CHICAGO (WGN) — The Chicago White Sox are coming off the worst season in Major League Baseball history and barring Jerry Reinsdorf going Los Angeles Dodgers mode with his wallet, they will likely be a team that finishes well under .500 again in 2025.
But despite their historically poor performance in 2024, there is a path toward the Sox becoming a .500 team again. There’s even a path that points toward brighter skies sooner rather than later.
It’s just not likely to happen based on where the South Siders rank in baseball’s hierarchy and Reinsdorf’s penchant for pinching pennies. But we’re going to explore it anyway.
On top of setting the record for most single-season losses in league history, the White Sox were also dead last in Major League Baseball in at least 14 different statistical categories, and bottom five in baseball in another six statistics.
Here’s a list of statistics where the White Sox were ranked dead last in baseball at the end of the 2024 season(second-to-last is in parentheses):
- Home Runs: 133 (135 – WSH)
- Triples: 9 (15 – SEA)
- Hits: 1,187 (1,195 – SEA)
- Runs Scored: 507 (604 – TBR)
- RBI: 485 (564 – TBR)
- Run differential: -306 (-247 – COL)
- Walks (batting): 395 (403 – MIA)
- Batting Average: .221 (.224 – SEA)
- On-Base Percentage: .278 (.300 – DET)
- Slugging Percentage: .340 (.366 – TBR)
- On-Base Plus Slugging: .618 (.668 – TBR)
- Saves: 21 (33 – MIA)
- Blown Saves: 37 (31 – BOS)
- Walks (pitching): 643 (601 – LAA)
The South Siders were also bottom five in doubles (31st – 226), team ERA (30th – 4.67), runs allowed (30th – 813), earned runs (29th – 737), home runs allowed (29th – 201) and opponents’ batting average (28th – .255).
Bouncing back from a performance so incredibly abysmal will require a gargantuan effort in both player development and acquisition, along with a bit of luck, but it’s not completely impossible.
Here’s a breakdown of how the South Siders could return to 80-plus wins in 2025, versus what I think will likely take place with the organization this winter.
Current Outlook
Roster losses: LHP Garrett Crochet, RHP Chris Flexen, RHP Mike Clevinger, RHP Michael Soroka, RHP Dominic Leone, 1B Gavin Sheets, 2B Nicky Lopez, 3B Yoan Moncada, C Max Stassi
Roster additions: OF Austin Slater, RHP Penn Murfee, OF Mike Tauchman
Question marks: OF Luis Robert Jr.
Needs: 3B, SP, RP, CP, RF, 1B/DH, 2B
In order to generate a 40-game turnaround on the South Side of Chicago, the White Sox will need to address their bats, their bullpen and add depth to the starting rotation.
Let’s start with their bats.
Fixing the worst hitting team in baseball
The headline speaks for itself. The only imposing bat in Chicago’s lineup is Luis Robert Jr, but with no protection around him, opposing pitchers had every opportunity to figure out how to get him out in 2024.
That led to the worst offensive output of his career. Robert finished with career lows in batting average (.224), on-base percentage (.278), slugging percentage (.379), on-base plus slugging (.657) and OPS+ (87).
With those numbers, trading him becomes a difficult proposition, forcing the Sox to pitch teams on the promise of his talent and past results, as opposed to the most recent product put on the field.
For the sake of this article, we’re going to assume Robert is kept on the roster going into the regular season and the White Sox keep him a centerpiece of their plans moving forward.
If that’s going to work next year, he needs protection in the lineup, and there’s still several potent bats on the market that could offer just that, and one of those big names has ties to a recent White Sox hire.
Anthony Santander
Nothing says protection in the lineup for Robert Jr. like bringing in a switch-hitting outfielder who’s averaged 35 home runs a season over the last three years.
Now, I know what you’re going to say, prospective White Sox fan and reader. „But Eli, wouldn’t he cost too much to bring in?”
While the answer is likely yes, it wouldn’t absolutely break the bank to bring in a guy like Santander to help improve the Sox, even if it would require a new franchise record for the South Siders’ richest contract ever.
According to Spotrac, their estimated value for Santander’s next contract sits around five years, $96.7 million — an average annual value of $19,340,000 without weighing a possible signing bonus.
What makes the potential signing somewhat plausible is Santander’s ties to the White Sox’s new Director of Hitting, Ryan Fuller.
Fuller served as co-hitting coach of the Baltimore Orioles over the last three MLB seasons, where he helped coach Santander toward the most productive stretch of his professional career. The Margarita, Venezuela native hit 33 home runs in 2022, 28 homers in 2023, and 44 home runs in 2024, which resulted in Santander making his first All-Star team and winning his first Silver Slugger award.
