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There are roughly anywhere between umpteen and countless factors that go into a third-base coach’s calculations when deciding whether to send a runner home. How fast is he? Whose arm is he running on? Does the outfielder have his momentum? Does the baserunner have his? What’s the score? What inning? What’s the likelihood of a successful plate appearance afterward? Is the weather helping or hurting?

A third base coach has to take those elements and others — is he cutting the corner well? did he have a big meal? — and correctly prioritize them while following three moving objects over the course of three seconds. It’s not an easy job, so ill-fated calls deserve no small amount of grace.

But the White Sox ran into their 13th out at home on Thursday night, a total that leads the league and doubles the league average with an out to spare. For context, an average team runs into about 14 or 15 outs at the plate in an entire season, so the White Sox are deficit-spending forgiveness right now.

In McEwing’s defense, one shouldn’t reduce a third-base coach’s approach to the job in a single number. Back when the White Sox hired Jeff Cox to serve as third base coach, he had come off the same job with the Pittsburgh Pirates, who only had seven guys thrown out at home during the 2007 season, and none on Cox’s sends. While that sounds great, Cox was instead criticized for being overcautious and leaving runs on the board. A third-base coach isn’t doing his job well if he’s avoiding all risks.

This is especially the case with two outs, when probabilities work against the team at the plate. If McEwing doesn’t send a guy on a 50/50 call — or even a 40/60 call — with two down, he’s dependent on the batter on deck coming through with a productive plate appearance. Either way, the odds aren’t in favor of the offense, so some coaches should be emboldened to take ownership of their destiny.

But as the body count piles up, McEwing should probably be de-boldened. His recent unsuccessful sends aren’t the result of minor errors in rapid-fire complicated calculations. Instead, they more closely resemble decisions that are predetermined by a Computer Science 101 student that lack the sophistication to account for any other variables than the number of outs.

Because outs at home are high-leverage and emotionally charged, I reviewed all of McEwing’s eight unsuccessful sends this year (the other five outs were on infield plays), ranking them on a scale of 1 to 5.

While the higher number is usually better, this is a scale of least to most objectionable:

I ranked them in this order because I always need a moment to remember whether a Grade 3 strain is worse than a Grade 1 strain, and that knowledge is vital for covering the White Sox in 2022.

Situation: Nobody out, runners on first and second and the White Sox trailing 2-0 in the fifth.

Play: Danny Mendick smashes a grounder inside the third-base line, and it caroms softly off the tarp in foul territory. Reese McGuire scores easily from second, but Steven Kwan throws out Adam Engel by about 20 feet.

Grade: 4. Making the first out at home is bad, especially by that distance since Kwan has a good arm for a left fielder. The fact that this game ended 2-1 is worse. But this was the game where Tony La Russa issued a lineup card with Josh Harrison batting first, Adam Haseley second and Leury García third, so when Harrison and Haseley followed by striking out on seven pitches between them, you could understand what informed McEwing’s thinking.

Situation: The White Sox are trailing 2-0, but have Luis Robert on second and Leury García on first to start the top of the fourth.

Play: José Abreu hits a deep fly to right that goes off Franmil Reyes’ glove. Robert stands on second anticipating a tag, while García hangs out 20 feet from second in the event the ball isn’t caught. Reyes indeed fails to make the catch, creating a situation where García trails Robert by 20 feet running to and rounding third, so somebody was going to be out somewhere. Robert was nailed at home by a large margin, but McEwing might’ve been lucky he stopped García from making it a double play.

Grade: 2. This was a disaster of the players’ making, but it reflected poorly on everybody in the uniform.

Situation: Bases loaded, two outs and the White Sox leading 1-0 in the third inning.

Play: Andrew Vaughn laces a single to left. One run scores, but José Abreu’s attempt to score from second is thwarted by an on-target throw by Trevor Larnach.

Grade: 1. Two outs, Abreu was only out by a few steps, and Leury García loomed on deck. It only stung because it keeps happening.

