P.O. Sox: Gearing up for a grueling White Sox winter

The Offseason Plan Project opens on Friday, so here's a P.O. Sox mailbag that will attempt to answer some White Sox questions without putting my thumb on the scale with regards to how everybody will go about attempting to climb out from under such a monumental mess.

As always, thank you for your support.

Roster-wise, how to complete a competitive five-man rotation without using all the resources that could be used to fix right field and second base. Constraints can inspire great art, though, so I'm looking forward to seeing what kind of buy-low or off-the-radar candidates people have in mind to try to bridge the gap.

I'm going to reject the premise and say that the White Sox can spare Dylan Cease, because he's only under team control for two more seasons, whereas Luis Robert Jr. has up to four years remaining on his deal, and Colson Montgomery's clock hasn't started yet. You might be able to use the players acquired for Cease while Robert and Montgomery are contributing near peak levels, but Cease probably wouldn't be around when the prospects acquired for Robert or Montgomery emerge, so the question is whether you want to be down a horse now or later.

I get where you're coming from, though, because the prospect of a White Sox roster without Cease is ghastly. The Sox have been without Robert for stretches while Cease has made every start since the White Sox promoted him, and if he's out, then Michael Kopech is the incumbent No. 1 starter, and even Kopech would hate that idea.

The one thing that makes the idea easier to digest is the arrival of Brian Bannister. The Giants were able to put together some deep pitching staffs largely by outside additions, none of them budget-crushers. The Giants thrived with Carlos Rodón on a player-friendly short-term contract, got decent production from Anthony DeSclefani, Alex Wood and Alex Cobb, all of whom signed on short-ish deals for $10 million a year, filled in 200 innings over two seasons with Jakob Junis, and their ace is a fourth-round pick. Those are the kinds of waters a successful White Sox team will have to swim in, so I'm curious to see what Bannister and Ethan Katz can do with all of the opportunities.

Trading Cease abandons all pretense of putting forth a competitive team in 2024, but the drastic effects of the trade could largely be contained to 2024 if the Sox can make the right moves.

After watching Joe Kelly and Andrew Benintendi use their first seasons as six-month rehab stints, I don't trust the Sox to sign players off a season-ending injury, at least with the hopes of having them contribute a third starter's workload, so I would be the least enthused about that idea, even if I understand the gambit.

I'd be most excited about somebody like Shota Imanga, just because it would represent the White Sox pursuing a new-to-them path for talent acquisition, and thus would be far more fun to write about, speculate and follow up on our guesses. Their last Japanese-born player was Kosuke Fukudome, but their last Japanese-born player signed directly from NPB is Tadahito Iguchi. It seems like the opportune time to take a shot, because with such a wide-open rotation, they can accept any and all production, whether he looks like a No. 1 or a No. 5. The efficiency of the contract can be left to those in the White Sox payroll office. I wouldn't get my hopes up for this outcome because the Sox seem to have zero presence overseas, but here's me trying to speak it into existence.

In between are the Clevinger-level gambles. It seems like they need somebody who is a good bet to throw 150 innings, and somebody about whom they'd say, "We can't wait to get our hands on him," even if there's nothing in the record that suggests fans should be excited about him (see: Velazquez, Vince). That guy often doesn't become anything, but he didn't really cost anything, either. The nice thing about Bannister being around is that there's a valid reason to suspend judgment on these sorts of deals.

The question regarding a mulligan is whether Jerry Reinsdorf would view the possibility of signing Bryce Harper any differently given how reality unfolded. When the Sox pulled up short of Manny Machado (and then didn't even redirect their attention to Harper), Kenny Williams and Rick Hahn cautioned against the impulse against signing 10-to-13-year megadeals because of the way it would hamper their flexibility and limit the White Sox's ability to retain their core. The flexibility talk was revealed to be an utter scam, the core wasn't worth preserving, and Williams and Hahn were fired less than halfway into Harper's deal with Philadelphia. Meanwhile, Harper and the Phillies are thriving.

The lesson would be to sign the fun guy, and cross the What Happens in Eight Years Bridge when you come to it eight years later. Would Reinsdorf heed that lesson? Probably not.

Along those lines, no, and for two reasons. The White Sox don't have the prospect package that other teams couldn't top, and the White Sox's last attempt to pull off this kind of move was the Jeff Samardzija trade, and they made it so GD awkward. Remember the Shark Cage?

