The Chicago White Sox did not make a ton of moves to upgrade a roster that lost a record 121 games in 2024.
With revenue streams shrinking due to the debacle of the team’s regional sports network being rolled out, CHSN, the Sox had a frugal offseason.
That does not mean general manager Chris Getz did not make some moves that are trending toward being good decisions.
Signing veteran pitcher Martin Perez is looking good.
The White Sox needed a left-handed veteran in the rotation after trading ace Garrett Crochet in the offseason.
Many fans were hoping the team would reunite with Jose Quintana.
Instead, Getz went with Perez.
Right now, it looks like the correct call, as despite Quintana signing for less money with the Milwaukee Brewers than what Getz is paying Perez, Quintana had to miss Opening Day because he needed to ramp up.
The Sox have gotten two great starts from Perez as he has allowed just one earned run.
He was part of the season-opening run the Chicago White Sox starting rotation went on when the starting five went 28.2 innings without giving up an earned run.
Starters Sean Burke, Jonathan Cannon, and Davis Martin have struggled since that impressive run, while Perez turned in a great outing last Sunday.
He has been a great leader for that rotation that needed a veteran to show the young arms how to go about their business in the big leagues.
Hopefully, he can stave off regressing to the mean for as long as he can. He does have a career 4.41 ERA.
However, he has shown he can sustain greatness for periods of time, as he made the AL All-Star team in 2022 when he was with Texas.
He also finished last season strong with a 3.46 ERA over his final 10 games with San Diego after the Pittsburgh Pirates traded him to the Padres.
It would be great for the team in the short term and the long run if Perez can maintain this brilliance.
Currently, it would give the Sox a shot at getting some rare victories. In the long term, he can be flipped by the trade deadline for valuable prospects toward the team’s rebuild.
Selecting Shane Smith with the first pick of the Rule 5 Draft looks like a steal.
His first two starts have been very impressive.
It almost makes you question the sanity of Milwaukee’s front office for not adding him to their 40-man roster to keep him out of the draft, especially with all the starting pitching injuries the Brewers are experiencing right now.
Smith has a 1.54 ERA in his first two starts with nine strikeouts. He blanked the Minnesota Twins for the first five innings of his big-league debut, and had he not suddenly run out of gas, it likely would have been six.
He did blank the Cleveland Guardians in his last start for six innings and took a no-hitter into the sixth. It took a weakly hit infield single by Jose Ramirez to break it up.
You see his stuff and you think the White Sox are lucky they only had to pay $100k to acquire him.
Now he still has ways to go toward developing into an ace, but his stuff looks the part.
He is giving off those same vibes that Crochet did last season. He will have a chance to see if he can match the White Sox’s former ace on Sunday as the two are slated to face off in the series finale of a three-game set between Chicago and Boston.
However, Getz made many offseason decisions that are not looking so good. Two of them are looking particularly awful.
Tendering Justin Anderson a contract was a bad decision.
He was not very good for a bullpen that blew 37 saves last season. For some reason, the front office actually thought he could be the team’s closer this season.
It is one reason they tendered him a contract despite having a 4.39 ERA last season, and he was projected to get $1.1 million in arbitration.
The White Sox were able to get him to agree to a $900k one-year deal to avoid arbitration.
However, it is turning out not to be money well spent. Since the club is pinching its pennies, the Sox cannot afford to be wasting financial resources as they will be doing after designating Anderson for assignment.
Anderson did not even make the Opening Day roster after a terrible spring training. Now he is no longer worthy of a 40-man roster spot.
With the White Sox bullpen in shambles, it might have been better to realize Anderson was not it and use that money on a different option.
Tendering Andrew Vaughn despite him being nothing more than a replacement-level player is another bad look.
The White Sox decided to spend $5.8 million to avoid arbitration and keep Vaughn in the fold. It also made him the second-highest paid player on the team.
That speaks to the poverty the White Sox are claiming when Vaughn, a -0.8 fWAR player, is making that much and is ranked second among players’ salaries. Plus, he is producing so little.
He is off to another terrible start this season.
He is hitting the ball hard, but the White Sox need him to be amazing, and he continues to range somewhere between awful and replacement-level.
At some point, rushing him to the big leagues can no longer be a crutch for why he is not living up to the hype of being the No. 3 overall pick in the 2019 MLB Draft.
If the team was going to sink that $5.8 million into him rather than spread out those resources to address the bullpen and shortstop, then he has to produce better than what he is now.
The Sox could get the same production they are getting out of Vaughn from a 40-year-old Yuri Gurriel at a fraction of the cost. Prospect Tim Elko is a year younger, and a heck of a lot cheaper, who could likely do better than what Vaughn is doing now.
Instead, they committed to Vaughn again, hoping history would stop repeating itself.
The payoff right now is…history repeating itself as his start is a carbon copy of the terrible beginning he had in 2024, which helped sink the team into a historically awful season. No wonder it looks like this team is trending toward another historically miserable year.
