White Sox: Jose Abreu near top of first baseman leaderboards

Chicago White Sox first baseman Jose Abreu is playing as well as he ever has, and he’s among the best first baseman in baseball as a result.

Not too long ago, I suggested that White Sox star Jose Abreu was not-so-subtly pounding on the door to let people in Chicago know that he, not Chicago Cubs counterpart Anthony Rizzo, was the city’s best first baseman.

Turns out, that didn’t just apply to Chicago. Apparently, he wanted to make a play to be the best first baseman in Major League Baseball.

After starting off rather tepidly in April (.263/.342/.827, six home runs, 12 RBIs), “Mal Tiempo” has been absolutely “en fuego” in May. His splits for the month: .380/.426/1.067, three home runs, 18 RBIs with a hilarious .438 average on balls in play.

After a fairly standard April for Abreu in terms of his career numbers, he’s actually destroying the career average splits .290/.338/.839 hitter (.333 on batted balls in play) in May thus far.

Oh, the home runs don’t impress you much? I get that. But will you take a franchise-record 15 doubles in the month of May instead?

With four days left in the month, don’t be surprised if he ties or breaks that record. The way May is going for him, you can’t rule it out.

And just think: he usually heats up in the second half of the year…

Also, look at the leaderboards for first basemen in the league, and what do you see at the top of the list? A whole lot of Abreu.

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Perhaps most impressively, Abreu’s 30 RBIs are just behind Joey Gallo‘s 32 in the American League despite the fact that the White Sox only have a team OBP of .313 and are bottom-five in the league in both runs scored and RBIs.

And if you look at WAR numbers across the entire league among players with qualifying numbers of plate appearances, Abreu is currently tied with Joey Votto for third overall at 1.4 (San Francisco’s Brandon Belt leads the way at 2.5). Interestingly, Abreu’s WAR leads the AL by a fairly wide margin; Tampa’s CJ Cron sits second at 0.9.

It just never seems to matter how the White Sox are performing as a team. Abreu keeps putting his head down and doing his job regardless.

And thanks to his offensive rampage, he’s at least the best first baseman in the American League at the moment as well as making an inarguable case as one of the league’s best right now.

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Of course, I hope that doesn’t mean that the White Sox will start dreaming about all the draft assets they could get in return for him at the trade deadline. I know baseball is a business, but that still wouldn’t be a pleasant one to swallow.

As long as he’s here in Chicago, though, let’s appreciate what this guy continues to do on a night-in, night-out basis.