Offseason Primer: What Are the White Sox Up To?

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.