It’s Time to Join the Eloy Jiménez Fan Club

Everyone believes in something silly. 

You’ll find people who somehow believe there isn’t a direct correlation between spending money and winning in baseball; that 40-year-old Aaron Rodgers off a torn Achilles would save the New York Jets; that billionaires give the slightest nibble about you.

Maybe it’s just in our nature to justify the unjustifiable. Maybe believing in silly things is what makes us more human than anything, and there’s beauty in naivete as the void inches closer, immobilizing and consuming us in the end no matter what we think or do.

“Screw it, why not!” the Angels sing, glory to the jejune kings! 

It’s for that reason that I, too, enter the vortex of ill-advised opinions: I believe in Eloy Jiménez and hereby declare this the grand, glorious opening of his fan club.

But the story of Eloy, and joining his fan club, is not one for the faint of heart. Once considered a top-tier prospect, Jiménez slashed .270/.321/.469 with a 114 wRC+ across six seasons for the decayed corpse known as the Chicago White Sox.

In his most recent season with the Sox, and later the Baltimore Orioles, Jiménez put up an astonishingly bad line of .238/.289/.336 with a measly 78 wRC+. 

And of course, there’s his health. The antithesis of an Ironman, Killjoy Eloy missed more than 300 (!) games of a possible 818 across his Sox tenure, making him perhaps — next to steak-eating king Byron Buxton — the poster boy for bad injury luck. 

Honestly impressive pic.twitter.com/HWh07CCbvx

— Sox On Tap (@SoxOnTap) April 5, 2024

There were some highlights, though, that get lost in the Super 8 trainwreck that was his Chicago tenure as a whole. In his rookie year, he smacked 31 home runs in 122 games. He also had two separate seasons with a wRC+ above 130 (2020 and 2022).

When healthy, he did produce, and even in his most miserable 2024 season, his hard hit rate (49%) and average exit velocity (92) both ranked in the 90th percentile amongst all hitters. 

So really, you might describe Eloy Jiménez as somewhat of a glass cannon. It’s possible that his upside, thanks to the litany of aforementioned injuries, is officially gone. But nobody ever said the Eloy Jiménez Fan Club would be an easy venture. Nay, it is only for those that open their third, and fourth, eyes. 

Do I care that his isolated power number (.099) last season was lower than Nico Hoerner’s? Nope, I instead point to his swinging strike percentage being down.

Do I care that his defense has always been pretty lackluster, meaning that he has to be especially good at the plate to produce tangible value? No, I instead point to his strikeout rate being down.

Do I care that his injury history portends more IL stints for wherever he signs? Not in the slightest, as I point to his HR/FB rate (8.2%) being so much lower than his career average (20.4%).

I have simply deluded myself into the inspired belief that Eloy was so bad in 2024 that it shouldn’t be taken at face value. That was his InfoWars season. It’s part of the long con of meme-generating genius that he’s ascribed to. Positive regression should be expected for a man of his talents. 

And there’s another thing about Silly Boy Eloy: he’s become a meme. It’s what makes joining the Eloy Jiménez Fan Club all the more fun.

He’s become so universally absconded by the press and fans alike that you don’t need to mock him anymore. This is a man who managed to hurt himself in a fight he wasn’t even a part of.

This is a man whose teammates once hung his jersey in the dugout — perhaps a sign of their rightful belief that he could be the Kwisatz Haderach — as if he had died, when it was merely one of his many absences due to injury. I can not emphasize enough how much that is the funniest flippin-dippin-slippin thing I’ve ever seen.

Plus, how much funnier would it be if he succeeds immediately after leaving the White Sox and the not-so-secretly worst owner in all of sports (shush about John Fischer just this one time, for me)? It would be a level of hilarity not seen since the Michael Rappaport snowball video.

And yes, I’ll admit, part of the ethos for the Eloy Jiménez Fan Flub is predicated largely on wanting rather than thinking he’ll be good, but don’t let anyone convince you crazier things haven’t happened.

Jurickson Profar, the worst qualified player in all of baseball in 2023, turned things around to become the starting outfielder for the National League All-Star team after having never been remotely close to that in years prior.

What’s more, Jiménez is still just 28 years old. How often do former top-level prospects become available for basically nothing in free agency? 

So sit back, light the candles in the Eloy Jiménez shrine you’ve surely made after reading all this, turn on the appropriate theme song, and watch as this offseason’s most hidden gem flourishes anew.

Don’t say I didn’t try to tell you.