Saturday night in Cleveland, the White Sox’ Andrew Vaughn wrapped his thickly muscled pipes around teammate Tim Anderson — who was dazed and upset, and maybe looking for a rematch, after being TKO’d by the Guardians Jose Ramirez — and carried him off the field and into the dugout with the get-’er-done matter-of-factness of a mover lugging an armoire into a box truck.
This was, as manager Pedro Grifol saw it, just the kind of leadership a team with a gaping void in that department needed.
“Absolutely,” Grifol said. “That was great leadership. [Vaughn] is one of those guys that has all the characteristics of doing it. Leadership is being selfless. It’s having great character, integrity, putting others in front of yourself. You don’t need to be doing great to be a good leader. As a matter of fact, when you’re facing some adversity and you’re still going out of your way to help somebody else, that shows great leadership. So there’s a lot of guys in here that are going to have the opportunity and have the characteristics of becoming good leaders and leading us where we want to go.”
Adversity is the Sox’ middle name as they sit in fourth place in baseball’s worst division, on a pace for upward of 100 losses and having sold nearly everything that wasn’t nailed down at the trade deadline. They also need guys who can play baseball, as Vaughn did Monday in a 5-1 series-opening win against the Yankees at Guaranteed Rate Field, hoisting the team on his shoulders by homering off Gerrit Cole for what held up as the winning run and preserving the lead at first base with the finest defensive play of his career.
But the scores the rest of the way in a lost season probably don’t mean as much as how a bunch of young players carry themselves, and if and how they demonstrate that they’re ready to dig deeper and help an organization that can seem directionless find an identity.
Andrew Vaughn lifting Tim Anderson away pic.twitter.com/z4PXXRpkSJ
— Gustavo (@iamvega1982) August 6, 2023
Grifol’s employment beyond his rookie season at the helm isn’t tied to just Rick Hahn, the general manager who hired him and whose own standing with the Sox could be — or should be — on shaky ground. The up-against-it skipper also is looking for players to have his back at a time when recently traded pitchers Keynan Middleton and Lance Lynn became the latest ex-Sox to paint a picture of the culture on the South Side as being weak and ineffectual.
“In my opinion, leadership is 10% given, 90% taken,” Grifol said, “and we have two months here for guys in there to stand up and take it. … I’m just really looking forward to watching this club and who wants to take that next step.”
Does Vaughn, 25, see himself as being in that vein?
“I think finally we’ve got a good group, a group of guys to come together,” he said. “We’re all learning this, too. We’re younger guys [trying] to right the ship.”
If that was a yes, it was less than resounding. Asked more pointedly if he wants to be a leader, he said, “I would do anything to help my team.”
Monday’s winning pitcher, Dylan Cease, faced similar questions. A 27-year-old one-time All-Star with ace-level stuff and under two more years of club control, Cease is the class of what’s left of the Sox rotation and has the credibility to assert himself in any manner he desires. So what about it?
“I mean, maybe,” he said. “It’s hard to say without knowing what the exact situation is. I think, at the end of the day, we still have a lot of grown men here. A lot of guys now are really trying to prove themselves as well, so I don’t really think that will be an issue. Usually, if anything needs to be said, you can usually just be direct and kind of just say it in a positive way. But I never really thought of it, honestly.”
The Sox and leadership — a nebulous topic in sports to begin with — haven’t really jibed in a discernibly positive manner in a long time. It was hoped former star Jose Abreu, reputedly a great leader, would rub off on Luis Robert Jr., Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez and others more than he apparently did. Why didn’t he? Is it them? Was it him?
And a recent history of bringing in veteran starting pitchers hasn’t exactly borne fruit. In June of 2016, on the heels of the team’s weird breakup with first baseman Adam LaRoche, with the Sox “mired in mediocrity,” as Hahn put it, and ace Chris Sale seemingly on the way out, the ill-fated trade for pitcher James Shields happened. Shields was a willing mentor but a catastrophe on the mound, undercutting his potential influence. And we won’t even mention the name Fernando Tatis Jr., or did we just do that?
Heading into the 2020 season, the Sox gave a big free-agent contract to former Cy Young winner Dallas Keuchel, whom Hahn hailed as not only a stabilizing force for the rotation but a major voice in the clubhouse. That relationship didn’t blossom the way the Sox envisioned, either.
The latest prime example is Lynn, who helped the Sox win a division title in 2021 but fell off so far from there that he had a 6.47 ERA at the time he was dealt — along with big-name reliever Joe Kelly — to the Dodgers on July 28. If what the Sox intimate about Lynn and Kelly is to be believed, both were disappointments in the areas of leadership and team culture.
Does Cease want to be more than just a good pitcher, or even an elite one? Is there more in him?
And do the Sox even know what to do with it — how to let it blossom into something meaningful — if there is?
