The White Sox still have nearly two weeks before they and the rest of Major League Baseball have to drop two players from their active roster. As we saw during the opening series in which the Sox lost Lucas Giolito and AJ Pollock to muscle strains, it's a little too soon to start buying plane tickets.
But it's still worth having a general idea of which players may be on the bubble, because that helps inform the debates over playing time and pitcher deployment, and adds stakes to some random innings and spot starts that April games usually lack.
Thanks to the aforementioned injuries as well as Yoán Moncada's absence, a roster crunch with the players on hand can mostly be solved by LIFO, because there was a reason certain players started the year in Charlotte. In a scenario where Giolito, Pollock and Moncada all return without nobody else requiring a trip to the shelf, then the cuts require more careful consideration.
Here's where they stand as they open a road trip to Cleveland and Minnesota that Monday's weather postponement shortened from seven to six.
Pitchers
Giolito has been throwing without issue, so let's account for him in this exercise, knowing everybody else can slide up a spot if he's somehow delayed into May.
- Lucas Giolito
- Dylan Cease
- Michael Kopech
- Dallas Keuchel
- Reynaldo López
- Vince Velasquez
- Liam Hendriks
- Aaron Bummer
- Kendall Graveman
- José Ruiz
- Bennett Sousa
- Tanner Banks
- Kyle Crick-----------------
- Matt Foster
- Jimmy Lambert
- Anderson Severino
The only real debate at this point is Crick or Foster. I'd probably roll with Foster based only on performance, because Foster's enhanced slider allows him to give hitters a different look from the fastball-changeup guy they thumped last year, whereas Crick's a slider-first guy who has rolled a few too many for my comfort early on.
Both have options. The only difference is that Crick has one, and the Sox haven't used this year's yet because Crick broke camp with the club off a minor-league contract. Foster has two options, which gives the Sox slightly more flexibility in handling his immediate future. This isn't a significant-enough factor to prioritize one over the other in the face of a gap in results. It's more of a tiebreaker.
If and when Joe Kelly comes back -- he's supposedly sitting 95 in Arizona right now -- then Banks seems like the most vulnerable. Kelly handles lefties well as a righty, and López/Velasquez gives the White Sox multiple innings of relief on long man, and they're on guaranteed contracts. Banks hasn't been scored upon in three games and 5⅓ innings, so he's doing what he can to make the White Sox recheck even the simplest of math.
Position players
AJ Pollock is supposed to be heading to Charlotte soon according to Tony La Russa, and perhaps I'll see him in Nashville this week. History says it's a fool's errand to pencil in a healthy Pollock until he's actually on a field, but this exercise is a pointless errand if Pollock isn't healthy. The White Sox are already carrying just 13 position players because they replaced Pollock with a pitcher, and with the 26-man roster limiting pitching staffs to 13, the reductions would have to come on the other side of the roster.
So we're including Pollack for purposes of content, and even then, it's pretty simple.
- Yasmani Grandal
- Reese McGuire
- José Abreu
- Josh Harrison
- Tim Anderson
- Jake Burger
- Eloy Jiménez
- Luis Robert
- AJ Pollock
- Andrew Vaughn
- Adam Engel
- Leury García
- Gavin Sheets----------------
- Danny Mendick
Likewise, Moncada's return would theoretically be a straight swap with Burger, because Vaughn is already having a hard-enough time getting the playing time his hot start warrants, so Burger's right/right corner profile further adds to the congestion.
The question is whether Vaughn stakes his claim to the DH spot with enough authority that Sheets has to settle for leftovers, but Vaughn have to get an uninterrupted string of starts before that's an issue. Sheets has the ideal skill set for a left-handed bench bat, even if that role isn't an ideal job with regards to his development. He's achieved enough to get his own shot at staking down a position, but I don't want to dwell on that too much, because it's the sort of thing that makes fans turn "more bats than spots" into a problem to actively solve, rather than excess to enjoy.
