On the heels of one of the worst seasons in baseball history, the White Sox must stockpile young talent while operating under a cloud of uncertainty about the future of the franchise.
Guaranteed Contracts
- Andrew Benintendi, LF: $47.5MM through 2027
- Luis Robert Jr., CF: $15MM through 2025, with a $20MM club option ($2MM buyout) for 2026 and the same club option for '27
Option Decisions
- Yoan Moncada, 3B: $25MM club option with a $5MM buyout
- Max Stassi, C: $7.5MM club option with a $500K buyout
Additional Obligations
- Owe $1.5MM buyout to released RHP John Brebbia
- Owe $250K buyout to released C Martin Maldonado
2025 financial commitments: $40.75MM
Total future commitments: $71.75MM
Arbitration-Eligible Players (service time in parentheses; salary projections via Matt Swartz)
- Nicky Lopez (5.139): $5.1MM
- Matt Foster (4.093): $900K
- Garrett Crochet (4.028): $2.9MM
- Enyel De Los Santos (4.015): $1.7MM
- Andrew Vaughn (4.000): $6.4MM
- Justin Anderson (3.122): $1.1MM
- Jimmy Lambert (3.108): $1.2MM
- Gavin Sheets (3.076): $2.6MM
- Steven Wilson (3.000): $1MM
- Non-tender candidates: Lopez, Foster, De Los Santos, Vaughn, Anderson, Lambert, Sheets, Wilson
Free Agents
While we knew this team would be bad, we didn't realize it would be historically bad. The 2024 White Sox set the modern record for total losses with 121, and it easily could have been worse had they not surged to win five of their last six games. Starting pitchers Garrett Crochet and Erick Fedde were the only glimmers of hope, but the latter was traded and the former seems on his way out.
The Sox fired manager Pedro Grifol on August 8th, with Grady Sizemore serving as interim manager for the remainder of the season. Sizemore is at least under consideration for the full-time job, but the list of known candidates has also included Donnie Ecker, Will Venable, Clayton McCullough, Danny Lehman, George Lombard, A.J. Ellis, Phil Nevin, Daniel Descalso, and Skip Schumaker. Grifol was Rick Hahn's hire, so the new manager will be the first chosen by senior vice president/GM Chris Getz.
Beyond the managarial change, existential issues loom over the White Sox. One is whether longtime owner Jerry Reinsdorf intends to sell the team. On October 16th, Brittany Ghiroli of The Athletic reported that Reinsdorf is "open to selling" the team, and furthermore, "is in active discussions with a group led by former big leaguer Dave Stewart." Stewart's involvement has led to speculation about potentially moving the team to Nashville, given the former pitcher's efforts to bring an MLB team to that city.
The Stewart rumor follows January news of Reinsdorf's aim of getting a new stadium built in a (Chicago) South Loop area called "The 78." A relocation threat is one of the oldest in the new-stadium playbook, of course, and Reinsdorf successfully leveraged a potential move to St. Petersburg back in 1988 to get the current Guaranteed Rate Field built in Chicago. Back in 1995, Reinsdorf famously said in reference to his St. Petersburg play in a Cigar Aficionado interview, "A savvy negotiator creates leverage. People had to think we were going to leave Chicago."
Moving from Chicago to St. Petersburg hardly made sense in terms of market size, and the same is true of Nashville now.
Unlock Subscriber-Exclusive Articles Like This One With a Trade Rumors Front Office Subscription
- Access weekly subscriber-only articles by Tim Dierkes, Steve Adams, and Anthony Franco.
- Join exclusive weekly live chats with Anthony.
- Remove ads and support our writers.
- Access GM-caliber tools like our MLB Contract Tracker
White Sox outlook is 50 wins and Jerry Reinsdorf selling the team. That’s all that it comes down to.
I wouldn’t be surprised if they won around 56-58 wins next year.
Please,please sell the team to someone who will keep them in Chicago!!
Why?
MLB Teams are capital assets to that city — economic, cultural, social, are all factors to any city’s vitality and well being (economic being most important) …
If it comes to a real possibility of a new owner moving the White Sox out of Chicago, I would expect behind the scenes pressure from local Chicago powerbrokers to keep the team in Chicago.
I agree that whoever eventually takes over after Reinsdorf, the sale of the team should be predicated on keeping the team in Chicago.
How does putting a historically abysmal team on the field jive with
“Reinsdorf’s aim of getting a new stadium built in a (Chicago) South Loop area called “The 78.”?
I guess the answer is the same as with other teams. There’s always at least a “mystery bidder” and always some municipals officials who don’t want to lose a major league team on their watch. Not very nice for the fans, but their job is to buy tickets, merchandise, parking and the occasional beer and stay out of the way.
