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Offseason In Review: Chicago White Sox

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In his first offseason as White Sox GM, Chris Getz made four key trades and a series of small free agent deals as the team enters another rebuilding phase.

Major League Signings

2024 spending: $20.8MM
Total spending: $30.05MM

Options Exercised

  • None

Trades and Claims

Notable Minor League Signings

Extensions

  • None

Notable Losses

Back in October, I was skeptical of White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf saying, “We want to get better as fast as we possibly can,” as part of the justification for hiring internal GM candidate Chris Getz without conducting outside interviews.  It was just too tall of an order for a team that lacked talent and has an owner averse to big free agent contracts.  Based on the moves Getz ended up making in his first offseason as GM, a quick turnaround and 2024 contention were never actually the goals.

Given Liam Hendriks’ August Tommy John surgery, the White Sox chose to decline his $15MM option for 2024, instead triggering a buyout in the same amount that will be paid out over the next decade.  The club also declined their $14MM club option on Tim Anderson, paying a $1MM buyout after finding no takers via trade.  This outcome was unsurprising after Anderson’s abysmal 2023.  The White Sox opted for a cheap defensive-minded veteran replacement at shortstop, signing free agent Paul DeJong in November.  Anderson’s eight-year White Sox career officially ended when he inked a $5MM deal with the Marlins in February.

Though Getz chose to retain manager Pedro Grifol, the Sox did turn over the coaching staff early in the offseason, bringing in Marcus Thames as hitting coach and also adding Grady Sizemore, Drew Butera, Matt Wise, and Jason Bourgeois.  Getz also dropped this memorable line to the media: “I don’t like our team.”

Getz would go on to back up that statement by giving the White Sox a major makeover.  The first strike happened in mid-November, with reliever Aaron Bummer getting shipped to Atlanta for a five-player package.  Taking advantage of Chicago’s lack of depth, four of the five players acquired were on the 40-man roster.  It was a whole lot of players the Braves didn’t need.  The biggest name, Mike Soroka, may have otherwise wound up non-tendered.  But as a $3MM flier for a threadbare White Sox rotation, Soroka fits.  Shuster provides another backend rotation candidate; he’ll start the season at Triple-A.  Given that Bummer was coming off a 6.79 ERA and rebuilding teams don’t have much need for decently-compensated relievers anyway, sending him off for depth pieces was a solid first trade for Getz.

The White Sox’s biggest free agent offseason expenditure came during the Winter Meetings with the signing of Erick Fedde.  The former Nationals top prospect, now 31, rejuvenated his career in South Korea in 2023.  Now he’s a key part of Chicago’s rotation.  The Fedde signing seems like a reasonable play for innings, with a hint of upside for a sub-4.00 ERA season.  This is very much a Rotation of Opportunity in 2024.  Perhaps nothing demonstrates that better than Garrett Crochet getting the Opening Day nod.  As James Fegan noted at Sox Machine, Crochet has 73 big league innings to his name, “it’s his first time back in [the starting pitcher] routine since essentially his sophomore year of college, and Tommy John surgery rehab and a shoulder strain didn’t make 2023 a typical platform year from the bullpen.”

A veteran backup catcher was on Getz’s shopping list this winter, given the inexperience of Korey Lee and Edgar Quero.  He found one in another deal with the Braves, who were serving as a way station for Max Stassi.  The White Sox are only on the hook for $740K of Stassi’s $7MM salary this year, so he makes for a low-risk addition.  Several weeks later, the White Sox inked Martin Maldonado to a one-year deal, possibly stifling an opportunity for Lee or Quero assuming Stassi sticks.  Logically, if one of the young catchers seems ready this summer, one or both veterans will be traded.

In January, news came that Reinsdorf is seeking a new stadium for the White Sox in the South Loop.  Everything so far has been standard: a request for over a billion dollars in public money, promises of an economic boom around a new stadium, questionable reasoning about why the current stadium won’t work, and a vague threat that the team could be moved.  All of this is outside the scope of our Offseason In Review series, but the ballpark situation figures to hang over the team for the foreseeable future.

In February, Getz added Dominic Fletcher in a trade with the Diamondbacks, hopefully filling the Sox’s long-standing right field vacancy in the process.  Fletcher, 26, hit well in limited action as a rookie with Arizona last year.  Coming into the 2023 season, Baseball America rated Fletcher as a 40-grade prospect with a strong glove and a “line-drive swing with average bat speed.”  Projection systems suggest Fletcher’s bat is not currently MLB-caliber, despite his brief success in ’23.  Still, the bar is astoundingly low here, as the White Sox haven’t had their primary right fielder post a 1-WAR season since Avisail Garcia in 2017.  Fletcher may have the right field job out of the gate, though minor league signing Kevin Pillar will likely be lurking as his potential platoon partner or backup.