Jurickson Profar
The next addition that would come in handy on the South Side is another switch-hitting bat, but Jurickson Profar offers more positional versatility than pop at the plate like Santander.
Profar primarily logged games at left field with a few spot starts at first base in 2024, but across his career, he’s also spent time playing second base (219 games), shortstop (104 games), third base (89 games), right field (33 games) and center field (21 games).
Profar pairs his switch-hitting ability at the plate with more than two dozen games of experience at every position not named pitcher, catcher or center field. Bringing Profar into the fold would offer first-year manager Will Venable flexibility across the diamond and in the lineup, on top of adding another bat that could offer protection for Robert Jr.
What’s more is that Profar would be relatively affordable to sign.
According to Spotrac, Profar’s base calculated value on the free agent market sits around three years, $38.4 million — an average annual value of $12,800,000.
Joc Pederson
Joc Pederson is coming off one of his best seasons in MLB and would be the cherry on top if the White Sox added Santander and Profar in free agency.
Pederson posted career highs in on-base percentage (.393) and OPS (.908) in 2024 with the Arizona Diamondbacks. The 11-year veteran would pair well as a left-handed-hitting designated hitter at Guaranteed Rate Field, where a wind tunnel often benefits lefties who step to the plate.
Spotrac also calculates Pederson to be a relatively affordable contract, given he’s coming off his age-32 season where most hitters begin to decline at the plate.
When compared to other hitters like Jorge Soler, Kyle Schwarber, Marcell Ozuna and Mitch Garver who put up similar numbers in their age-29-to-32 seasons, Spotrac says Pederson should fetch a contract worth around two years, $29 million — an average annual value of $14.5 million for those still keeping track at home.
Revamp the bullpen
The South Siders have already made minor strides toward putting together a new bullpen for 2025 — they claimed Houston Astros reliever Penn Murfee off waivers and drafted Shane Smith out of the Milwaukee Brewers organization in the 2024 MLB Rule 5 Draft.
Murfee went 1-2 with a 1.29 ERA in 16 games before undergoing Tommy John surgery in July 2023, which held him out for all of 2024 as well. Smith went 6-3 with a 3.05 ERA across 94.1 innings pitched between Double-A and Triple-A last season.
Two other relievers out there have previous ties to people in the White Sox organization and there are three total who could help improve a staff that led baseball in blown saves and walks last year.
Jose LeClerc (RHP)
Leclerc would be a familiar face for first-year manager Will Venable. The two worked together on the Texas Rangers from 2023-24. That stint included a World Series Championship in 2023 where Venable served as associate manager under Bruce Bochy, and Leclerc posted a 2.68 ERA across 57 games out of the bullpen for the Rangers.
According to Baseball Savant, Leclerc’s fastball averages out at 95.3 mph, but he’s also among the best in baseball when it comes to generating swings and misses.
Leclerc ranked in the 96th percentile in whiff percentage (36%) and the 92nd percentile in strikeout percentage (30.6%) in 2024, thanks in most part to his off-speed offerings. His slider and change-up are his second and fourth-most used pitches, but Leclerc got opposing hitters to whiff 45.7% of the time on his slider, and 50% of the time on his changeup.
Danny Coulombe (LHP)
Danny Coulombe would be another former member of the Orioles that could be brought in to bolster the Sox.
While White Sox Director of Hitting Ryan Fuller likely didn’t have much overlap with a pitcher in Baltimore’s bullpen, he’s more than familiar with who to approach to gauge Coulombe’s fit on a team that needs an effective lefty in relief.
Coulombe posted a 2.12 ERA across 29.2 innings pitched in 33 games for the Orioles in 2024, which included a .175 batting average when facing lefties.
Carlos Estevez (RHP)
The South Siders need a closer. There’s no other way to put it.
After leading baseball in blown saves and trading the only reliever who remotely resembles a closer (Michael Kopech), Estevez would bring stability to the White Sox’s bullpen and help solve their most pressing pitching need.
Estevez logged a 3.22 ERA and 57 saves over the last two seasons split between the Los Angeles Angels and the Philadelphia Phillies. In 2024, he ranked in the 89th percentile in fastball velocity (96.8 mph) and the 86th percentile in walk rate (5.7%).
Add two veteran starters to a young rotation
With the departures of Erick Fedde at last year’s trade deadline and Garret Crochet earlier this offseason, the Sox need veteran pitching to help guide a young core of starters and eat innings as the regular season grinds on.
According to multiple reports across baseball, the White Sox plan to make a pitch to prized Japanese starting pitcher Roki Sasaki, but in the case a Sasaki deal doesn’t pan out, here are a few other starting pitchers that could be possible options to sign in free agency.
Jose Quintana
The South Siders have a history of successfully developing and working with left-handed starting pitchers so, why not have a reunion with one who began his career with the White Sox?
