I try to avoid telling people how to fan.

The White Sox are in a decade-long playoff drought, the top two prospects in the organization are on the injured list, Manny Machado and Fernando Tatis Jr. are in San Diego…cope however you need to cope.

But in sports, and especially in baseball — that dusty old sport Tim Anderson is doing his best to shake up — it’s rare that the essence of an exciting, must-watch player is genuinely distilled into a fitting nickname an entire fan base can embrace. So rare is it, that we’re flooded with formulaic attempts to reverse-engineer the magic by cramming together shortened versions of star players’ or top prospects’ first and last names hoping something will click.

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As a result, we get “LuBob” as a fan-created nickname for Luis Robert, which is admittedly more charming than most iterations of this method. The genius is the subversion of expectations that comes with flipping Robert to “Bob,” which takes a flashy but presently somewhat unknowable player and gives him a moniker more befitting of the divorced accountant filling out the last slot of your bowling team. It’s so discordant with the experience of watching him play — an electric mix of power-hitting, base stealing and diving catches — that it achieves irony, which is good enough in the absence of the genuine article.

The thing is, we got the genuine article in spring training last year: the idealized scenario of a small cross-section of the team’s senior leadership, young stars and Robert’s own countrymen watching him play and being inspired enough to drop a perfect moniker on him: “La Pantera,” which obviously translates to The Panther, but holds a more appropriate mystique in its original language.

“We were like, having fun with him,” said Yoán Moncada through team interpreter Billy Russo. “At that time I watched the movie ‘Black Panther,’ and I thought it was funny to call him the Black Panther.”

OK, so maybe the actual source and moment of inspiration isn’t as important as the end result, a label that fits his game and style of play.

“I don’t know, I just called him that name to have fun,” Moncada said through Russo. “I don’t know if it’s something that relates to his game.”

“I don’t know,” said Avisaíl García, bursting out laughing. “It just came up. Everybody called him La Pantera, so I called him it back. But he’s super fast, he plays hard and goes 100 percent all the time. He’s a really good kid. He plays hard, has fun in the game. And he’s a really good kid. I’ll always like him.”

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Ah, well. Maybe it just sounds cool, unless some particularly sage veteran clubhouse leader can specify otherwise.

“It’s a perfect match for him,” José Abreu said through Russo. “His physical tools and he looks like a panther when he’s on the field.”

Abreu said the then-20-year-old’s reaction to a group of older players bestowing him with the name was hard to read, and he didn’t know whether that was good or bad. Robert said he liked the nickname during an interview last July, and now Abreu feels it was positive for him as he worked to find acceptance and familiarity in a new clubhouse. He answered in English that La Pantera was a perfect encapsulation of Robert’s power and speed combination, and felt strongly enough about it that it seemed like the time to explain how the LuBob name came about.

“No, no, no, La Pantera is better,” Abreu said through Russo after giving it just a moment of thought.

After an injury-ravaged 2018 season, Robert is delivering on the excitement that accompanied the news of his signing, in a way that’s making his progression the most exciting thing to follow in a White Sox system previously energized by Eloy Jiménez and Moncada. Robert was promoted to Double-A Birmingham Tuesday after he hit .453/.512/.920 with eight home runs and stolen bases apiece and three triples in just 19 games at High-A Winston-Salem this year.

“If he can keep himself healthy, those results that he’s putting up right now are going to be nothing compared to what he’s capable of doing,” said Abreu through Russo. “I think this is just the surface of the things he can do.”

The excitement is enough — and the White Sox outfield is in such a state of flux — that Rick Renteria spent Wednesday defending the idea that Robert needs more at-bats before a promotion to the majors becomes a possibility. Given his professional success against older competition in Cuba as a teenager, it’s something that would be conceivable now had much of Robert’s 2018 not been lost. It’s much harder to imagine now, considering the development left in his game and the White Sox’s demonstrated interest in salvaging an extra year of contractual control of their young core pieces

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While clearly torching the competition, Robert has a slightly high 23.8 percent strikeout rate against otherwise overmatched pitchers this season, and while he’s walked plenty in the past, four free passes in 84 plate appearances suggest he’s still getting comfortable with his plate approach — no thanks to a five-game absence because of a hand contusion. With his blazing speed in center field, Robert won’t be easy to hold down in the minors over vague defensive concerns. But the primary questions facing him as a prospect are how much he’ll strike out and the maturity of his plate approach, both of which will need to be addressed by making him prove he can adjust to the challenges of each minor league level.

“He’s a quick study, so to speak,” said Renteria. “He’ll still have those experiences and that learning curve to go through. It’s just a process, it’s just allowing them opportunities to have at-bats and play the game. When everybody continues to put their eyes on him and views him as being ready and he continues to be the voice of that through his actions, he’ll be here.”

He’ll be here, and when he is, his teammates will know what to call him.

The Athletic’s Josh Tolentino contributed to this report.

(Top photo: Jennifer Stewart/Getty Images)

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