The only thing truly ridiculous about the Adam Eaton signing was the timing. The rest of the elements were all defensible.
Entering the winter, the White Sox really could have used a left-handed hitter with an above-average OBP and the ability to cover right field, and even if you didn’t count on Eaton resuming the form he showed with the White Sox, he’d met that description as recently as 2019 with the Nationals. Sure, his conduct during L’Affaire LaRoche and the rest of the disastrous 2016 season showed what Chicago sports talk radio had always whispered about, but his contributions to a World Series champion three years later indicated maturation of some sort. Health was the biggest sticking point. Three of his four seasons in Washington were limited by injuries, and that’s the reason why he only required a one-year deal with a team option for his services.
Had the White Sox signed Eaton to that $8 million deal in January, it wouldn’t have been as big an issue. That’s usually the time of the winter for Guys Who Might Have Something Left — see Carlos Rodón signing on Jan. 30 — and there was enough reason to believe Eaton wasn’t toast.
Instead, the White Sox signed Eaton on Dec. 8 as the first major outfielder transaction of the winter, and just one day after the trade for Lance Lynn suggested something more sweeping. When a team acts with that kind of urgency, it alters the primary question asked by those on the outside.
- Signing Eaton in late January: Why not?
- Signing Eaton in early December: Why?
Eaton had enough things working against him that all one needed to predict the future was a very basic distrust of Rick Hahn’s attempts to solve right field on the cheap, which exacerbated the general sense of fools rushing in where angels fear to tread.
When Hahn has bought low, he’s received lower, so when Hahn acquires a player like Eaton, you first have to process the move for how it’s going to fail. Here, it’s easy: Eaton just turned 32, he’s coming off a .226/.285/.384 line, he dealt with a season-shortening injury for the third time in four years, which foreshadows doom for a BABIP-reliant player.
There are ways to defend the signing. Eaton is a slow starter, and the start was all the 2020 schedule afforded. His BABIP probably wouldn’t have spent an entire season around .260. His overall production was killed by going 4-for-39 against lefties, and facing lefties will be Adam Engel’s job.
Except … you could talk yourself into [Nomar] Mazara and [Jon] Jay and [Edwin] Encarnación and [Yonder] Alonso just the same. Reflexive pessimism won the day each and every time. Here, reflexive pessimism says Eaton is either going to be unavailable, or he’s going to struggle into the summer, but Hahn will have to consider replacements well ahead of the trade deadline either way. I don’t want to make my analysis so reductive, but it gets old mining for upside, only to have the shaft collapse.
The only way to defend the signing now is by noting the 2021 performances of free agents who could be expected to man right field with any sort of adequacy:
- Adam Eaton: .201/.298/.344
- Joc Pederson: .230/.299/.415
- George Springer: .213/.333/.475 (over 17 games)
- Eddie Rosario: .254/.296/.389
- Jackie Bradley Jr.: .169/.248/.286
- David Dahl: .215/.244/.344
Prioritizing right field play leaves out Kyle Schwarber and Michael Brantley, who are as strong as ever. Fretting over their inexperience/inability in a specific corner looks silly in a world where Jake Lamb and Gavin Sheets are making it up out there as they go along, but the body count is far above what anybody envisioned when putting together the roster over the winter.
(The argument for Schwarber or Brantley was as the primary DH with some outfield flexibility under the premise of “more bats than spots.” Eaton is not mutually exclusive with that approach.)
This context makes Eaton’s failure less acute at the moment, and perhaps everybody comes away unhappy from the marketplace when I review this pool of players after the season. It just doesn’t make the signing any less of a flop. The problem with racing for Eaton is that the White Sox rushed to sign the guy whose shortcomings were most likely to render him unrosterable halfway through the schedule. He had already provided a preview of what happens when leg injuries chip away at the potency of a guy who needs all of his wheels to be special in 2020. He left little to the imagination.
Sure enough, Eaton suffered three flat tires in a game against Detroit on April 27, and that’s when the wheels came off.
- First 20 games: .253/.337/.443 over 90 PA
- Afterward: .164/.270/.273 over 129 PA
Pederson has run more cold than hot this year, and maybe Rosario is a mere product of the balmy climes of Minneapolis, but they still offer enough to make them worth playing for the foreseeable future. If three months of scuffling turns into six, then this exercise may be attempting to distinguish players without a difference. But since they’re all still playing for their original teams, they could very possibly level up over the remaining months to make this comparison obsolete.
Meanwhile, the White Sox’s Dec. 8 signing of Eaton turned into the White Sox designating Eaton for assignment on July 7, and the only true surprise is that minor-league signings and prospect auditions spelled his doom. I didn’t think he’d last the month, but I would’ve wagered a small amount on a deadline deal forcing Eaton off the roster. Instead, the Sox merely decided that previously unremarkable internal candidates like Sheets and Jake Lamburger were worth prioritizing in the interim, and that’s fine, too. If the Sox were too eager to sign Eaton to begin with, at least they used a similar amount of urgency in looking beyond him.
(Photo by Matt Marton/USA TODAY Sports)
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White Sox couldn't wait to sign, DFA Adam Eaton - Sox Machine
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