The White Sox just wrapped up the worst MLB season since the Taft administration. 41 wins is the fewest total since the infamous ’62 Mets, just a .253% winning percentage. That WP% number got even worse after the White Sox sold off their few remaining assets at the deadline, trading Erick Fedde, Paul DeJong, Eloy Jiménez, Michael Kopech, Tommy Pham, and Tanner Banks away to leave the White Sox as an Island of Misfit Toys. The White Sox are in shambles. Let’s see if there’s any hope.
Rotation
Garrett Crochet is very likely to be traded this winter. Crochet was fantastic in the first half and should be a valuable trade asset, but that’s all he’ll be for the White Sox. As a result, Chicago will be forced to utilize their homegrown talent, which includes the following players:
So, it’s not great. Cannon was the only one to play a large role for the White Sox, throwing 115 overtly below-average innings. His five-pitch mix is decent for a rookie, but his K/BB ratios are rough, and his batted ball data is far from encouraging. He should be a solid – if fairly unremarkable – rotation piece. That leaves the other four rotation spots available to be filled.
This brings us to Davis Martin, a former 14th-round draft pick back in 2018 (!) who has clawed his way through the minors to make the big league rotation. Martin’s 47 innings as a starter showed him treading water as he struggled to keep his walks down. Martin’s 10.5% walk rate caused him to struggle, which certainly inflated that WHIP and ERA. If Martin can rein in his four-seam locations (just a 61% strike rate), it could move his walks to a much more palatable 8.0%, and keep his strikeout rate well above 20%. Martin, like Cannon, can be a solid back-end rotation piece, albeit with a bit more upside on account of his excellent slider and solid batted ball data.
Drew Thorpe is one of the strangest pitchers in MLB. He cruised through the minors on account of having a true 70-80 grade changeup… and basically nothing else. His fastball grades out very poorly, and his slider doesn’t fare much better. Thorpe toyed with a sweeper in 2024, and maybe an improved version in 2025 can alleviate some struggles against same-handed hitters. As for his fastball? His four-seamer clearly needs better locations, as its 9.9% mistake rate and 60% strike rate are exemplary of his control issues. Thorpe almost never throws his changeup early in counts, so he has to rely on his subpar fastball and breaking ball to get through hitters. Thorpe is young, and a velo spike or control improvement is possible, but he is going to need a lot of development to reach his full potential.
The last starter who gets a paragraph here is Sean Burke, who I wrote about in more depth in my Small Sample Standouts piece. Burke has a really nice fastball and solid secondaries, with – stop me if you’ve heard this one before – questionable control. Burke’s 16 innings as a starter were promising but obviously, we need to see more. Burke stands at 6’6″, with seven feet of extension and nearly 18 inches of iVB on his 95 mph-sitting four-seam fastball. This is very encouraging, but the ability to handle a full season’s workload is still a massive question mark. Out of all the pitchers mentioned thus far, Burke might just have the highest upside… and the lowest floor.
Nastrini I really don’t see becoming more than a spot starter or innings eater for the White Sox. His stuff is fine but his command is so terrible that he’d need to see major changes before taking him seriously as a piece of the future. Ky Bush has seen his velo fall off a cliff and with it his appeal as a prospect. His fastball is tolerable but the rest of his arsenal is basically negligible. If Bush can modify his pitching style to be more ground ball heavy there might be a rotation path for him, but he’s nothing but organizational depth for all intents and purposes. That makes the No. 5 spot in the rotation up in the air, likely to be held down by an innings-eater veteran on a one-year deal.
You can make a case for this rotation going forward, especially with some strong prospects in the upper minors (more on that later). Cannon and Martin might be miserable as your No. 1 and No. 2 starters, but serviceable as your No. 3 or No. 4 starters. If all goes well, Burke and Thorpe could develop into serious assets, while Cannon and Martin have high enough floors to keep the rotation afloat. Despite trading Fedde at the deadline and Crochet seeing his usage plummet, White Sox starting pitchers after the deadline were 22nd in ERA. With a horrible defense and nothing to play for, White Sox starters actually had a better two-month stretch to close out the season than the Phillies, Dodgers, and Diamondbacks. Give these rookies another year to develop, and maybe they can flirt with being a mere average rotation. That would be a major improvement.
