I’m running short on time and long in word count again; let’s just go to the rankings…1
HONORABLE MENTIONS:
Sandy Alomar Jr. 2003
Cam Carreon 1963
Brook Fordyce 1999
Ron Hassey 1986
Omar Narvaez 2018
John Romano 1965
When his prime was over, Alomar reinvented himself as a useful reserve, mostly in Chicago. Even better in '02, but he finished that year in Colorado before re-signing. After Sherm Lollar's last solid year in '61, the White Sox used an assortment of spare parts at catcher in the 60's, and most were pretty good, including Carreon. Acquired from Cincinnati for a player who never made the majors, Fordyce posted a .297-.343-.459 line with 25 doubles in '99, before being traded for Charles Johnson. Hassey was traded between the White Sox and Yankees three times in eight months, but ended up hitting .323-.406-.481. With Carlton Fisk having the worst year of his career in '86, the Sox needed the help. Narvaez posted a .795 OPS in part-time duty, was traded for closer Alex Colome, and hit 22 homers in Seattle the next year. Colome was pretty good for two years in Chicago, so I'd call it even. Romano had two solid years (33 homers) after being part of that big Colavito trade. He'd been traded from Chicago for Minnie Minoso in the first place, so it comes full circle.
If you came to baseball in the mid-to-late 80's, like me, the image of early-career Brian Downing as a catcher is so weird, like imagining a fish doing yoga or a giraffe riding the subway. It doesn't seem to make sense in the world you know. But Downing's stats were better than they looked, even as a .240-hitting caterpillar not yet reborn as a 90-RBI butterfly. The 76 walks helped; catchers with a .356 OBP were themselves scarce on the ground in 1975. He even threw pretty well in '75, catching 66 of 155 runners, though he allowed a lot of stolen bases in California after being included in a trade for Bobby Bonds. The senior Bonds didn't last 100 at-bats in Chicago, but Rich Dotson was also in the trade; I guess a 22-game winner isn't a bad consolation prize.
He never moved off catcher, but like Downing, Flowers turned into a much better hitter after leaving Chicago. With the White Sox, he showed flashes of power (15 homers, 50 RBI), but struggled to keep his OBP close to .300. Returning to the Braves, where he'd signed originally before going to Chicago as most of the return for Javier Vazquez, Flowers immediately jumped to a .357 OBP, went as high as .378, and hit well for four years. I don't really see anything in his batting splits to explain it: He bounced between hitting better at home/on the road for both teams, had a quite modest platoon edge without any obvious spike or plunge suggesting a platoon. He was born in Roswell, Georgia, so it might have been home cooking or maybe aliens...2
Unless your name was Carl Michael Yastrzemski, it could be hard to notify the outside world you were having a good batting season in 1968: Even when you were (comparatively) raking, sometimes you ended up hitting .225. Or .247, in the case of Josephson; he made the All-Star Game as the AL's third catcher with a season that would have looked like a catastrophic slump in the 90's (.637 OPS). Two years later, as the hitters emerged, blinking, into the sunlight of the post-apocalypse, Josephson posted a more typically starlike .316-.370-.407, but the magic was gone. He went to Boston, had one decent year and then retired, bringing the paler shade of Sox Sox Vicente Romo and Tony Muser in return.
Only saw 135 at-bats with the White Sox, but he made them count. While I can't seriously tell you he's an all-time great of this franchise, the strength of his full season (.304-.379-.582, 31 homers, 91 RBI) demands to be listed somewhere. Also had three hits in Game One of Chicago's extremely brief stay in the Division Series, enjoyed a two-homer day against Seattle (the same opponent) in just his fifth game in Chicago, and drove in 7 against Anaheim on September 2nd, still his career high. He homered three times in six games against Texas. So while Johnson returned mostly to the NL after 2000, you can't say he didn't try his best to get some rivalries started.
Can't decide if I've got him over-ranked or under-ranked; I originally had Essian at #5 before switching him with J.C. Martin, deciding it looked silly to rank a guy with 450 career hits and one good season of 322 at-bats that high. But Essian was really good in that season, .273-.374-.435, and the White Sox catching ranks are odd, full of useful players but only one star. Went to Oakland with Steve Renko for Pablo Torrealba, which didn't work out too well for the White Sox, but Essian was just okay with the A's. Scorching hot in June '77: .363 with 4 homers, 15 RBI. The original Star Wars was released in theaters a week earlier, so blame it on the Force.
