The White Sox have until 5 p.m. to add Rule 5 draft-eliglible players to the 40-man roster, but thanks to the shortage of talent that led to them falling down a 101-loss hole in 2023, they're not blessed enough to be stressed.
For one, the White Sox have five open roster spots, and given the current state of the 40-man, you could probably cut six or seven more without feeling even a pinch.
The other part is that five vacancies might be enough to host all of the potential Rule 5 draft targets.
The pool of eligible players is, by and large, 18-year-olds who were drafted or signed in 2019, or players 19 and older who were signed or drafted in 2020. Using MLB Pipeline's White Sox prospect list as a quick reference point, here are the players who meet that criteria:
- Jake Eder (5)
- Cristian Mena (10)
- Wilfred Veras (21)
- Matthew Thompson (22)
Not one of those players seems particularly close to being able to handle MLB plate appearances or innings to open the season in 2023, even in a garbage-time role (for instance, Veras wouldn't have utility as a defensive sub). Beyond them, you're looking at players like DJ Gladney and Juan Carela, neither of whom have seen Double-A action once disregarding Project Birmingham.
MLB readiness -- even for a single tool or skill -- is one criterion for protection. The others?
Starting the clock: Once a player is placed on the 40-man roster, he basically three years to work out the kinks in the minors before he's out of options, so ideally the player should have established a beachhead in Double-A at the very least. All of the bulleted players meet that standard, although Mena and Veras are the only ones whose recent performances there have been truly encouraging. The catch is that if they suffer setbacks along the way, they risk using up the final option year as 23-year-olds, whereas if Eder is still on the fringes of the roster at age 28, he's probably dealing with greater existential issues.
The value of the roster spot: The other drawback of protecting a player unnecessarily early is the removal of a roster spot that could be used to claim intriguing and potentially useful players over the course of the season. This doesn't feel like an especially pressing concern at this point.
My guess is that Eder, Mena and Veras get protected, just because they're potentially too valuable for the White Sox to deal with the hassle of having to wrangle them back. I guess it wouldn't surprise me if Thompson made the cut due to the organization's shortage of pitchers who resemble spot starters, but his arsenal is so inconsistent from one start to another that I'm not sure what a final, rosterable form would look like.
For what it's worth, Jonathan Mayo and Jim Callis said Thompson is the White Sox's hardest call:
The White Sox spent $7.1 million on high school righties Thompson, Andrew Dalquist and Jared Kelley in the 2019 and 2020 Draft, and that investment has yet to pay off. A 2019 second-rounder from a Texas high school, Thompson can flash a plus fastball and curveball but got tagged for a 4.85 ERA and led the Southern League with 85 walks while striking out 136 in 124 1/3 Double-A innings.
If the White Sox protect fewer than those three -- or none of the above -- then they just might not fear the Rule 5 draft this year. On the "demand" end, the Oakland A's are the only team with real designs on tanking. If there are others, including the White Sox, they'd be doing so begrudgingly. On the "supply" side, the White Sox should easily be able to accommodate the return of any claimed player at any time.
(The White Sox were on the other end of this last year, when they selected Nick Avila in the Rule 5 draft, only to return him to the Giants during the last week of spring training. Avila ended up validating the White Sox's interest by going 14-0 with a 3.00 ERA for Triple-A Sacramento in 2023, although that still didn't net him a roster spot with the Giants.)
There are a couple of reasons why the White Sox have a small pool of potential additions this year. The first is that the 2020 draft was only five rounds, four were college picks, and only two of them still remain in the White Sox farm system. Garrett Crochet made his professional debut in the majors, and fifth-round pick Bailey Horn was traded to the Cubs for Ryan Tepera.
The other reason is that the White Sox might have a whole lot of nothing to show for the 2019 draft. They essentially concentrated all of their draft pool in the first four rounds:
- Andrew Vaughn, $7.2212M
- Matthew Thompson, $2.1M
- Andrew Dalquist, $2M
- James Beard, $350K
And the next six picks were all $10,000 signings. They tried to compensate with a number of six-figure signings on Day 3, but Gladney is the only non-reliever pick still in play.
The only thing that makes the 2019 draft look good is ... the 2018 draft. The White Sox ended up trading four of their first six picks for Craig Kimbrel, Nomar Mazara and Cesar Hernández. That leaves Davis Martin, Romy González and Lane Ramsey as the last hopes for value.
That's back-to-back years where the White Sox drafted in the top four, and the only non-fungible player to show for it is Andrew Vaughn, and the debate about whether he's anything special remains a loud and violent one. This isn't the leading reason why the rebuild disintegrated, but it's up there.
