How Tommy Pham fits in White Sox’ outfield puzzle

When Tommy Pham showed up to Guaranteed Rate Field on Friday, he was asked what the White Sox wanted from him as they looked for a boost amid a horrendous 3-22 start to their season.

“Just be me,” he said, matter of factly.

Indeed, team brass had talked up what that meant since Pham joined the organization on a minor league deal.

“He’s been around the game for a long time, and there’s a reason for it. He brings an edge to the game that is needed in every clubhouse,” Pedro Grifol said. “He respects the game, he plays the game hard, and he plays it the right way. He’s a winner. He can bring a lot to this clubhouse.”

Since Pham arrived in that clubhouse, the White Sox haven’t lost. He banged out five hits and scored in all three games of a three-game sweep of the Rays that injected some desperately needed good vibes into a team that was already setting marks for all-time futility early on in the campaign.

This isn’t to suggest that Pham’s mere presence spurred Martí­n Maldonado and Andrew Benintendi out of their respective slumps, nor did Pham’s arrival push Erick Fedde to a near-complete game.

But for a White Sox team that added Pham to boost their anemic offense, 21 runs in three days was an avalanche of scoring. And Pham helped.

“It’s his offense,” Chris Getz said Friday. “He’s had a lot of success in the big leagues. He can hit the ball out of the ballpark, he can put together a quality at-bat. From what I’ve gathered, he’s got such an obsessiveness to win and show up every day. I say that not even on wins and losses but the performance from himself to help us move in a direction to win ballgames.”

And win ballgames they have.

Pham’s presence, though, adds more than just another bat to the lineup. It adds another layer to the team’s outfield situation, a puzzle with pieces scattered from the South Side to North Carolina to Arizona.

The biggest and most important part of that puzzle, of course, is Luis Robert Jr., the superstar at the center of the team’s present and future. Robert strained his hip flexor rounding first base earlier this month and is on the mend in Arizona. An initial timeline that suggested a possible months-long absence has grown steadily more optimistic, and Getz is hopeful Robert can rejoin the White Sox by the middle of May, something that would be an obviously huge deal for the team as it looks to dig itself out of what’s already a very deep hole.

Until then, the plan is for Pham and newly promoted Rafael Ortega to combine for the playing time in center field. Pham won fans quickly with what he did over the weekend, meaning his absence from Monday’s starting lineup earned social-media jeers.

“I’m just giving him a break,” Grifol said Monday. “He didn’t have a spring training. He ran hard for three days. Everything he does is 100 percent, from the time he gets in here to the very last pitch of the game. He goes hard. Not having a spring training, I have to protect him, as well.”

Things could get more interesting once Robert returns. After all, Benintendi — in Year 2 of a five-year, $75 million free-agent contract — isn’t likely to lose any playing time in left field. He’s fared better of late, with two homers and eight RBIs over the weekend after a miserable start to the season. Meanwhile, a solid start for Gavin Sheets has forced Grifol to dedicate playing time in right field to the natural first baseman.

Sometimes, these things can work themselves out, and if Sheets’ bat cools by the time Robert returns, maybe Pham is easily slotted in right on a regular basis. Or what if Andrew Vaughn’s season-opening slump extends to mid May? Could Sheets assume more time at first base, clearing time for Pham in right field?

We’ll see.

The shorter term questions hinge on what is best for a White Sox offense in desperate need of more frequent scoring. The longer term questions, though, would figure to be more important for a team at the outset of another rebuilding project.

Pham and Ortega’s arrivals accompanied the departures of Dominic Fletcher and Kevin Pillar. Pillar is a veteran bench player who didn’t have much of a role to play in the long-term future of the organization. But Fletcher was acquired in an offseason trade, with well regarded pitching prospect Cristian Mena going to the Diamondbacks. All offseason and spring long, Fletcher was set up as someone who’d receive a bulk of the playing time in right field. When Robert went down with the injury, Fletcher’s ability to play center field made him a fixture there.

But only briefly. Before getting sent down, Fletcher seemed to be playing a smaller role in Grifol’s outfield rotation. And his numbers didn’t go against that idea at all. He had a batting average just north of .200, an on-base percentage well south of .300 and an OPS-plus of 53 (league average is 100).

“You’ve got a young player who is still trying to get comfortable at the major league level,” Getz said before relaying the message he gave to Fletcher as the outfielder left town. “‘We believe in you. You’re a guy that we obviously went out and traded for.’ You look at the decision-making that he made in his at-bats, it was actually pretty strong. Now getting the hits and getting the results, when those didn’t start to fall, I think he started getting outside of himself.

“Really, I just want to get him down to Triple-A, slow his world down and gain confidence so that when he gets another opportunity, he comes up here with hopefully a clean slate and just gets rolling.”

Development isn’t linear, as the baseball brains are always quick to remind, and so Fletcher’s future with the White Sox is far from written. We’ve heard similar things about Fletcher’s new Triple-A teammate, Oscar Colás, who hasn’t gotten any big league opportunity this year outside of a one-game appearance in the wake of an injury.

It’s a balancing act, then, for Getz, who is trying to prevent the big league team from slipping into the most unfortunate annals of baseball history while also trying to construct a future winner. The 36-year-old Pham might help stave off an unwanted distinction, but Fletcher and Colás are the guys who could be playing for this team past the end of this season — or past the end of July, as Getz acknowledged.

“There’s no perfect way to go about it,” he said. “We’re at a point where we’re certainly trying to go out there and score more runs. There are some younger players on this roster, and we will continue to add younger players as the season progresses. Some of those veteran guys who have been through situations, perhaps, like this before or have a proven track record can help in the development of players at the major league level. There’s a handful of different factors. At this point, just felt like it was time to make some of those moves and add some different bats and different dynamics to this team.

“You’ve got six months to play baseball, and we’re at the end of April. There’s going to be plenty of at-bats and plenty of innings for our young players that we want to see up here. We want to surround them with guys who have had some success, and there’s a lot of value in that.

“Certainly some of these players that get the opportunity on one-year deals to show what they can offer to Major League Baseball, there’s other chances to perhaps grab some value at the trade deadline or at some point to help once again to get our organization healthy.”

Those types of situations pop up all over the roster; look at the starting rotation, where youngsters and potential future pieces Nick Nastrini and Jonathan Cannon have already been swapped out for veterans Brad Keller and, eventually, Mike Clevinger.

And so Pham is here for more than just his bat. He’s here, too, to audition for a potential deadline deal that could land the White Sox a piece that could be part of the future. That is the value of such veterans to the White Sox’ latest rebuild.

But they’ll gladly reap any rewards in the meantime, the sort of things that Pham brought to three straight wins over the weekend, a trio of victories that doubled the team’s season win total.

Upon Robert’s return, we’ll see how the pieces fit together in the outfield. Once the deadline has passed, we’ll see how they fit together, too.

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