Five and a half years after the White Sox acquired Blake Rutherford as the centerpiece in the last major trade of the teardown, they can finally close the book on it.
Rutherford, who reached minor-league free agency following the 2022 season, latched on with the Washington Nationals this week, ending his time with the White Sox.
Rutherford, as everybody probably remembers, was the centerpiece in the seven-player deal in July 2017 that saw the Sox send David Robertson, Todd Frazier and Tommy Kahnle for Rutherford, Ian Clarkin, Tito Polo and Tyler Clippard. It wasn't the last deal the Sox made, but it was the last one that had real hopes of adding to the White Sox's rebuild.
Alas, the White Sox behaved like true Boy Scouts when it came to Rutherford, in the sense that they left him as they found him. The knock on him back in 2017 was that he couldn't pull the ball in the air with authority, and he couldn't quite figure out lift, though not for a lack of trying. Rutherford's hit tool got him to Double-A, but he couldn't reliably turn around upper-level pitching. His record shows 24 homers over the last two seasons with the Charlotte Knights, but the power is mostly a Truist Field mirage. He only managed five homers over 116 games away from Charlotte during his Triple-A career.
At least he's still active. Neither Clarkin nor Polo appeared in affiliated baseball last year, so Clippard's 11 decent outings and two saves are the only MLB production the Sox received for Robertson, Frazier and Kahnle. Frazier retired, but the two relievers are still getting new contracts.
For trivia purposes: The other players the White Sox traded for between the Jose Quintana-Eloy Jiménez-Dylan Cease megadeal and the trade deadline? Ryan Cordell (Anthony Swarzak), Casey Gillaspie (Dan Jennings), and A.J. Puckett and Andrew Davis (Melky Cabrera).
Spare Parts
A new study says that how much the striding leg toward the pitching hand (think of a cross-fire delivery) may contribute to knee injuries on that lead leg. Michael Kopech is the lead image on the post because he dealt with such an injury last year, although the surgery was on his right knee.
When spring training opens, Oscar Colás at-bats are going to be way too important.
Evan Drellich's new book is going to reopen some old wounds regarding the Houston Astros' tub-thumping scandal, although you might argue they never healed in the first place.
Jayson Stark links to this Baseball Savant leaderboard, which shows that the White Sox will travel the third-fewest miles of any team next year, so that's one thing the new schedule shifts in their favor.
One of the soundtracks of AL Central baseball is no more, unless Progressive Field decides to pipe it into their game production.
- What could a Bally Sports bankruptcy mean for RSNs' team deals? -- The Athletic
- Diamond Sports Group's bankruptcy could rock the baseball revenue boat -- FanGraphs
- A radical remodel of local sports TV may come sooner than expected -- The Score
The other advantage the White Sox have: They're the only AL Central team without an RSN on Bally Sports, whose parent company is approaching a bankruptcy filing because of a leveraged buyout gone bad. Below are a couple good explainers of the story, which will probably only get bigger. The only question is whether the transformation takes place this year, or a little further down the road.