Jose Quintana went 10-10 with a 3.75 ERA across 170.1 innings in 31 starts for the New York Mets in 2024.
The Columbian lefty played his first five-and-a-half seasons on the South Side before he was traded at the deadline in 2017 to the Cubs in a deal that landed the Sox Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease.
According to Spotrac, Quintana should sign for around three years, $25.1 million — an average annual value of just under $8.4 million.
Michael Lorenzen
Michael Lorenzen has been a quality back-of-the-rotation starter for the better part of the last four seasons.
The outfielder-turned-pitcher went 7-6 with a 3.31 ERA between two teams last year, which included a six start stretch with the Kansas City Royals where he posted a 1.57 ERA over 28.2 innings pitched despite dealing with a hamstring injury that kept him out for nearly a month from August to September.
A year prior, he made his first All-Star team with the Detroit Tigers before being dealt at the trade deadline to the Philadelphia Phillies, where he threw a no-hitter in his home debut with the Phillies.
Spotrac figures Lorenzen should warrant a free-agent contract for around two years, $13.33 million — an average annual value of $6.66 million.
Martín Pérez
Martín Pérez is another one of those players who overlapped with Venable in Texas but also fits the bill of being a left-handed starting pitcher who could benefit from a stint on the South Side.
Pérez has averaged 158 innings pitched over his last three seasons and is two years removed from making an All-Star team in 2022 with the Rangers when he went 12-8 with a 2.89 ERA across 32 starts on the mound.
In the two years since, Pérez hasn’t been as effective. His ERA steadily rose into the mid-4s, which should also drop his contract value into a range affordable for the White Sox.
According to Spotrac, Pérez should fetch around a one-year, $11.8 million deal in free agency this offseason.
Patrick Corbin
After a successful reclamation project last season with a former Washington Nationals starting pitcher (Erick Fedde), why not take another flyer on a former Nationals starter down on his luck?
Patrick Corbin’s last deal was a six-year, $140 million venture he signed after the 2018 MLB season. Corbin went 14-7 with a 3.25 ERA and 238 strikeouts in 2019 but has struggled to return to the best version of himself, despite the velocity on his top three pitches — the slider, sinker and fastball — consistently sitting at the same velocity ranges since 2013.
Three years ago, Devan Fink wrote an article for FanGraphs that suggested Corbin was overextending his delivery when throwing the slider — Corbin’s most-used pitch. In Fink’s words, overextension would limit the amount of break he generated on the pitch because he’s slightly closer to the plate, making it a more hittable pitch than it was for Corbin from 2017-19.
If Corbin signed with the Sox and the likes of Brian Bannister and Ethan Katz developed a plan to get his slider back to being Corbin’s slider of old, his pairing with the South Siders, at it’s best, could go a long way toward revitalizing Corbin’s career and helping the White Sox become more competitive in 2025. At its worst, Corbin would still be a cost-effective innings eater on a rebuilding team. He’s made at least 31 starts every year, minus the COVID-shortened 2020 season, going back to 2017.
Spotrac estimates a free-agent contract for Corbin this offseason should cost clubs around $7.75 million a year.
Potential lineup and pitching staff
For consistency’s sake, let’s say the White Sox sign Pederson, Profar and Santander in the field, and add Coulombe, Corbin, Estevez, Leclerc and Lorenzen to the pitching staff.
According to Spotrac’s data, adding those eight free-agent contracts would cost the Sox $81.156 million in 2025, which when added to their estimated payroll for next season ($74 million), would bring their total estimated payroll to a shade over $155 million — $5 million more than what their 2024 estimated payroll of $150 million.
Here’s how their lineup and pitching staff would look like if that’s how the offseason shook out.
Lineup:
- SS – Brooks Baldwin (S)
- CF – Luis Robert Jr. (R)
- RF – Anthony Santander (S)
- DH – Joc Pederson (L)
- 2B – Jurickson Profar (S)
- 1B – Andrew Vaughn (R)
- LF – Andrew Benintendi (L)
- C – Korey Lee (R)
- 3B – Miguel Vargas (R)
Rotation:
- Michael Lorenzen (RHP)
- Drew Thorpe (RHP)
- Davis Martin (RHP)
- Patrick Corbin (LHP)
- Jonathan Cannon (RHP)
Bullpen:
- Long reliever: Shane Smith (RHP)
- Lefty specialist: Danny Coulombe (LHP)
- Middle reliever: Jairo Iriarte (RHP)
- Middle reliever: Steven Wilson (RHP)
- Middle reliever: Penn Murfee (RHP)
- 7th inning: Jordan Leasure (RHP)
- 8th inning: Jose Leclerc (RHP)
- Closer: Carlos Estevez (RHP)
