SCOTTSDALE, Ariz. — For a brief moment, after over an hour combined of Rick Hahn being fenced in by an iron curtain of White Sox media over the past two days in an empty ballroom, a Boston reporter broke through and started tossing in some hypotheticals sufficiently cloaked to allow for discussion of a trade for Mookie Betts or Jackie Bradley Jr. You know, just “some player with one year of control left,” which would cover Joc Pederson too, for the record.
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After acknowledging Tuesday that the White Sox were close enough to contention that one-year impact additions might have some purpose for them now, he was more reticent at the idea of giving up real value in a trade for someone on a one-year deal Wednesday.
“When there’s a guy like Chris Sale available, who had multiple years of control and you’re ready to win, making that push makes all the sense in the world,” Hahn said. “If you’re talking about a guy on a one-year basis, we’re not to that point yet, and if we do get to that point, that’s going to be a tough trigger to pull because we’re trying to build something sustainable for an extended period of time. Quick hits don’t necessarily do that.”
As Hahn pointed out, exclusive windows to negotiate an extension before the trade goes through feel like a relic of the Johan Santana era. The five-day exclusive negotiation window for outgoing free agents doesn’t seem to produce much — hell, they can’t even get someone like José Abreu locked up during it. Hahn perked up a bit discussing draft pick compensation when free agents leave after their single year in town, but that being the solace for sending out someone like Andrew Vaughn (whom Hahn said could be in Triple A by the end of next year) didn’t sound like enough.
Which means, as much as Hahn has prepared the eager offseason viewership for trades, the White Sox need to turn strongly to free agency to solve their lengthy list of needs. With Cots Contracts estimating the Sox rolling payroll at just above $55 million currently if they retain all their arbitration-eligible players (they won’t), the club’s available budget room (which lends “plenty of latitude,” per Hahn) dwarfs the number of fungible stud prospects they have in tow, or the trade value of Yolmer Sánchez, for whom other teams will be even more successful at removing personality from the valuation than the Sox are attempting to be.
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So it’s at this stage that the Chicago media gains an interest in the declarations of agent Scott Boras, and all the bombastic statements to boost the value and profile of his clients that his job motivates him to provide, since he is willing to provide public insight on the state of the open market, so long as you’re willing to bring your own grains of salt. Besides inspiring a ring of camera operators to spend the first 10 minutes cursing angrily at the poor angle his placement next to Bruce Levine had provided them for a shot, Boras spent the early portion of his nearly hourlong, slowly thinning scrum Wednesday deriding two things.
The first was the “competitive hibernation” that a league-wide acceptance of multiyear rebuilds has created, in which the White Sox have clearly taken part, and if anything have recently failed to live up to the approach of only competing three years out of 10 that Boras derided. The second was regression-based projections, a concept he introduced by reading off how his clients Gerrit Cole, Anthony Rendon and Mike Moustakas have repeatedly outperformed projections that called on them to return to their old performance levels, and in his viewing, ignore elite players’ ability to continually improve. Boras didn’t immediately include free agent right fielder Nicholas Castellanos in this group, but given his line about “Young St. Nick delivers all season,” and his belief that his defensive improvements are stable, rather than doomed to regress, he would likely be willing to.
“The good thing is that even with the current metrics in place is that it has improved,” Boras said. “He’s gone from being a new outfielder in Detroit to where he’s now in the middle of the group with his routes and paths. It’s not athleticism, it’s not his abilities, it’s really about positioning and route management and that certainly improved this year early in Detroit and really improved in Chicago.”
Hahn has reiterated multiple times that the team’s interest in adding more left-handed balance is a slight preference, rather than a “lefties or bust” commitment. The White Sox (107 wRC+ against left-handed pitching, 88 wRC+ against right-handed pitching last year) need to get better at hitting righties, more than they need to get left-handed for the sake of being left-handed. Generally, left-handers are better at fixing that need, but anyone who can hit right-handed pitching would be a welcome addition. Castellanos (137 wRC+ against lefties for his career, 104 wRC+ against righties) would not seem to be that ideal solution, whereas Moustakas (113 wRC+ against righties the last three years) might be the more compelling solution in Boras’ stable, if a bit more confusing as to how to use defensively.
