The White Sox enter the offseason with a void at catcher. Yasmani Grandal is departing in free agency, Seby Zavala was DFA’d in early September and scooped up by the Diamondbacks, and the White Sox No. 3 prospect Edgar Quero is a still year away from being ready to crack the big league roster.
That leaves the White Sox with Korey Lee and Carlos Perez as the only catchers on the 40-man roster. While neither inspires much confidence, Lee did not look like an MLB-ready hitter. The White Sox acquired the 25-year-old at the trade deadline from the Astros in exchange for Kendall Graveman. Graveman is still under team control through 2024.
At the time Lee was ranked the No. 5 prospect in the Astros organization while FanGraphs had him ranked inside their top 100 prospects. Scouts view him as an average defensive catcher who hits for power. Lee didn’t hit much of anything in the major leagues in 2023.
In 65 at-bats he batted .077 with one home run, three RBIs, and a .281 OPS. For his MLB career, he owns a .100 batting average with one home run, seven RBIs and a .323 OPS in 90 at-bats. The sample size is very small but Lee isn’t just struggling, he looks lost at the plate.
He swings at nearly half the first pitches he sees (45.8%) and owns a chase rate of 32.8 percent. Lee has also stuck out in 30.2 percent of his plate appearances and posted a measly walk rate of 6.3 percent.
Some of those numbers could be overlooked if he was hitting for power but Lee has a career-expected slugging percentage of .238 while the MLB average is .405. Meanwhile, his average exit velocity was 85.3 mph which was also below league average.
Things were not all bad for Lee in 2023. He did handle himself well defensively behind the plate and posted an impressive pop-time of 1.91. However, Lee is going to need a lot more time to work out the offensive issues before he can be considered an everyday major league catcher. It may be the reason the Astros were so willing to part ways with him.
That’s not to say that Lee can’t continue to develop. He said all the right things in the media about wanting to grow relationships in the clubhouse and work closely with the pitching staff. But he is going to need more time in Triple-A to work on his swing and at the age of 25 the clock is ticking.
