Pedro Grifol said. “If you’re a player in this clubhouse, a position player in this clubhouse, and you watch how he goes about his business, that’s something to admire, something to look up to. Whether they’re emulating that or not, they’re watching it. … Beyond results, I’ve been impressed in how he goes about his business and how detailed he is, which is really nice to see.”

Pham, too, has solved the White Sox’ need for a leadoff man. Benintendi was supposed to assume that role, but his extended season-opening slump put a quick end to that experiment. Pham now seems entrenched atop the order, and it’s paying off.

“Tommy sets the tone at the top, and he’s obviously getting on base all the time,” Benintendi said. “Just pass the baton and keep it going up and down the lineup. It’s been nice.”

Pham is perhaps destined for the same fate as many of his new teammates, to be shipped out of town before the trade deadline as Chris Getz looks to infuse talent into the organization that provides a longer-term benefit to his rebuilding project. In the meantime, though, the White Sox will reap as many different rewards as Pham provides on the field.

Garrett Crochet

Garrett Crochet didn’t look his best in his most recent outing, against the Nationals. He didn’t have his best stuff. He was walking guys.

He also tossed five shutout innings in a 2-0 win.

“I’m a really big competitor. So I feel like even without my best stuff, I would still take me 10 out of 10 times,” Crochet said. “To go out and put up zeroes when I don’t have my best stuff, it’s awesome. Giving up one (run) today might have been a win the way the misfires were. But you know, I wasn’t going to settle for that.”

Toss that on the growing pile of Crochet quotes that show just how confident this guy is.

Though the big lefty had made his desire to be a starting pitcher known before the offseason, it still came as a surprise at the outset of spring training that the White Sox were going to allow Crochet the opportunity to make the rotation out of camp. After all, the entirety of his pro career had been spent as a reliever to that point.

Then Crochet didn’t just make the rotation, he was named the team’s Opening Day starter. Then he didn’t just pitch on Opening Day but pitched wonderfully, and he’s continued to impress as he inches ever closer to his career high in innings in a single big league season.

But while the focus will remain on Crochet and how the White Sox handle his workload, Crochet’s staunch insistence that it won’t be an issue is perhaps starting to make believers out of folks. He’s been excellent, with a 4.18 ERA and 70 strikeouts, the second most in baseball, in 10 starts. He dazzled in his first three starts before running into some trouble in the next three, inflating his ERA. But he’s been terrific again in his last four, allowing three earned runs in 22 innings, including back-to-back efforts without a run allowed.

“It’s really nice to see him become a true starting pitcher,” Grifol said. “There’s adversity you’re going to face from start to start. There’s adversity you’re going to face from rolling the lineup over a second and third time. And it’s just great to see him just mature on that end.”

“You’ve seen it all year. I’ve seen it since spring training. I saw it from him last year coming out of the bullpen,” Korey Lee said. “Nothing but outstanding for us.”

There’s a thought that still-developing players can learn more from moments of struggle than moments of success, that a game in which Crochet didn’t look his best could be more helpful to him learning how to be a big league starting pitcher than one in which he strikes out 11, as he did in his second most recent start, against the first-place Guardians.

Crochet might even somewhat agree with that notion. But he didn’t seem to like the idea that he’s still learning how to be a big league starting pitcher. He’s already a big league starting pitcher.

What did he learn from that most recent outing, then?

“Nothing that I feel like that I didn’t already know.”

See, he’s a confident fellow. Add that one to the pile.

Erick Fedde

The best player on the White Sox, according to Baseball Reference’s WAR metric?

That would be Erick Fedde.

Fresh off a “revenge game” that didn’t seem to stir too many outwardly vengeful emotions in Fedde, the righty the White Sox signed off an MVP year in Korea showed his longtime team exactly how different a pitcher he is these days. He dominated the Nationals to the tune of seven shutout innings, allowing just three hits and walking nobody.

“I was trying to really downplay it all week and try not to think too much of it,” Fedde said of seeing the Nationals, where he spent parts of six big league seasons before heading to Korea for the 2023 campaign. “Every start I go out there, I want to try to pitch well and do my thing. Of course, it’s always in the back of your head, you want to pitch extra well. I’m glad it went the way I wanted to.”

Most everything has gone the way Fedde has wanted it to since he donned a White Sox uniform, inked to a two-year free-agent deal in the winter. He’s got a 2.60 ERA, hammered down nearly a full point thanks to back-to-back scoreless performances, neither of which featured a walk, a nice bounce back from a rare ugly outing, when he walked five against the Cardinals.

But the most impressive thing about Fedde has been maintaining the transformation he made prior to last season in Korea, an overhaul of his arsenal that led to outstanding numbers overseas and the two biggest awards in that league. Considering his half decade with the Nationals didn’t go so well, it was a question whether Fedde could translate that success back to the big leagues.