But the tempting practice has often been to rule Boras clients out of the White Sox plans completely, and while that is still prudent with Rendon and Cole, Boras kept redirecting focus away from his relationship with Jerry Reinsdorf, and what could be seen as diametrically opposed goals in driving labor costs. The first issue Boras directed focus toward was being able to provide an actual chance to win, in which he feels the Sox have drastically improved of late.
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“They have talent,” Boras said. “It’s a great city. Certainly the players look at the White Sox in a very different way than they did two years ago.
“Certainly the White Sox need veteran players, because they have such great young players. You try to create that mix all the time in doing that. I readily foresee there’s a lot of fits that could go in there and really advance what they’ve built to date.”
The second issue was to try to push focus away from Reinsdorf, and get onlookers to view the fate of the White Sox in free agency as depending more upon Hahn.
“I think the relationship between Rick and Jerry is more relevant,” Boras said. “Rick is obviously operating a process there. His design and plan, and Jerry putting a stamp of approval on it, that’s what I think is most relevant to the advancement of the White Sox. Jerry’s a very competitive guy. I think he wants his people and his team to really be the decision-makers at this point. I think he certainly gives them authority, but in the end I think he wants to win now.”
Hahn, asked for comment for the first time on the David Samson remarks about Reinsdorf wanting to finish in second place, echoed a similar directive.
“You’re talking about a guy with seven rings, so it’s tough to believe from the outside that he would be satisfied with coming in second,” Hahn said. “I know in my 19 years working for Jerry, not a single time has there been a conversation about the goal being anything but winning championships. I don’t quite remember the exact quotes. I kind of remember the general idea. It certainly isn’t consistent with anything I’ve ever heard from the man or what I know personally drives him, and that’s to add an eighth championship. And probably a ninth, too.”
If the Sox really do add two proven major-league starters, and two above-average hitters, this will be their most active offseason since the rebuild and they will enter spring with one of their most complete rosters in possibly a decade (to be fair, consider the decade), and it will be easy to feel that they are living up to a mandate to win as soon as possible.
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There are still notes of dedication to a longer process buried within all these lofty goals. Despite a plan to try to have “too much starting pitching,” and have five guys in place before even getting to Michael Kopech, Carlos Rodón, Dane Dunning or Jimmy Lambert all eventually returning from Tommy John surgery, one of those five includes the Sox betting hard on a step forward from Dylan Cease and a bounce back from Reynaldo López, who at this point has a 4.64 career ERA with a matching FIP after 464 1/3 major-league innings, outside of last year’s struggles in the rotation.
“As we sit here today, we very much believe in Reynaldo’s upside and believe he’s going to be an impactful member of a very good rotation in the future,” Hahn said.
The 2019 Sox bullpen held leads, and their late-inning trio of Alex Colomé, Aaron Bummer and Evan Marshall all can return. But they also got by with a contact-heavy approach, and the young group of hard-throwing reinforcements of Zack Burdi, Tyler Johnson, Ryan Burr and Ian Hamilton have all been slowed by injury (promising Codi Heuer is healthy, though). Hahn seemed comfortable with standing pat — at least on major acquisitions — with those who had success last season, buying into Kelvin Herrera’s improved health, and hoping relief prospects will eventually patch what holes emerge.
“We got through last year with a fairly decent bullpen without real contributions from any of those guys, with the exception of Burr prior to the injury,” Hahn said. “We feel pretty decent about where it sits now and feel even better about those guys coming back healthy and providing further reinforcement over the course of next season. Like every other club, if there’s a chance to make the bullpen better, you’re going to look into it and have some interest in doing that.”
So, there are still some bets on turnarounds in 2020 buried in the plan, but those bets are not ones that can derail the long-term plan like a trade for a guy on a one-year deal can, or like how a trade for Jeff Samardzija eventually necessitated a long-term reboot when it flopped. Like Scott Boras, and supposedly the players around the league, we can look at the White Sox differently from how we did two years ago, but the absolute need to win in 2020 isn’t there yet.
(Photo of Yolmer Sanchez: Ron Vesely / MLB Photos via Getty Images)