A terrific, amazing, tremendous player for several years in Los Angeles, even better after signing in Milwaukee for 2018, but like a lot of us, hasn't really been the same since the pandemic year. He was fine in 2020 itself: His .773 OPS was exactly his career average. But Grandal stumbled out of the gate in '21, hitting .131 through the end of May. Finally got hot in June, posting a couple of two-homer games for a total of 8 on the month. But he got hurt in July, and though he returned strong (.320-.470-.573), he didn't reach 300 AB, then performed poorly over the next two years. Catching in Pittsburgh at this writing; Calvin & Hobbes once speculated an eternal Pittsburgh waits for us all.
Ranks here as a career achievement award; he posted half a dozen useful seasons as a White Sox reserve before moving on to the Miracle Mets. Chicago got Ken Boyer, Sandy Alomar Sr., and eventually Bobby Knoop (in exchange for Alomar) out of the deal, but missed out on all their good years. As a left-handed hitter and fully capable left-handed half of a platoon, Martin is the White Sox version of Ron Hodges, who would fill his spot as the Mets' reserve catcher within a few years. I'm not sure if that's a compliment, but if your catcher was a righty slugger, you could do worse than choosing a Martin/Hodges type to back him up.
Speaking of the Mets, here's another fellow who crossed over between the two teams. McCann started out in Detroit, but had his best year—by far his best year, an All-Star year, not so much a fluke as the best possible version of his usual stats—in Chicago. When .273-.328-.460 with 18 homers and 60 RBI fits that description, you're probably a decent player but not headed for Cooperstown, which is how I'd categorize McCann. Also very good in the pandemic year, .289 with considerable power, but that was in 97 at-bats. But he played more than half of the 60-game schedule, so... do we count that as a real season, or not? I'm never quite sure...
A valuable player, but awkward to choose his career year. At a glance, you'd pick '93... but that was the start of the 90's Power Era, so his .228 with 20 homers was barely a blip, even playing for a division winner. He also posted a reverse platoon split (.198 against lefties), which is annoying; when righty power is a player's main offensive virtue, you at least want him to display it successfully. His stats were about the same in '94, plus an improved .325 OBP, but the strike, 207 at-bats, etc. I usually pick '92, another broadly similar season with a fairly neutral split. Note he threw out more than half his base-stealers in '93, so if you're not obsessed with platoon advantages in table games (though if not, why not?) you might pick that one...
Born in San Diego, a city which has produced a number of fine catchers: Bob Boone, Jason Kendall, Matt Nokes, Dave Engle. I mention this because while Herrmann is maybe the fourth-best catcher produced by one mid-sized city, he's also the best White Sox catcher of the 70's, the best of several unspectacular options between Lollar and Fisk. A prophet is not without honor and so forth, but it could be worse: Imagine being the second-best ballplayer born in Spavinaw, Oklahoma, after Mickey Mantle. Herrmann's best offensive season was 1970 (.861 OPS, 19 homers), but that was in 297 at-bats. He got more playing time in the offensive dead zone that was '72, where a full season with a .692 OPS constituted a pretty good year...
Like Jermaine Dye, Tad Iguchi, Scott Podsednik, Orlando Hernandez, and Dustin Hermanson, debuted with the White Sox in their 2005 curse-breaking season. Obviously not all those guys get the same amount of credit, but they've got that in common for the rest of their lives, and every one can say Maybe it wouldn't have happened without me. Pierzynski can make special mention of his 2-run double in the 14-inning Game Three. He stuck around Chicago for seven years thereafter, never got as far as the LCS again. But he did hit 27 homers in 2012, shattering his previous career high by nine. One of five players on that White Sox team to hit over 25 homers; they scored some runs and their pitching wasn't bad, and they finished three games behind Detroit despite a better run differential. Lightning rarely finds the same bottle twice.
Had the flashy 37 home runs in '85, and the extended late career when we were just amazed he could move around the bases without a walker at 43. (I'm middle-aged myself, so I can make that joke). But if Fisk's .289-.355-.518 didn't quite have the sizzle of those years, let alone his Boston peak, it was all-around solid. After April, at any rate: Like the team, he started off cold, .154 with no homers, but Fisk didn't have another bad (full) month and exploded in July: 10 homers, 31 RBI as the team moved into first place. They really found their groove at the end of the year, 46-15 after August 1st, and Fisk hit .292 in that stretch. Then they lost three out of four to the Orioles (Fisk going 3-for-17), and that was that. Playoffs giveth iconic foul-pole home runs, but they taketh away second chances.
There's no drama and hardly a reasonable doubt about naming Carlton Fisk the greatest White Sox catcher of the expansion era; I suppose Lollar could have an argument if we moved the debate to All-Time, or Ray Schalk. But barring people who don't meet the criteria and/or have appeared as characters in major baseball movie, Fisk is the easy choice. Whether he's actually a career White Sox (Sock?) is, as discussed in the Red Sox article, a bigger question.
On Saturday: Seattle Mariners catchers.
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Yeah, I know, different Roswell.