Offseason Primer: What Are the White Sox Up To?

[Matthew Lenz]

The White Sox, coming off a season of historic failure, look forward to putting the 2024 season in their rearview mirror. While an improvement in 2025 would be hard not to guarantee, do their fans have much of anything to look forward? Let's catch up on the state of the South Siders.

Image courtesy of © Kamil Krzaczynski-Imagn Images

The White Sox finished the 2024 season with a Major League Baseball record 121 losses. Even a relatively strong finish and an attempt to avoid history, going 5-1 over their last six games and 10-15 in the month of September, couldn’t save them from what seemed inevitable. 

2024 Season Review

One of their lone bright spots was left-handed starter Garrett Crochet, who was the subject of endless trade speculation up to the deadline although no deal came to fruition. The 25-year-old Crochet, a 2020 1st round pick, transitioned into a starting role after two plus years of relief duty and posted a 3.58 ERA and 29.6 K-BB% across 146 innings.

The White Sox also had solid production out of a few relief arms in Fraser Ellard, Prelander Berroa, Gus Varland, and Ron Marinaccio, but the foursome only combined for 92 ⅔ innings. Aside from those names, you likely won’t find a White Sox player who would define their individual season a success, including their position players.

Chicago finished the season with MLB lows in OPS (.618, 61 points below the 2nd worst team) and HR (133), and they were in the bottom 5-10 teams in most other offensive categories. After a promising 2023 campaign, Luis Robert only played 100 games and finished with a career-low 0.5 WAR. The once promising bash-brother duo of Andrew Vaugn and Gavin Sheets had underwhelming seasons themselves with .699 and .659 OPS, respectively, combing for just 29 home runs.

The Sox front office has made a myriad of trades in recent years as part of their rebuild, acquiring multiple notable prospects, but none of those players were able to get much going in 2024. Defensively, they were one of the worst groups in the league accruing -42 outs above average (OAA) only finishing ahead of the Oakland Athletics (-46) and often finding themselves on the wrong end of the highlight reel.

 

Looking Ahead to 2025

Turning our eyes to the 2025 season, we’re likely looking at another very, very down year for the White Sox. They aren’t losing anyone of significance to free agency so, for better or worse, they will be running it back with largely the same roster from this season. That said, they do have 20 pre-arbitration and nine arbitration decisions to make that could result in some extra roster space and money to work with during the 2024-2025 offseason. Lastly, they could see Yoán Moncada return from injury, but he’s proven again and again that he cannot stay healthy and is somewhat of a black hole at the hot corner, making his $5M buyout a much more attractive option to his $25M salary.

Due to the 29 players who theoretically could be non-tendered, Spotrac projects the White Sox current payroll to be about $90M less in 2025 than it was in 2024. In recent years, the White Sox payroll has been in the $150M range, ranking in the middle of baseball, with 2022 being an outlier where they had the 7th highest payroll at just over $203M. That said, a month ago Bob Nightengale of USA Today reported that the White Sox are looking to reduce their payroll for 2025 citing “substantial losses in revenue,” Thus, the White Sox won’t be “working heavy in free agency" – a direct quote from GM Chris Getz – and likely will continue seeking suitors for Crochet who is projected for a $2M raise via arbitration.

If there will be one saving grace it’s that they have five prospects in MLB’s Top 100 and each of them are expected to contribute at some point next year. As of August 15th, 2024, MLB.com ranks their farm system as the 11th best in all of baseball with 15 of their top 30 prospects on or very close to reaching the Big League club. This group is headlined by left-handers, Noah Schultz and Hagen Smith, who project as frontline starters and shortstop Colson Montgomery who projects to have an All-Star worthy bat.

In summary, 2025 is shaping up as another abysmal year for the White Sox, who are looking at a multi-year rebuild, but their prospects are on their way and could provide their fans some relief from a depressing state of affairs.

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[Parfigliano]

How did the Chi Sox manage to only get 92 IP out of their 4 top relief pitchers?

[gman]

On the bright side they should finish last in the division.

[bean5302]

Nobody is that bad. No group of players are that bad. Their record was literally worse than you'd expect a complete AAA team to have at the MLB level (45-117).

The White Sox need a mental gut-check and reverse that atmosphere, but I don't think that's coming after their horrible owner went full on cronyism in his GM promotion of Chris Getz. That organization needed to totally, utterly, completely clean house. Fire everybody. Burn it to the ground. It was obvious to everybody there was nothing to save.

I honestly feel bad for White Sox fans. They're going to be absolutely terrible for a couple years.

[darin617]

Pretty sure the Sox are cutting payroll for 2025 and knowing them they will be ready in 2026 to compete. 

Kind of a hard reset. Fans won't like another bad year. But if it gives them time to not rush their prospects they should be back in 2026.

[bean5302]

4 hours ago, darin617 said:

Pretty sure the Sox are cutting payroll for 2025 and knowing them they will be ready in 2026 to compete. 

Kind of a hard reset. Fans won't like another bad year. But if it gives them time to not rush their prospects they should be back in 2026.