Bullpen
Let’s move on to the bullpen, and the White Sox front office should really send gift baskets to the Blue Jays and Rockies for taking the heat off of how bad the White Sox bullpen was. Bullpens are inherently variable, so projecting their future is a difficult task, but there are some names worth mentioning.
Gus Varland, acquired via a waiver claim shortly after the trade deadline, proved to be one of the few decent arms in the White Sox pitching staff. Not only did he post a 3.54 ERA across 20.1 innings with the White Sox, but he struck out 28.2% of batters while walking just 4.7%. He did this off the strength of his fastball, which sat in the mid-upper 90s and had very strong vertical and horizontal break, making it one of the most effective fastballs in MLB outright. It is transactions like these – getting a quality reliever for basically nothing – that can really help turn a franchise around. If Varland can continue his success and be a reliable middle reliever, or even a setup/closer, then it’s a major organizational win.
I’d also be remiss to not talk about Prelander Berroa, who is certainly one of the stranger relievers in baseball. Now with his fourth organization, the 24-year-old righty has truly filthy stuff, including a 97+ mph fastball with tons of iVB and a 133 Stuff+ slider. The problem is that he walks 16% of batters. As with every White Sox pitcher, Berroa will have a very long leash in 2025, meaning he will have plenty of time to rein in his control. If Berroa can drop his walk rate to even nine or 10% he can be one of the most electric relievers in the game, but that is a big if.
The rest of the bullpen is bad in an uninteresting way. John Brebbia is bad, Steven Wilson is bad, Justin Anderson is bad and Jared Shuster is also bad. Fraser Ellard is okay though, and the White Sox have Ron Marinaccio for some reason. It’s a bullpen that undoubtedly is going to get some of the rotation rejects throughout next year, so if guys like Sean Burke or Ky Bush don’t have enough for the rotation they will certainly find a spot in the ‘pen.
Lineup
The 2024 White Sox rotation was below average in the second half, but the lineup was truly dismal. The White Sox were dead last in Runs Scored (507) and WRC+ (75). As a result, position players for the White Sox generated -6.3 fWAR as a whole, a historically terrible team. 29 teams have had a negative combined fWAR among batters in the integration era, and the 2024 White Sox are just the sixth team in the new millennium to fail to have a roster above replacement.
The White Sox’s 507 runs are the fewest runs scored in a 162-game season since 1972 when the overall league offense was way down. That comes out to 3.1 Runs per game, the 18th worst in the live-ball era, which does not account for 1960’s second dead-ball era offense clogging up the leaderboard. There hasn’t been a team this anemic at scoring runs since the ’81 Blue Jays in a shortened season. A historically awful season.
Oh, and don’t think that their poor offensive performance is a result of a glove-first roster construction. The White Sox not only finished dead last in Statcast Fielding Run Value, but Fangraphs has the 2024 White Sox as the 12th worst defensive team overall since 2000. They likely would have finished even worse had it not been for Nicky Lopez lending his services to the junkyard that was the White Sox infield.
While the White Sox rotation isn’t a particularly difficult sell, the White Sox lineup is a different story. Besides Luis Robert Jr. (who may not even be on the team by Opening Day), this lineup is almost entirely devoid of talent.
So… is there hope?
Alright, I’ll do my best.
Andrew Vaughn is probably the best hitter on the White Sox, which is an extremely low bar, but he is at least a capable bat. Vaughn is tolerable against righties, but does fairly well against lefties, with a 113 career OPS+ against southpaws, as opposed to a 96 OPS+ against RHP. Perhaps Vaughn can improve his approach against righties, but if not, Gavin Sheets could serve as a platoon bat against righties. Vaughn and Sheets are is basically unplayable in the field, so maybe their best bet would be to run a DH platoon between them, with some 1B reps if needed. It’s hardly a supreme offensive force, but it’s something.