The Fletcher addition fits with Getz’s stated goal of improving the team’s defense.  Aside from Fletcher, the Sox have improved up the middle with DeJong, Nicky Lopez, and Maldonado.  Groundballers like Fedde and Soroka should appreciate that, and defense is generally much cheaper on the market than offense.  Of course, a tradeoff has been made, as offensive expectations for Fletcher, DeJong, Lopez, and Maldonado are quite low.

On the same day as the Fletcher trade, Getz dealt his best reliever, Gregory Santos, to the Mariners for Prelander Berroa, Zach DeLoach, and the #69 pick in this year’s draft.  The two prospects project as a potential setup man and a fourth outfielder if things go well, and the draft pick will further boost organizational depth.  With dim prospects in the short-term, trading away relievers for quality prospects is usually a good move.  DeLoach may not have the ideal arm for right field, but as a 25-year-old who played 138 games at Triple-A last year, he could push Fletcher for playing time this year.

Of course, those departures leave the White Sox with one of the game’s shakiest-looking bullpens.  New additions Steven Wilson, John Brebbia, and Tim Hill will see high-leverage work.  The idea of Michael Kopech in the rotation seems to have been abandoned, and the once-highly-regarded righty will try to find success in relief.

Dylan Cease was the undercurrent of Getz’s entire offeason.  With two years of control remaining, Cease was seemingly shopped all winter.  Getz waited out the acquisitions of Aaron Nola, Sonny Gray, Eduardo Rodriguez, Tyler Glasnow, Yoshinobu Yamamoto, Lucas Giolito, Chris Sale, Shota Imanaga, Marcus Stroman, and Corbin Burnes, all pitchers who had crossover with Cease’s market.  Blake Snell didn’t reach an agreement until March 18th, and as of this writing Jordan Montgomery remains available.  The Dodgers, Braves, Cardinals, Reds, Yankees, Mets, Mariners, Orioles, and Rangers were linked to Cease at various points, but it was the Padres who swooped in to make a late deal on March 13th.

As I wrote in my subscriber-only mailbag last week, comparing the trade to the handful of rare precedents, I like the deal for the White Sox.  Aside from Wilson, something of a throw-in, Getz acquired three prospects graded 50 or 55 for Cease.  Looking at deals made for James Paxton, Joe Musgrove, and Gerrit Cole, teams generally fell short of that return.

Without Cease, the White Sox rotation has the potential to be awful.  RosterResource currently projects Crochet, Fedde, Soroka, Chris Flexen, and Nick Nastrini as the starting five.  Drew Thorpe, perhaps the key piece in the Cease trade, has a great opportunity here, but did not help his short-term chances with yesterday’s spring training outing.  The projected White Sox rotation has produced exactly two good Major League seasons to date: Soroka’s 4-WAR effort in 2019, and Flexen’s 3-WAR 2021.

Trading Cease is something of a concession the White Sox are not going to be good in 2024 or 2025.  They’re projected to win 66 games this year, and it’s hard to see them leaping into contention in ’25.  Luis Robert may be at peak value coming off a healthy 5-WAR season, and he’s controlled through 2027.  A case could be made that if his performance is largely irrelevant on bad teams in ’24 and ’25, and the team might just be turning the corner in ’26, the optimal move is to cash him in now for the maximum return.  But the White Sox probably don’t see their timeline that way, and keeping Robert simply as a reason to watch the team is defensible.

Should the White Sox be taking advantage of their low payroll this year to try to add prospect capital?  In a mailbag earlier this month, I explored the concept of sign-and-flips by non-contending teams, and we found success stories to be pretty rare in practice.  As Anthony Franco put it, “If the guy was any good, he wasn’t signing a low-base MLB deal with a non-contender.”  So you might suggest the White Sox should’ve landed one-year free agents like Teoscar Hernandez or Luis Severino with a mind toward flipping them, but those players might not have been interested.

Overall, this was a good first offseason for Getz, who traded three of his more marketable players aside from Robert and got respectable returns.  It’s likely he’ll continue to listen on Eloy Jimenez and would trade Yoan Moncada if he has any kind of resurgence.  As far as the season ahead, it’s going to be ugly.

 

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