Going into the offseason the White Sox had a hole in their lineup at shortstop with the departure of franchise player in Tim Anderson who came off disappointing season as he became a free agent after they declined his option. Enter in Paul Dejong, an Illinois native from Antioch, off the free agency market and a former Cardinals/Giants/Blue Jays shortstop. He was a great high school baseball player (All-area, All-Lake County First-Team, and All-North Suburban Conference First-Team) and went to Illinois State University where he won numerous awards like being an All-American and a Capital One Academic All-American.
He won one NL Rookie of the Month award and during that season hit the most home runs for NL shortstops (25) and the second most for a rookie in St. Louis Cardinals history, which helped him finish second in NL Rookie of the Year voting behind unanimous winner Cody Bellinger.
He made the All-Star team in his third season and finished with 30 homeruns and 78 RBIs. He also had the best fielding percentage of all major league shortstops (.989Per Baseball-Reference.com), he led all National League fielders in defensive WAR with 3.3 and assists (435), and NL shortstops in putouts (211) and double plays turned (119). After the season, he was nominated for his first Gold Glove Award.
While Anderson he had lowest isolated power in the AL (.051) and hit the highest percentage of ground balls in the league (61.1%), while batting .245/.286/.296(the lowest slugging percentage in the AL), with an OPS of .582 (the lowest in the AL). Also in first half of the season as he batted .223 by the All-Star break and went homerless until July 29, his first homer in 379 days. The terrible season started, in my opinion, with his bad play in the World Baseball Classic which had him play second base for the first time in his career.
He also instigated a bench-clearing brawl with José RamÃrez of the Cleveland Guardians after Anderson applied a tag to RamÃrez during a game. They exchanged punches, with Ramirez knocking Anderson down to the ground. Anderson was ejected from the game and suspended for six games.
You might think inking Dejong could be a bad signing due the Covid shortened season where he contracted Covid19 or the 2021 season where he did miss time due to injuries and was benched but still finished with 19 home runs. Or that his 2022 season wasn’t his best season being benched and demoted and in 2023 he also got hurt. in reality he was traded because the St Louis Cardinals were out of contention and Blue Jays actually needed his services at shortstop to replace the injured Bo Bichette. His stay in Toronto did not go so well as he was designated for assignment soon after the trade. He did quickly hook onto the San Francisco Giants and rebounded enough to drastically improve his stats by the end of the season.
Based on his track record of being a two-way shortstop during his time in St. Louis, he has been a reliable player for his teams. The White Sox can afford to take a chance on him for $1.75 million contract with incentives, since they can use the potential offensive production increase from last season for whole entire infield. They also have the #9 prospect in baseball, Colson Montgomery, to take his place at short next season. Lastly, there is a void of talented shortstops on active rosters so he can possibly be a trade candidate for those teams who could use an upgrade at the position or to cover injury later in the season.