11-22 UPDATE: Sheets has been nontendered. Probably should have seen that coming to be honest
Another straw to grasp onto may be Lenyn Sosa. Sosa is a 24-year-old utility infielder that HATES WALKS!!! His 3.3% walk rate is indicative of his plate approach – a lot of swings and a lot of chases. Sosa’s done this throughout his professional career, and the results have been mixed. Sosa hits a ton of line drives and a ton of Flares & Burners. He doesn’t have an especially high batting average, but when he does put the ball into play it generally does decently well. His .304 xwOBA is nothing to write home about but it’s far better than his .280 wOBA, indicating that Sosa can perform better.
Sosa has played all over the infield in his major and minor league career, never really performing well anywhere. With Sheets and Vaughn being effectively incapable of playing first base, I think that Sosa could prove to be an above-average 1B, or they can continue using him as a utility infielder/righty platoon. A utility infielder that doesn’t steal or play good defense isn’t very exciting but perhaps Sosa – still just 24 – can improve on a few weak aspects of his game to become an everyday player. On a normal team, Sosa would be nothing more than organizational depth, but on the White Sox, he gets a whole two paragraphs about him! Gasping at straws indeed.
The last bit of hope for the lineup is that Colson Montgomery is inching closer to making the big league roster. Montgomery came into the season a consensus top prospect but had an underwhelming Triple-A campaign. A .710 OPS is hardly disastrous for a 22-year-old, but his future projection is much more mixed than it was last April. Still, scouts agree Montgomery is a top-40 prospect, and with a strong Arizona Fall League campaign, his stock may be rising again. The White Sox might take their time with Montgomery (they don’t have much to lose, do they?) so perhaps he won’t see the big leagues until late in 2025 or even 2026. All that being said, Montgomery is likely the most obvious source of optimism for a well otherwise run completely dry.
Outside of that? Gosh, it’s brutal. Maybe Dominic Fletcher learns how to hit, or Andrew Benintendi remembers. I really tried to find something to look forward to but there just isn’t much here. Such a wretched roster is making me sad, so let’s see if there are any yields to be seen on the farm.
The Farm
The saving grace for the White Sox may be that their farm was quietly one of the more productive of any organization in 2024, and with some good luck in development, it could make the White Sox a force again.
Let’s start with Noah Schultz, who is currently one of the top pitching prospects in all of MLB. Schultz was drafted out of Oswego High School, just an hour away from downtown Chicago. Schultz has, to this point, crushed the lower levels of the minors. He’s consistently striking out well over 25% of batters and, at age 20, held his own in Double-A, posting a 1.47 ERA in 61 innings. Volume is still a question for Schultz (those 61 Double-A innings came in 16 starts), as are his non-slider pitches. His fastball sits in the mid-90s but has been hittable. Still, his standout slider has kept him one of the most productive pitchers in MiLB. Schultz is sort of a harder-throwing, lefty version of Drew Thorpe in the sense that he has a truly 80-grade pitch and mediocre-to-bad primary offerings. If Schultz can improve upon his fastball and maybe develop a splitter or improve his subpar changeup… look out.
The White Sox also have Hagen Smith, who had a sensational collegiate campaign with Arkansas, striking out 17.3 batters per nine innings. Debuting in Single-A Winston Salem, Smith merely treaded water in his three starts. Still, Smith has upper 90s velo and a gnarly slider, giving the southpaw a huge swing-and-miss profile. How he will adjust to the pro game we have yet to see, but the 21-year-old Smith certainly has one of the liveliest arms in the minors.