I'd be utterly stunned if the White Sox' payroll wasn't under $80MM next year. They've only got $32MM on the books at the moment after declining options for Stassi and Moncada. Then another $9MM in arbitration after they non-tender Sheets and Vaughn. If the White Sox go full dive, that's about $55MM total. It wouldn't surprise me for the White Sox to snap up a few of the short term veteran or upside contracts to try and fill the team out a little bit just to try and get some trade bait at the deadline.

Considering how poor Luis Robert, Jr. played last year, I think the White Sox are going to hang on to him and hope they can flip him at the deadline if he rebounds (and is actually not injured).

[Doctor Gast]

It's surprising how far the CWS has fallen. Just a couple of years ago or so, the CWS had a promising young powerhouse team that was projected to dominate the central. IMO their down fall was lack of veteran leadership. Also BAL has tons of young talent but because of lack veteran leadership they don't have enough to take them over the top. We have great young talent but w/o Buxton & Correa around they tend to flounder.

[rv78]

11 minutes ago, Doctor Gast said:

It's surprising how far the CWS has fallen. Just a couple of years ago or so, the CWS had a promising young powerhouse team that was projected to dominate the central. IMO their down fall was lack of veteran leadership. Also BAL has tons of young talent but because of lack veteran leadership they don't have enough to take them over the top. We have great young talent but w/o Buxton & Correa around they tend to flounder.

That "veteran leadership" that is lacking in BAL seems to be lacking in MIN too since they can't get over the top either. BUT WHOA........... it's not Correa or Buxtons fault. Maybe they should bring in a guy like Gallo? HA HA! You can't build around part-timers and expect good results. Besides they probably don't have $11M to spare for a .189 hitter to improve the offense.

[Blyleven2011]

Who was a worse embarrassment  ,

the white Sox who were projected to finish last or the twins who were projected to win the division ???  ...

 

[Rod Carews Birthday]

What are the White Sox (FANS) up to?

Crying. . . . or perhaps in Biblical terms, weeping and gnashing of teeth.

[Rod Carews Birthday]

Oops, forgot to add this.

If you want to go see some really cheap baseball, just buy White Sox tickets on the secondary market.  Several times this season (even early in the season), I got box seats in the first few rows for under $20 apiece.  If you wanted to go to the bleachers, you could get them for $2.  The Sox are pretty terrible, but they do still play other major league teams, so it's still worthwhile. 

They have an extreme attendance problem.  At the moment, they couldn't sell out if they gave the tickets away.

[gil4]

2 hours ago, Blyleven2011 said:

Who was a worse embarrassment  ,

the white Sox who were projected to finish last or the twins who were projected to win the division ???  ...

 

The White Sox were bad on a historical level. 
The Twins won about 8 games fewer than expected, and other teams were better than expected. 

The Twins finished 4th, 10.5 games out of 1st.  The White Sox were 41 games  behind the Twins.  

The Twins were 16 games behind the Dodgers, who had the best record in baseball.  The White Sox were 20 games behind the Rockies, who were the 2nd-worst team in baseball.

Let's keep some perspective. The Twins were disappointing. The White Sox were embarrassing.

[Richie the Rally Goat]

4 hours ago, gil4 said:

The White Sox were bad on a historical level. 
The Twins won about 8 games fewer than expected, and other teams were better than expected. 

The Twins finished 4th, 10.5 games out of 1st.  The White Sox were 41 games  behind the Twins.  

The Twins were 16 games behind the Dodgers, who had the best record in baseball.  The White Sox were 20 games behind the Rockies, who were the 2nd-worst team in baseball.

Let's keep some perspective. The Twins were disappointing. The White Sox were embarrassing.

In January 2024 Zips had the Twins at 85-90 wins. Going from 17 games over .500 to 1 game over .500 in 6 weeks was tough, but “depending on the health of the roster” was pretty nails.

[darin617]

On 10/13/2024 at 4:59 PM, bean5302 said:

I'd be utterly stunned if the White Sox' payroll wasn't under $80MM next year. They've only got $32MM on the books at the moment after declining options for Stassi and Moncada. Then another $9MM in arbitration after they non-tender Sheets and Vaughn. If the White Sox go full dive, that's about $55MM total. It wouldn't surprise me for the White Sox to snap up a few of the short term veteran or upside contracts to try and fill the team out a little bit just to try and get some trade bait at the deadline.

Considering how poor Luis Robert, Jr. played last year, I think the White Sox are going to hang on to him and hope they can flip him at the deadline if he rebounds (and is actually not injured).

If your prospects aren't ready I could see them bring in some low cost veterans that they could flip for even more prospects. 

With the talk about the White Sox for sale isn't this the wrong approach? I would spend and back load the contracts and let the next owner to deal with it.

[ashbury]

On 10/14/2024 at 1:53 PM, Richie the Rally Goat said:

In January 2024 Zips had the Twins at 85-90 wins. Going from 17 games over .500 to 1 game over .500 in 6 weeks was tough, but “depending on the health of the roster” was pretty nails.

I had the Twins for 78 wins in TD's preseason survey, so for me Rocco is a dark horse candidate for Manager of the Year for this over performance.  😊