He’s forcefully shown that indeed he can.

Considering he didn’t walk anybody, it was a bit of a shock that he wasn’t overly pleased with his command in that most recent outing against his former team. But the current version of Fedde can do things the original model couldn’t, and that turned a day where he was falling behind hitters into a day that looked as good on the stat sheet as any he’s had this year.

“Any time I can go seven shutty, I’ll take it,” Fedde said. “My command of the zone wasn’t great today, but I did a great job of bouncing back from 2-0, 3-0 counts and making pitches. … That’s just the difference in the pitcher I am now. I have so many weapons to get back into counts, can get 2-0 popups like I feel like I got today and make guys feel uneasy, so even on a 3-0 count they just can’t sit on one pitch.”

It was a mystery, at least on the outside, whether the White Sox would get the Korean version of Fedde or the Nationals version. They got the former, and his work on the mound has helped turn that miserable start into a much better stretch.

Will he be the White Sox’ representative at the All-Star Game? Will he still be wearing a White Sox jersey come August? That remains to be seen. Right now, the known is that he’s giving the White Sox some real dependability every fifth day.

Korey Lee

Lee, according to his skipper, got his ass kicked last year.

It’s hard to argue with that assessment. Lee joined the big league squad as a September call-up after being acquired from the Astros in a deadline deal and got all of five hits in 70 trips to the plate. Even as Grifol complimented what Lee was doing behind the plate, it was a pretty pitiful offensive showing that landed the rookie catcher a minus-22 OPS-plus, making him 122 percent worse than the average major league hitter.

But that so-called ass kicking might have been the key to unlocking what’s happening now.

Lee is tied, with Pham, for the team lead in OPS-plus, with a 136 mark driven by a batting average that’s north of .300, an on-base percentage north of .340 and four home runs.

The lessons learned from that horrendous September and a whole lot of work this offseason have completely turned Lee’s fortunes around.

“I actually think getting his ass kicked last year for the last month and a half really benefited him,” Grifol said. “He’s a tough kid. He learned a lot. … He went home and worked on the things that he knows deep down gave him some trouble. … He came back a different guy.

“He’s extremely talented. But now he’s proven to everybody that he’s extremely tough mentally.”

Lee didn’t just make changes, but he’s been able to stay consistent.

And he wasn’t even supposed to be here right now. Getz’s front office added a pair of veteran catchers this offseason in Martín Maldonado and Max Stassi. Lee was supposed to serve as depth. With Edgar Quero, also acquired in a deadline deal last summer, one of the organization’s highest rated prospects, the best-case scenario for Lee in the minds of many was being the No. 2 catcher of the future.

Lee, though, has shown early that he deserves consideration for more. With little word on how Stassi is recovering from an injury and Quero at Double-A, Lee doesn’t need to be looking over his shoulder right now. He’s even grabbed playing time from the oft-lauded Maldonado, whose terrible offensive numbers have frustrated fans but whose ability to work with pitchers has kept him in the lineup. With Lee swinging the bat the way he is, Maldonado isn’t in the lineup quite as much as he was in the season’s earliest days.

Lee, too, is benefitting from Maldonado’s presence. Both were part of the Astros, Maldonado obviously for much longer, but Lee shouted out Maldonado as a mentor when he arrived after last season’s trade. Now the two are reunited, and Lee is again learning the finer points of big league catching from a backstop who’s had a very successful career. Add in Lee’s natural ability – his athleticism has created big statistical numbers describing how quickly he gets rid of the ball on stolen-base attempts – and the White Sox have an exciting young player on their hands.

Of course, while some are ready to send Lee out there every day, it’s important to remember that the process of Lee maturing into a major league catcher is ongoing.

“The thing we’ve got to understand is he’s still developing here,” Grifol said. “At times, you want to throw him out there every day, but that’s not the right thing to do, either. There’s a process to this thing. We’ll continue to look at when we want him to play, how much we want him to play and graduate him little by little.”

So, too, is Lee’s process of revitalizing his offensive game.

“It’s awesome,” he said. “It’s really, really good. It’s a long process. It’s a long year. I’m going to continue to do what I’ve been doing, not going to change too much, just keep the simple approach and keep on attacking my pitches.

“It’s holding myself accountable, every single day coming into work and having a really, really good head on my shoulders, having good coaches to hold me accountable, having good teammates to hold me accountable, and they’re doing a good job at that.

“It’s a team thing, it’s not just me, there’s a lot of behind-the-scenes things that are going on. I’m happy about that, and I’m ready to keep on working.”

So far, it’s worked wonders, making Lee not only an effective presence behind the plate but one of the White Sox’ best hitters at the plate. And it’s helped turn the White Sox from a team steaming toward the worst record in baseball history to a team that can point to some positives in a rebuilding year.