Mikenmn: It would or wouldn’t GIBE, and that’s no JIVE.
Easiest offseason team to project. Doom and gloom until the team is sold.
Which may happen sooner rather than later.
I would like to get Michael and Oprah together and make the chairman a respectful offer.
Lol imagine Oprah at arb time this year. You get a non tender! You get a non tender! Crochet you’re traded. Everybody else is getting a non-tenderrrrrrrr!
MJ & Opes? No, FULL STOP
Please trade Lyle green…I’m begging you white Sox, me and Lyle are both from the same place, it would be nice to see a Russian make it into MLB…
Why would you want them to trade him? He’s YEARS away, but he certainly doesn’t have a better shot of making it to the bigs on the Yankees or Dodgers? My pathetic Sox might be his only chance lol
I would say trade him to maybe someone like the rays
With all the players they’ll cut during the offseason they should be aggressive in the rule 5 draft and waiver wire and look for any upside they can get
Find myself coming to this site less and less, as paid content gets more. Been here for 18+ years. Greed ruins everything lol
Are you one of those people that work for free? That’s very generous of you.
I think Tim did basically work for free at the beginning. Somewhere along the line he turned this into a legit source of income and then a legit source of income for others.
No right or wrong answers here. I will probably pay eventually but I worry young fans may not.
2.50 a month is too greedy for you? I’m about to spend more than that on a freakin coffee!
Funding a site on advertising is a dying business model. If you ran a site that receives decreasing ad revenue each year, and you have employees to pay, what would you do? While not getting greedy, mind.
The sort of aggregation you seem to be looking for is going to be generated by AI soon in places where it isn’t already
I’d rather pay a few dollars to help keep the quality up
I hear you. I just worry making it less accessible to the casual fan will hurt in turning casual fans into serious ones. I can say for sure that this site and Fangraphs helped make that change for me.
MLBTR’s mission isn’t to make the MLB fans more “serious.” If they do, great, they’ll probably get more clicks from that individual. But if it drives more revenue to charge individuals and have less site traffic then that’s exactly what makes sense.
To me, it is like everything else in the world. Everything costs money. I get paid to provide my services, so I don’t mind paying others.
I mean, it seems like Contigo has been getting free $chitt for 18, but thinks MLB-R is being greedy by asking him to contribute?
@contigo $2.50 per month gonna break ya. You are sad little entitled *.*.*.
Less than 9 cents a day. Cheapskate.
Left off of this depressing article is that the Sox also just fired most of their Latin American staff as well because they have been giving 7 figure signing bonuses to International stiffs for years as well. So yeah, fun times.
I will say, I think the rotation / minor league arms are a bit better than Tim’s analysis appears… and while the final numbers weren’t good, Sosa was really good late in the year, Baldwin had a great minor league year (if overmatched when up) and Fletcher is an exceptional defensive right fielder with SOME potential to still hit a bit.
Yes, I’m an optimist. And an idiot.
I think the White Sox are better off than most act like they are. Smith and Schultz is perhaps the most exciting 1 2 punch in the minor leagues. Crochet and Robert are still around to trade. The farm system is deeper and simply better than I can ever remember it.
The last sentence is debatable.
When was it better?
2017.
Yeah 2017 was probably better
But unlike 7 years ago, they have some decent depth(especially pitching) and decent/ok position player depth.
The White Sox had a top heavy farm system in 2017, but the organization’s farm system had little to no depth. The White Sox finally have depth, even though its farm system lacks any players that currently scream superstar. However, pitchers re an exception to the previous sentence.
Schultz and Smith are screaming superstar. Schultz is being compared to Randy Johnson. Smith was an absolute stud in college last year.
Schultz and Smith are the only lefty pitchers ranked in the top 100 prospects, but I noted that pitchers were an exception to the noted sentence that the White Sox farm system do not having any minor league players that scream superstar. I admit that I left out the “a” from are, but I had to hurry because my boss was making his rounds.
Yeah the system is light on stud position player prospects but thats nitpicking. They might have the best young pitching in all of baseball.
They aren’t necessarily thin ice on hitters but they lack “quality” hitters.
In addition JR is getting less TV money from his own network than if he had just kept the Bulls and Sox on NBC Sports Chicago aka Comcast. And Comcast won’t show the new network on its system.
Big Hurt: your not an idiot in my opinion.
Not an idiot. This is the time for optimism. You get the whole off-season without having daily reminders that the team isn’t good. That’s pure baseball fan joy, if you ask me.
Stassi hasn’t even played in the majors since 22 so He & Yoan will get cut.