Because we’ve already discussed Montgomery, the only other major prospect to note is Edgar Quero, who the White Sox got with Ky Bush in the extremely funny Lucas Giolito trade with the Angels. Quero is a catcher (for now) who has boasted double-digit walk rates at almost every level of the minors. His raw power and ability to stay at catcher are question marks, but Quero has thus far hit well above average at every level of the minors. Just 21 years old, Quero can still have a lot of time in the oven before he needs to make his MLB debut, but it is very encouraging that he is holding his own at Triple-A despite his youth.
The rest of the farm system has loads of question marks but there’s talent sprinkled throughout. 2023 seventh-round pick George Wolkow is an enormous human, listed at 6’7″ and 239 lbs. He has tremendous raw power but also a tremendous whiff rate – posting a 40% K rate in A ball. Wolkow is crazy young, born in 2006 (!), making his promotion to Single-A impressive. If he can rein in his strikeouts, Wolkow could go from a fringe, fun prospect to an organization staple. Jacob Gonzalez had a famously horrible 2023, but his 2024 was a significant improvement. Currently, Gonzalez projects no more than a utility IF role, but there’s always a chance he can develop his glove or power.
There are some other names: Brooks Baldwin, Samuel Zavala, Wilfred Veras, and Bryan Ramos, that deserve a mention but frankly, I have little to say about them other than they might be serviceable contributors someday. If we want to go way down the prospect list: Alexander Albertus was doing pretty decent in Single-A before a season-ending injury, Jeral Perez played in the Futures game, Trey McGough is a lefty reliever prospect but might end up being a very good one, Javier Mogollon has crushed rookie ball, and Anthony Hoopii-Tuionetoa is a Triple-A reliever who might just have the best name in the minors.
Despite a putrid season, the White Sox are not eligible for this year’s draft lottery, and thus cannot draft higher than 10th overall. Thankfully, the farm has seen some internal development to make up for the shortcomings, but they will have to go into the draft without the top talent available to bolster their farm. Overall, the trajectory of the White Sox may depend on whether Schultz and Smith can stay healthy and develop smoothly. A 2026 rotation of Schultz/Smith/Cannon/Thorpe/Burke could be tremendous, but so much would have to go right for that to happen. The White Sox have a huge organizational hole with position players, so if Quero or Montgomery flare out, there isn’t much organizational depth to fall back on.
So… What Now?
A peculiar problem with the White Sox is that there isn’t a clear path toward their rebuild. They have very few foundations to build on and are hampered by a Benintendi contract that gets worse by the year. Signing a big-time free agent won’t fix the atrocious lineup depth, and acquiring players on a shorter term will just have them play during a window that was never open to begin with. What the White Sox front office should prioritize is high-upside signings that can be flipped at the deadline.
Max Kepler is likely going to find a new team and could be both a stable bat and quality defender for the White Sox, plus if he regains some power he could be easily flipped to a contender. Drew Smyly could be a veteran arm for a young rotation. Gary Sánchez would certainly be an improvement over Martín Maldonado. In 2023 the Royals flipped Aroldis Chapman for Cole Ragans, so maybe the White Sox could buy some prospects.
Further down the road, the Sox need to prioritize adding a real elite bat to the lineup. The pitching staff is weak but is moving in the right direction, whereas the lineup currently has no direction. Don’t expect the White Sox to spend big this offseason, but in 2025 and 2026 they may be in a position to make their move. The 2021 Rangers were dismal before spending half a billion dollars on Corey Seager and Marcus Semien, and they got a World Series out of it. It’s doubtful the White Sox follow that route, but if there is hope, it may have to come from the owner’s checkbook sooner or later.
2025 will not be pretty for the White Sox. There is some optimism to be had here, but it’s a bleak outlook. A new owner and a couple of player developmental successes could turn this void-of-talent team into something that’s actually worth keeping an eye on, hopefully once again bringing good baseball to the south side.
Interesting article, clearly a lot of effort goes into following the culture. Interesting to hear the development zone described as “the farm”. Nice writing quality.