Situation: White Sox leading 4-2 with nobody out in the top of the ninth, A.J. Pollock on third and José Abreu at the plate.

Play: Abreu hits a deep fly ball to right for an apparent sac fly, but Jackie Bradley Jr. cuts down Pollock.

Grade: 1. If you’re treating fly ball distance like a game of high/low, I don’t know if you’re going to do better than 287 feet. Bradley has a great arm, and Adam Engel scored with a little bit of room to spare on a 309-foot fly an inning before, so it was worth a shot.

Situation: The White Sox trail 2-1 with two outs in the eighth inning, runners on first and second and Yoán Moncada at the plate.

Play: Moncada slashes a single to left, and McEwing waves home Josh Harrison despite reaching third at the same time Andrew Benintendi got the ball. Benintendi makes an on-target throw to get Harrison by plenty.

Grade: 3. This decision looks terrible when viewed in isolation, but the last time McEwing had a chance to wave home Harrison on a fly to Benintendi, the resulting throw could best be described as Johnny Damon-esque. Perhaps McEwing fell for the long con.

Situation: The White Sox trail 3-0 with two outs and runners on first and second, with the lead runner Yasmani Grandal.

Play: Jake Burger shoots a single through the right side, and Rafael Ortega has to cover some ground to charge the roller. Grandal is just touching third by the time Ortega picks up the ball, and Ortega makes a relaxed three-hop throw to get Grandal without a slide.

Grade: 5. This is one of those true Joe McEwing Auto-Sends.

Situation: The White Sox and Astros are tied at 3 with Leury García on second with two outs and Seby Zavala at the plate against Framber Valdez.

Play: Zavala singles to left to Yordan Alvarez, who is playing shallow because the Crawford Boxes at Minute Maid Park loom behind him. He gets the ball on two hops before García touches third, and Alvarez makes a 93.9 mph throw on the fly to Martin Maldonado, who tags out García standing.

Grade: 5. Another Auto-Send. This one probably counted on Alvarez looking like a DH playing left field, but the path of the ball didn’t require any athleticism in fielding it. The White Sox are held scoreless the rest of the way, while the Astros run it up to 13-3.

Situation: The White Sox trail the Orioles 2-0 in the bottom of the fourth. Gavin Sheets is on second with two outs, and Leury García is at the plate.

Play: García lines a single to right field at 104.3 mph. Austin Hays fields it on a short second hop, takes a massive crow hop himself, then makes an on-target, one-hop throw to Adley Rutschman, who applies the tag to a sliding Sheets well in front of home plate.

Grade: 4. It’s the most defensible of the recent Auto-Sends, because Hays seemed to lose some of the time he gained charging the ball with the awkward way he loaded up for the throw home. Then again, the aggressiveness of the send gave Hays that margin for error in stealing the out.

The one flaw with this exercise is that one can’t easily tabulate all of McEwing’s successful coin-flip decisions. On the send side, it doesn’t take nearly as much time to look at 13 outs as it does to filter through 287 runs. I’ve tagged a couple in the Sox Machine game recaps, like McEwing sendng José Abreu to score from first on Jo Adell back on May 2 …

… and McEwing waving Luis Robert home from first on a two-out double to Fenway Park’s left-field corner on six days later:

There’s also no easy way to track smart McEwing holds, because databases like Baseball-Reference.com’s Play Index or MLB.com’s video archive aren’t designed to capture the absence of an action.

Since any study of McEwing’s activity lends itself to dwelling on the outs, then it makes sense to apply such a scale to the outcomes. If McEwing’s scorecard showed all 1’s and 2’s, then it mostly merits a shrug, or a frown that he can’t catch a break. When he’s on a streak of 4’s and 5’s, it might be time to acknowledge an issue in forcing the issue.