This white sox makes the 100 loss oakland team look good.
Sox should do something interesting like trade Bendentini for Javier Baez and cash or Rendon & cash.
If they wanted to do something interested, they’d keep Benni, but still trade for Baez & Rendon, with Detroit and LAA throwing in prospects.
**inteesting**
Rendon has a full no trade and Baez has a list of ten that may or may not include the white Sox. You could have looked that up before you spouted nonsense
It also makes no sense. The Sox would trade Benintendi (who had a 124 OPS+ in more than half the season) for Rendon or Baez who are not only worse, but on worse contracts.
So – I’m sure it was a joke, but not a great one.
Enough of you, Turnbuckle.
To spell it out for you, it’s better to keep your meathole shut and let us think you might be an ignorant shmuck than to open it and remove all doubt.
Show the Sox some respect. The A’s only last 93 this year, or 28 games better than the White Sox. So yeah, they look good comparatively.
To put that in perspective, the horrible Angels were 25.5 games worse than the Astros this year. And the White Sox were 28 games worse than the A’s!
Wow.
Help us, Obi-wan, you’re our only hope.
Keep Nicky.
“Let’s go to Ollie Williams with the White Sox offseason outlook. Ollie?”
“THEY’RE BAD!!”
“Thanks Ollie”…
I’d like to see the SF Giants make a play for Crochet. Here’s a trade idea:
Crochet, Benintendi and Moncada for Luis Matos, Yaz, Tom Murphy, Marco Luciano and a pitcher (Mason Black, Keaton Winn, Tristan Beck, lotto type pitchers). SFG can throw in more prospects to make this more appealing like a Jack Choate and/or Dakota Jordan.
This trade is all about Crochet and offloading salary for the ChiSox. The Giants have stockpiled some decent prospects but they haven’t been developed properly. And they need playing time in MLB to fully develop. Sox can tender Yaz a contract and trade him later or just non-tender. SFG could pick up Moncada’s option (GULP!) and hope he finally showcases what made him the one time #1 prospect in baseball and play him at Second Base or just pay him $5M to leave.
Other teams could take on ChiSox salary for Crochet too. Posey needs to make a statement transaction to show he’s arrived and has no past player relationships that will affect him as an executive. There’s a match for these two teams to make a deal, whatever permutation that may be.
That’s way light for crochet. The Sox don’t need the salary relief on benintendi that bad with their current payroll commitments. You’re also misunderstanding moncada’s situation. The Sox can buy out a team option for 2025 at 5 mill and they absolutely will. So dumping him is a non-factor here. If a club wants to take a flyer on him they can wait a few weeks till he becomes a free agent.
Even if moncada salary was a factor, i doubt even Getz is dumb enough to give up crochet for short term salary relief, a prospect with diminished stock in Luciano an assortment of fungible depth pieces like Yaz and Murphy, and a couple token low grade minor league and 40 man pieces. This is his one clear shot rn to ger a high impact trade haul for the rebuild and any crochet trade should be 100% focused on maximizing upside and value in the prospect return. Squandering a trade piece like crochet for salary relief and cheap roater depth at the expense of high ceiling talent would be gm malpractice to.am extreme degree.
Whoops, I see you did reference moncadas option. My bad. That acknowledged it makes zero sense for a team to trade for control of the decision on moncadas option Literally zero sense. Front offices simply do not operate that way.
So spare parts for a very good, young pitcher? I think I can tell who your fav team is.
The White Sox need a Total and Complete rebuild that must start with a new owner(s) who is committed to a long-term rebuild. This won’t be easy, but it still is possible.
Anything less than this is a waste of time and money.
As long as Reinsdorf is the owner, there is no hope. And Illinois, Cook County, Chicago and any other government entity would be utterly foolish to spend a penny until Reinsdorf is gone
Haven’t checked his stats or advanced metrics, but will soroka actually get multi-year offers?
The Sox would be best off just dealing anyone who has any value for as many prospects as possible and taking their lumps next season. Just from Crochet and Robert alone, they could probably get 2-4 top 100 guys who are knocking on the door, as well as a few other mid level guys. They need quantity at this point.
Reinsdorf should have been forced to sell and kicked out of MLB years ago for the stunt he pulled along with Bud Selig in forcing the 1994-95 player strike to try to bust the union and impose a salary cap.
That was reprehensible and shows what a slimeball he is.
Fortunately, the MLBPA was and is too strong for that kind of crap to work.
He started his tenure fine until 2009. That’s been the downfall since.
sign flexen to the bullpen
Move them to Nashville or Portland. There should only be one team per sport per city/metro area.