The White Sox made their first round of spring training roster cuts Thursday morning, and it largely targeted the pitchers who will be expected to stretch out for season-opening assignments in minor league rotations. Jairo Iriarte and Jake Eder were optioned to Charlotte, and Wikelman González to Birmingham. Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith were also sent to minor league camp, but they’re not yet on the 40-man roster, so neither options nor specific affiliates were required.

The number of players dropped from 71 to 65, and that’s the most sensible place to start reducing the ranks, since that category of pitcher is caught between the prospective White Sox starters who also need to stretch out, and the score of relief candidates the coaching staff has to sift through in order to formulate an Opening Day eight-man bullpen.

As it turned out, however, Eder couldn’t even get through one inning in his last outing due to control problems that could eventually see him relegated to a relief role. He wasn’t alone. Gonzalez was limited to one outing — in which he gave up two solo homers in one inning — but the four pitchers who made multiple appearances all struggled to throw strikes in their most recent games, which might’ve been a smaller factor in determining a stopping point:

Four of the five pitchers received a consolation prize, as they’re on the Spring Breakout roster for the White Sox’s prospect-laden showcase against the Rockies on March 16.

Justin Ishbia’s deadline to purchase shares from the White Sox’s limited partners was Feb. 28, and according to CHGO’s Sean Anderson, the vast majority agreed to sell.

According to sources, a vast majority of the White Sox limited partners that faced the reported February 28th deadline agreed to sell their shares. There were some holdouts, but by and large, the limited partners that were approached decided to sell.

— Sean Anderson (@seanwanderson.bsky.social) 2025-03-06T01:48:11.064Z

From here, league approval is required, and then we have to see whether the White Sox reveal any actual transition plans. So far, the company line is whatever Ishbia acquires here won’t provide a pathway to controlling ownership of the team, which would mean we’re talking years before there’s any practical effect.

The year that comes to mind for me is 2029, because the White Sox’s lease at Rate Field ends after that season, and with the White Sox making little progress finding financial support from the state, they may need a greater percentage of private investment to make headway toward fulfilling their South Loop vision.

As Jeff Passan wrote at ESPN today, it’s not the easiest environment for building. He notes that two major league teams are going to play their home games in minor league parks this year, and they’re not even particularly hospitable minor league parks. The A’s are moving to Sacramento while they wait for a groundbreaking on their still-tenuous Las Vegas ballpark, and besides smaller capacity and fewer amenities, they’ll have to deal with temperatures routinely over 100 degrees. The Rays will be playing a frontloaded home schedule at Steinbrenner Field in Tampa to avoid the summer rains. They were forced out of Tropicana Field due to the damage inflicted by Hurricane Milton, but the emergency has revealed new tensions between the team and the city over the amount of money the Rays are expected to contribute to the new ballpark, which was supposed to open in 2028.

Passan says the White Sox and Royals — the latter whose shifting plans to move from Kauffman Stadium to a ballpark were halted by voters rejecting a sales-tax extension — would be wise to get ducks in a row sooner rather than later, because construction only gets more expensive while the number of feasible workarounds drop in number.

The A’s and Rays are cautionary tales of what happens when big, complicated challenges are met with half-measures and inaction — and reminders to teams with unsettled stadium issues in places like Chicago and Kansas City, Missouri, that the longer they take to reach resolution, the messier these situations get. With every city council meeting that ends with no deal, every local voting result that kicks the can down the road to the next election, every ballpark rendering torn up before a shovel ever enters the dirt, the likelihood of best-laid plans being replaced by worst-case scenarios multiplies.

For the Chicago White Sox and Kansas City Royals — two teams angling for public money to help finance new stadiums — there are countless lessons to learn about the fragility of deals and their capacity to go sideways. Already there has been resistance to the White Sox’s request of $1 billion to help build a new stadium in the South Loop, and voters in Kansas City last year rejected a sales-tax extension that would have helped fund a downtown ballpark. Public cynicism over using tax dollars to fund billionaire owners’ real estate plays has made turning visions of a new stadium into reality that much more difficult and the ramifications of letting a potentially volatile situation decay that much greater.

Tim Anderson is off to a slow start this spring, going 3-for-20 over his first eight games with the Los Angeles Angels, with whom he signed a minor league contract in late January. He does have a homer and a couple of stolen bases, which hints at the dynamism that had been missing from his game the last two years.

The Angels were one of the best landing spots possible for him, both due to their infield instability and the presence of Ron Washington, who knows a thing or two about both improving defense and recovering from off-the-field issues. Bob Nightengale wrote about the comeback project, which includes some eye-raising comments from Washington about what Anderson is attempting to come back from:

“We’re trying to give him love, man, because the last couple of year he ain’t gotten none,” Washington said. “The last couple of years, people just bashed him. The last couple of years, he got embarrassed. He got embarrassed on live TV when a guy threw a punch at him.

“And all of it had to do with the fact that he had issues, man. He caused some of it, but still the organization didn’t support him. Then, he found himself out there all by himself. He had to try to put his family back together with their family problems.”

And then there’s this:

“The first week here, man, I’m telling you, the ball wasn’t coming off his bat,” Washington said. “It was coming out like a wet newspaper. We made him get into the weight room, something he never did in Chicago. I went to the strength and conditioning guys and told them, ‘I want him to be a project. I want you to go looking for him. I want to let him know that we care. … Because mentally, that sets a standard to let him know that somebody cares about him.’”

We do know that Pedro Grifol had nothing to say about Anderson getting knocked down by José Ramírez, which was one of many moments that Grifol couldn’t meet as a manager. The rest of what Washington depicts is hazier, and will likely remain that way. For one, it seems to skip over Anderson’s most recent body of work in Miami, which was even worse than his last season in Chicago. Beyond that, the White Sox have changed leaders at multiple levels since then, so there’s even less value than usual in relitigating a chapter they’d be well served putting behind them.