There’s also a larger discussion to be had about the idea that McEwing has served on the coaching staff of three different White Sox managers over 11 years, and Daryl Boston can claim the same over nine, yet it’s not because of scintillating results with the team’s baserunning, infield and outfield play. But considering Tony La Russa requested a pair of McEwing’s spikes to remember him by when McEwing jumped from the Cardinals to the Mets in the late ’90s, said larger discussion would still be a short one.

Writing about the White Sox for a 16th season, first here, then at South Side Sox, and now here again. Let’s talk curling.

Kick us when we’re down Jim. Let’s just pile on the depression of the 2022 White Sox.

Congrats on a lot of work to put this together.

Tuesday night McEwing was too cautious not sending Robert home in the 9th, and I said to my wife it’s because he’s being ripped for sending runners home.

Last night Sheets should have scored easily on a single to right with two outs. Yes, the ball was hit hard but was Sheets off with contact as he should have been with two outs? I wondered because Sheets is not slow.

Heck, the whole organization from top to bottom is just mediocre. Coaching is just one aspect of the whole mediocrity.

I couldn’t see it last night, but there was a play a few weeks ago, and I don’t remember the details, but Sheets got absolutely zero secondary lead. It takes him long enough to get his big body up to speed, but starting from a dead stop doesn’t help.

Yes, thanks for doing an astonishing amount of work on this. There’s Inside Baseball, then there’s Way Inside Baseball. I look forward to the companion piece on Sox first base coaching.

One of those, I believe, is overly generous in McEwings favor.

May 16 vs. KC. Benintendi, although not strong armed, is known for accuracy. His momentum is towards home, short distance throw and gloves the ball before the runner reaches third. IMHO, that’s the very definition of stop sign.

However, great article, and it does ask the same question I’m sure many of us have….WTF happened to the Joe McEwing that we liked?

Another interesting question is: how did “we” originally decide that we liked Joe McEwing? If you pressed me, I’d have trouble identifying a reason to actually like him or think he could have been, say, a good manager. He’s always had some fans (including LaRussa) but he may just be an affable and unexceptional white guy who has been skating by on good will accumulated decades ago.

Personally, I liked his calls on sending, that’s it. The fact that I wasn’t regularly second guessing his calls made him satisfactory. That however, has changed drastically and left me wondering, have aliens or twinkies taken over McEwings body.

Maybe like the Sox themselves, Super Joe is just on a season long cold streak? But some (most?) of those weren’t even close or required perfect execution/throws by the defense. Maybe it’s time to recalibrate his decision making.

Who is really slanting the aggressive decisions, Super Joe or TLR (or somebody else on the bench)?

I had thought he was being extra aggressive because the offense wasn’t scoring and he was trying to make something happen. That was somewhat reasonable. But if that was the case, the offense if now showing some ability to string together hits.

I was going to say the same thing, but I think his overall logic is flawed overall because he keeps making bad decisions. Plus, this team consistently hurts themselves when they actually try to sprint, so maybe recalibrate.

Having to examine the gross underperformance of a third base coach in the context of a stalled and possibly failing rebuild is the essence of the White Sox. The brand is strong.

Watching our 3rd base coach send runners home with no chance, other than a bad throw, of scoring is continually getting worse every game. He is becoming a liability as he can not be seeing the play in front of him when the runner is out by 10- 15feet. Big innings are being erased with this type of insanity.

Gee thanks for all the videos to relive all those mistakes. Been saying this for months on another site. Sending guys when the left fielder already has the ball. He should be right behind the HOF manager when he leaves the door. From the top with a Brooklyn owner all the way to the trainer and just bad ballplayers this team stinks. Go support a minor league team instead of this one. Plus save a ton of money and you won’t get robbed.

Guess who’s starting at second base tonight? Guess who isn’t?

This has gotten so stupid there is just no excuse for this team. They bring up Sosa and sit him in favor of a generationally bad player (ok so I’m exaggerating, but he is still quite bad). Why even bother with this team? I half wish they had never even settled the CBA agreement and were still locked out.