CLEVELAND — Sam Antonacci has the lowest strikeout percentage among White Sox hitters, an impressive feat for a rookie. In the age of analytics, he must look at such statistics with great pride.
“No,” Antonacci told the Sun-Times. “I don’t even know if that’s good or bad.”
A 14.6 strikeout percentage is good. It ranked 29th among qualified major-leaguers entering the Sox’ game Thursday night against the Guardians. In 267 plate appearances, Antonacci had struck out only 39 times.
How has Antonacci developed such a keen awareness of the strike zone in his first big-league season?
“I’d say just trying to put the ball in play, whichever way I can, because you can’t do any good walking back to the dugout and anything can happen when it’s put in play,” he said. “So just try to do that, especially when I’m in the leadoff spot.”
Which he almost always is when a right-hander is on the mound, as was the case Thursday. Antonacci said he uses a Trajekt pitching machine at Rate Field to track opposing pitchers’ arsenals. He’ll stand in the box while the machine replicates the speed and movement of pitches. But that’s nothing unique to Antonacci. Many big-leaguers do it.
“It’s just to get the pitch that I want to hit and get my ‘A’ swing on it,” Antonacci said. “And then if I happen to get to two strikes, it’s just finding ways to put the ball in play.
“It’s the same swing. I’m OK with swinging and missing when I don’t have two strikes. And then with two strikes, I don’t want to swing and miss, obviously.”
Manager Will Venable credits Antonacci’s success to his competitiveness more than his swing.
“He steps in that box, and he’s fighting for every pitch,” Venable said. “He’s obviously not afraid to get hit with a pitch [he has been hit an American League-high 17 times]. But he’s just a competitor, and I think that’s served him very well to be able to win some battles against some tough pitchers and really limit the strikeouts.”
Venable also wasn’t surprised that Antonacci had no idea about his strikeout percentage.
“I didn’t, either,” Venable said. “But he’s locked into what he’s doing out there and really doesn’t care about anything else.”
Murakami getting closer
There’s still no timetable for Munetaka Murakami’s return from a hamstring injury, but Venable revealed what the slugging first baseman must do before going on a rehab assignment.
“The last thing is running the bases two days in a row and making sure that you’re running at high intensity, but also on that second day [being] able to recover and do it again,” Venable said. “And he’s moving a lot closer to that. He was out there running curves today, which is an important step to get closer to running at full speed on the bases.”
Murakami strained his right hamstring May 29 and was expected to miss four to six weeks. Next Friday is the six-week mark, and for what it’s worth, Triple-A Charlotte is on a homestand next week. Venable said Murakami’s rehab stint would be “a couple days.”
Down on the farm
Two rehabbing right-handers had positive showings Wednesday at High-A Winston-Salem. Shane Smith (strained rotator cuff), the Sox’ Opening Day starter, threw two scoreless innings, allowing one hit and striking out two in his first rehab outing. Tanner McDougal (strained right flexor) pitched a hitless inning with two strikeouts.
“I didn’t get feedback on the health side of it,” Venable said. “I just saw some of the lines and got some feedback on the performance, which is very encouraging. All positive stuff, and it sounds like they came out of it well. There were no alarm bells or alerts that they weren’t.”