Dylan Cease is going to San Diego, Michael Kopech is going to the bullpen and the White Sox are going to be really, really bad this season.
Then again, they already were. And now they have more prospects. Remember the days of ogling minor leaguers, White Sox fans? Well, get used to it again.
Lower than a limbo stick, the White Sox won 61 games last year. If they equal that total in 2024, they would hit the over for wins in some of the betting markets. If this team wins 70 games, give manager Pedro Grifol an extension. (Just kidding.)
I know GM Chris Getz focused his offseason efforts on adding defensively sound infielders, but do we know how high they can jump? Because while the Sox still have some hitters, the pitching staff is thinner than the team’s season ticket base.
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Padres-White Sox trade grades: Taking stock of the Dylan Cease deal for both sides
The Sox are so short on quality starting pitchers right now, I’m hearing that for every home game, the ceremonial first-pitch thrower is also going to serve as the opener. Can Mark Buehrle still give you 30 pitches? What about Steve Stone? We could see how good this improved White Sox infield defense really is.
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If this were a movie, pitching coach Ethan Katz would find a plucky dog or a kid with a magical arm to front the rotation, but this is reality. This is the White Sox. Expect the worst.
Cease was the Cy Young runner-up in 2022 and now he’s just another guy who used to pitch for the White Sox. He’s coming off a down year, but he had more than proven his promise. Eventually, he’ll get a big deal, one that the Sox were never going to offer anyway.
We should be thanking Getz for getting the Cease deal done now so we can stop asking about it. Everyone knew Cease, with two years of control left, was heading somewhere this season and now Getz can move on to trying to trade some of his veteran hitters as the team really bottoms out.
When Getz’s promotion was made official last August, chairman Jerry Reinsdorf tried to BS everyone by saying he hired Getz with no search because he wanted a quick turnaround.
“The conclusion I came to is what we owe our fans and ourselves is not to waste any time,” Reinsdorf said. “We want to get better as fast as we possibly can. If I went outside, it would have taken anybody at least a year to evaluate the organization. I could have brought Branch Rickey back. It would have taken him a year to evaluate the organization.”
No one bought it, of course. But Getz’s evaluation showed what we already knew: He was going to have to start over.
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Padres trade for White Sox's Dylan Cease
Getz has overhauled the front office and he’s working on the roster. The ousted duo of Rick Hahn and Kenny Williams handled the trade deadline and added prospects to the organizational mix. In his first big deal, Getz got three prospects and a reliever (Steven Wilson) from the Padres for two years of Cease.
The three prospects — right-handed pitcher Drew Thorpe (No. 3), teenage outfielder Samuel Zavala (No. 6) and right-hander Jairo Iriarte (No. 9) — all slotted into the White Sox’s top 10 prospect list, as ranked by MLB.com. That either says a lot about the new guys or the top tier of the team’s farm system. Probably a little of both.
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None of these prospects are considered a consensus top 100 prospect — they didn’t make Keith Law’s list, but Thorpe is No. 85 on MLB.com’s list — but Getz was so wowed by the offer, he pulled the trigger in a rare mid-March major deal.
“You look at what Drew Thorpe brings to the table, you look at what Iriarte brings to the table, you bring up Wilson … you’ve got a group of players that can be impactful for your major-league team right out of the gate and offer some ceiling,” he said. “And then you’ve got a young player in Zavala that, you know, the sky’s the limit.”
Getz said he thinks Thorpe and Iriarte could be on the big-league roster this season. The Sox certainly need the help as last year’s rotation has officially been turned over.
As of now, the rotation core is Michael Soroka, Erick Fedde and Chris Flexen. Garrett Crochet is likely moving up from the bullpen, but I doubt they’d ask him to shoulder a heavy load. Nick Nastrini, who came over last summer in the Lance Lynn-Joe Kelly trade, should be an option. There is a gaggle of other contenders in Sox camp and elsewhere.
Ethan Katz had dinner with Cease last night. Had a close bond during their time in Chicago. Said there are still around 10 in the rotation mix.
— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) March 14, 2024
“We actually feel pretty good about where we’re at, in regards to (being) able to cover these innings effectively,” Getz said. “However, there are some different ways that we could go about it to make us more confident or improve our roster further.”
Before the trade, The Athletic’s Ken Rosenthal reported there was interest in free agent Michael Lorenzen, while USA Today’s Bob Nightengale tweeted that the team could bring back Mike Clevinger. Expect castoffs and spare arms aplenty to pitch for the Sox at some point this year.
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Kopech, however, is not going to be starting. Not in April and maybe not again. Kopech has a 7.71 ERA and 1.71 WHIP in three spring stats, but his numbers have never been good in these exhibition games. The problem is they know they can’t trust him in the regular season. Fireballers with control problems go to the bullpen. Kopech was sent there at the end of last season and it looks like that’s his new home. They could use him because that group isn’t exactly battle-tested either.
Best-case scenario, he’s the new closer. Though, with this team, I’m not sure he’d get enough work. I have a feeling the Sox will need a lot of innings from him this season.
“He’s a very talented arm, as we all know,” Getz said. “He’s going to have the ability to get outs towards the back half of the game. I can’t say that everyone on our pitching staff has the ability to get outs like Michael does. So we look forward to seeing what that looks like.”
Michael Kopech on moving to the bullpen and Dylan Cease getting traded. pic.twitter.com/lPWmIB4Dxn
— Chuck Garfien (@ChuckGarfien) March 14, 2024
And Getz can now move on to entertaining offers for his veteran position players because this fire sale isn’t done.
It would take a blockbuster package for him to trade away actual star Luis Robert, who has club options through 2027, but if any rival executives are reading this column, he’d like them to know that Yoán Moncada and Eloy Jiménez look really great. Seriously. And they’re not limping around yet, either.
“Look at Yoan Moncada, the way that he’s been playing both offensively and defensively,” Getz said. “Eloy Jiménez, this is quite honestly the best we’ve seen him and his at-bats have been probably at the top in regards to any player that I’ve seen in spring training so far.”
It’s going to get ugly this year. No pitching, an overmatched manager and little hope. Good seats, however, are still available.
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The last time the Sox did this dance was in the shadow of the Cubs’ World Series. Sox fans saw how a stripped-down-to-the-studs rebuild worked out on the North Side and it allowed the organization a little leeway in its own buildup back to respectability.
And the Sox rebuild worked, by the way. Until it didn’t, of course. Hahn and Williams did acquire a lot of young talent — led by Cease, who came over in that blockbuster deal with the Cubs — that made their way to the majors as promised. Excitement returned to the South Side. The team got back to the playoffs, which in itself is a herculean effort for this tragic franchise. But the payoff was so minimal and the backslide was so severe, the Sox find themselves starting over again and asking fans to once again invest in the promise of the unknown.
And if those fans know any free-agent starting pitchers, bring them to the park. The Sox could use the support and the innings.
(Photo: David J. Griffin / Icon Sportswire via Getty Images)
