Who ya gonna believe, me or your own eyes?
It’s appropriate to begin by considering what Chico said to Margaret Dumont in Duck Soup, because being a fan of the White Sox is a lot like watching a Marx Brothers
movie — only without quite as many laughs. The line is especially appropriate when defense is on the agenda, though it could be adjusted to “Who ya gonna believe, stats or your own eyes?”
The Gold Glove nominations came out this week and it’s no surprise no Sox player was on the list. The only player who might remotely be considered is Luis Robert Jr., who’s been there before. But Luis still likes to make all his throws to home or third by way of some invisible drone that’s flying over the stadium instead of on a line, so there are better choices.
Didn’t it look like the defense was better this season? Most of the fielders seemed to have had some idea where they were supposed to be headed or throwing, at least with the exception of Lenyn Sosa, apparently devoid of baseball instincts?
Sure it did. And your eyes were right. Mostly. Especially as far as Baseball-Reference is concerned. B-R and FanGraphs tend to come up with very similar numbers for hitting or pitching evaluations, but they apparently have very different algorithms when it comes to fielding, so they can disagree pretty wildly. In the case of the Sox, B-R is much more generous.
B-R has the Sox 19th in their Defensive Efficiency category for 2025, compared to 25th in 2024. FanGraphs has them 28th in DEF, their more or less equivalent category, up from 30th a year earlier. Yep, dead last in 2024, no surprise.
B-R generously lists the Sox with just -10 defensive runs saved for 2o25, putting them in 27th place, while FanGraphs has them just one step lower at 28th, but with a much heftier -37.2 run awfulness. In both cases, though, it’s two rungs up the ladder from 2024, with FanGraphs chalking up 19 fewer runs given away and Baseball-Reference just six.
B-R, incidentally, also shows a player-by-player improvement, up from -8.1 dWAR in 2024 to a mere -2.8 in 2025, which presumably indicates defensive improvement was responsible for almost a third of the overall upswing.
“But what about years when the whole team wasn’t so awful?” you may well ask. Well, let us take a look-see, going back a decade at a time.
In 2015, a season we all thought was very bad back then because the record was 76-86 (little did we know what was coming), it sure wasn’t defense the stats folks liked. FanGraphs had the Sox 20th in DEF, while B-R marked them all the way down to 28th. Strangely, that flipped when it came to saving runs, with FanGraphs putting the Sox 23rd at -14, while B-R had them a mere -1, good for 17th place. Don’t ask about zone type ratings unless you’ve had a couple of stiff belts of limeade first.
“Maybe a year when the team was actually good?” you now hesitantly inquire. Fair question. There aren’t many of those this century to pick from, so let’s go to the big one, way back when the Chicago American League Team had a real manager and managed to surprise the world. Or at least the baseball world.
Was defense a key to the success of the 2005 team? You better believe it. Good enough to make the oh-so-successful pitching staff very happy.
FanGraphs ranked that team seventh in Defensive Runs Saved, with a big +39. B-R had them ninth, though at just +6. FanGraphs also put the championship squad seventh in the overall DEF category, while Baseball-Reference zoomed them all the way up to second in Defensive Efficiency, behind only the A’s. Offense sells tickets but defense wins championships, and all that.
One piece of bad luck in looking at 2005 is that FanGraphs hadn’t started measuring framing back then, so we can’t see how A.J. would have measured up. We can see, unfortunately, that while the rookie catchers did very well at the plate in 2025, they ranked 27th in MLB in framing — though that was up from 29th the year before.
But 2015 was a super year for framing by White Sox catchers, way up on the plus side and in fourth place in the majors. “Who were those amazing backstops,” you ask? Why, of course, they were Tyler Flowers and Geovany Soto. How could you forget? Flowers even got credit for saving 11 runs and throwing out 25.4% of would-be base stealers, which was way better than the 2025 catchers, but they were rookies and are bound to improve a bunch. Right?
So, what does all that mean?
Well, it would appear to mean that Sox fans would be well advised to rejuvenate their old high school football cheers — the one that start out, “Gimme a D!!!!”