In a world where the Sox actually had the prospects, appetite and acumen, I'd be all for it. Soto turns 25 in a couple of days, so you pay the price and figure out everything else later.

Sosa, no. He plays second base at an MLB level and showed some signs of life at the plate toward the end of the season, so he remains in a position to be worth auditions, even if he shouldn't be Plan A anywhere. It's hard to get excited about somebody with his lack of plate discipline, but he's far from unique. His failures to date have been ordinary.

Colás' failures were extraordinary in how comprehensive they were. He looked overwhelmed both at the plate and in the field, and both before and after his midseason optioning to Charlotte, and it wouldn't surprise me if there were camps of believers and non-believers in the organization. Hahn was one of the believers, and now he's gone. Getz signed off on a September demotion, so perhaps he'll be far more skeptical when it comes to his placement of Colás in the outfield depth chart.

That said, there's no point in giving up on Colás. He doesn't have real trade value and he has multiple options remaining, so he can make a standard Triple-A salary and get 500 plate appearances with the hope that it finally clicks. I just think he has to be blocked by somebody whose presence doesn't merely signify that Colás is being punished, because Colás could've produced like Trayce Thompson if he got those plate appearances.

Regarding Crochet, I'd rather see the Sox just stick to him as a left-handed reliever and see if he builds up trade value to turn that roster spot into somebody with far more utility. But if Bannister has an idea for him to stretch him out, again, I'll give him some benefit of the doubt. The stakes aren't that high.

It may look like a copout to point to the staff directories of the Dodgers and Rays and say "take your pick," but the answer is in the bulk. The White Sox add a Bannister here, a Geoff Head there, a Sam Mondry-Cohen in between, but it doesn't yet represent an operation. This Hannah Keyser story about the Astros after the 2022 World Series shows what one looks like:

“The guys have talked a lot in the clubhouse over the past few games about zero complacency,” Click said. “It applies to the front office also. We know that we cannot do the same thing that we did two or three years ago. If we do that, somebody else is going to do that and then we fall behind. So it has to be that same zero complacency where you're constantly updating, constantly reinventing, you're constantly turning the mirror on yourself to make sure that you are not getting complacent. And it's exhausting, honestly. …And it can be frustrating for a lot of people because they're like, ‘I don't understand, why do we need to change? This is working.’ But as soon as you say ‘why do I need to change,’ you’re dead.”

The White Sox seem like they're following the lead of what successful teams did two or three years ago, rather than building out a front office that ask the right questions and provide answers themselves.

I don't think it's quite that dire, especially since Hahn and Kenny Williams were fired. Say what you will about Chris Getz, but everything I've read and heard on and off the record suggests he conducts himself like a normal, relatable person. Lots of folks are rooting for him. This argument only goes so far, because Pedro Grifol was supposed to be a standard, engaged modern manager with something to prove, and just like Milhouse at the factor, the entire enterprise collapsed under his watch.

I mainly bring it up to say the White Sox might be able to repair the reputation from being bizarrely entrenched and insular, and only have to be deal with the misfortune of being a second-division team. If that's the case, then the White Sox will likely have to pay top dollar, but then it comes down to definitions of whether any instance of winning a free-agent bidding is considered an overpay/premium. I don't think people balked at Andrew Benintendi's contract as much as they wondered whether the timing was right for him to help the White Sox as much as they needed. A lot of people were also stunned that Benintendi was the largest free-agent contract the White Sox ever awarded, but that's a different conversation.

On the flip side, the Sox have plenty of low-pressure innings to offer a pitcher seeking a rebound for a bigger payday, so that's a great opportunity independent of money alone. It's not all bad, just most of it.

I think the Bannister and Barfield hires were along these lines. The Giants built the kind of pitching staffs the White Sox would want to emulate with the money they're willing to pay, and if the White Sox want to develop athletes into defenders, the Diamondbacks do that, especially in the outfield.

We'll have to see what happens with who fills the director of player development role that Getz vacated. I noticed the Nationals filling that role on their org chart by hiring away Baltimore's director of draft operations, and the Royals hiring their new scouting director from the Braves, so other teams are doing what you're saying. It'd be nice for the White Sox to get rid of that Gene Watson/Royals aftertaste, especially since one of the few benefits of running a smaller operation is presenting opportunities for promotions away from larger front offices. That hire should tell us a lot about where the Sox are looking after their natural connections have been exhausted.