As it became evident that Chris Getz was required to slash the White Sox payroll beyond the faintest hope of contending, clearing the bar for an acceptable offseason required less of a high jump and more of a high step.
He wasn’t going to replace what Lucas Giolito and Lance Lynn were supposed to provide in 2023, but he came up with a slew of arms who might be able to sop up starts. The White Sox’s up-the-middle vacancies were replaced by defense-first guys, which at least gave the team an ethos in place of entertainment.
As long as Gavin Sheets remained the most readily apparent option for right field, however, Getz couldn't be expected to receive a passing grade.
There’d be simply nothing to gain from it. Cratering production in the second half dragged Sheets' OPS below .600 for 2023, and while he distinguished himself as more credible outfielder than Andrew Vaughn, he was better in the sense that a second-degree crime could technically be worse.
As long as the White Sox plan to seal off Oscar Colás in Charlotte, the White Sox depth chart lacked an outfielder who could be a worthwhile use of all that playing time in right field. Plate appearances are the only currency the White Sox carry right now, and they can't afford to be wasteful.
Suddenly, however, the White Sox now have two such outfielders after Chris Getz’s two trades on Sunday.
Trading Cristian Mena for Dominic Fletcher brought in a 26-year-old left-handed bat who performed admirably enough in his first sample of MLB plate appearances to presumably stay on course for Opening Day. He was supplemented by the trade Getz struck right before, which netted Zach DeLoach’s boomier-and-bustier profile from Seattle in a three-player, one-pick deal.
At the start of his Zoom call with reporters, Getz sounded like he didn’t want to name a starter:
“We view both players that are going to get the opportunity to be in our outfield this year. Fletcher has major league experience, he’s had some success at the major-league level, and DeLoach hasn’t gotten the opportunity quite yet, but I’m sure when he gets it, he’ll take advantage of it as well. Both players that we feel strongly about that can help us, more than anything creating outfield depth from the left-handed side we felt was something we wanted to pursue and we were able to convert on it. Happy to have both of them. To say one or the other is going to be our right fielder or left fielder is premature, I’m just excited to have both of them in the building.”
But when returning to the topic later in the call to talk about Luis Robert Jr. making Fletcher’s center field defense a secondary characteristic, it seemed like Getz had a favorite idea:
“We like the offensive potential. He’s really done well against right handed pitching, to find a package of outfielders both left and right you position yourself for success in a long season. But the versatility is valuable. Same thing goes for the middle of the diamond. If you have someone with the ability to play shortstop that type of depth can be really valuable throughout the year. All factors that go into evaluating Dominic Fletcher, yeah, he has the ability to play center field but if we’re running him out there regularly in right field with certain matchups, yeah, we’re going to put ourselves in position to have success that day.”
Now, will Fletcher actually capitalize on those plate appearances? It's harder to say, because there's a lot about him that's unusual.
Some of it can be excused. He was a second-round pick out of Arkansas who didn't make his MLB until age 25 -- and he turned 26 later that September -- but he lost his age-22 season to the pandemic. When minor league baseball resumed, he skipped ahead to Double-A Amarillo, where he had his only unimpressive season. He's produced at every level since, including a hot debut month in May 2023 that bought Arizona time while weathering slow starts from Alek Thomas and Jake McCarthy, and a minor knee injury to Corbin Carroll.
Eventually Fletcher cooled off, the Diamondbacks brought back Thomas and McCarthy after stints in Triple-A, and Arizona went with its Plan A outfield mix the rest of the season. Once the Diamondbacks re-signed Lourdes Gurriel Jr. to a three-year deal after the season, playing time became even harder to find. The Diamondbacks saw the harbingers of 'tweener production for an outfield already awash in natural centerfielders. The White Sox have taken advantage of such crowding in previous trades with Arizona, whether it was acquiring Adam Eaton in 2013, or Carlos Quentin in 2007, so perhaps they're poised to redeem their once-a-decade Fleece Card.
The idea of the 5-foot-6-inch Fletcher in right and Andrew Benintendi in left brings to mind the 1990s, when the odd game would feature Tim Raines (5’8”) and Warren Newson (5’7”) in the corners, but the White Sox aren’t in position to be bothered by aesthetics. Fletcher has a history of clobbering righties, he has enough pop to regularly reach double-digits in homers, his reads are well-regarded, and he has the arm strength for the long throws, so regardless of his size, he's automatically better suited for an immediate audition than the rest of the field.
If I have any reservations about him, it's that pitchers coaxed more ground balls out of him as the book on him developed. Fletcher's struggles stemmed from weak contact, not strikeouts, and while he deserves a crack at a larger sample to give him a shot at adjusting his way out of it, the Sox could find themselves lured into a similar dead end. Sheets has gotten such a long rope because he seldom looks overmatched from game to game, only to realize that his contact hasn't amounted to anything for weeks. Fletcher isn't a burner, so he won't be able to turn weak contact into singles.
The other caution flag might be a personal hang-up, but Fletcher's season ended in late August with a broken left index finger, and the Sox have a pretty bad track record of assuming smooth recoveries from season-ending issues that happened elsewhere.
At least with Santos, the Sox traded away a guy who ended the season on the IL, and a reliever at that, resulting in the perfect opposite of a Rick Hahn move. They also acquired the other left-handed outfielder who's in line for an audition at some point in 2023, so...
What about Zach DeLoach?
DeLoach is of average build (6 feet, 205 pounds), but he resembles Fletcher in a lot of other ways. He was a second-round pick from a major program (Texas A&M), he's left-handed, and he's fared well enough at just about every stop along the way, including a .286/.387/.481 line for Triple-A Tacoma in 2023. If all goes well, he'll also make his MLB debut as a 25-year-old.
The key difference is that DeLoach has a more discernible final boss in his development. Scouting reports from Baseball Prospectus and Baseball America agree that he successfully tweaked his swing to get more elevation, resulting in a career-high 23 homers with the Rainiers. He also accepted a career-high 173 strikeouts, because it led to more whiffs on pitches in the zone.
DeLoach needed the increase in power to stand out as a better candidate for starts in a corner, but a 28-percent strikeout rate in the PCL doesn't foreshadow immediate success against MLB pitching. While Charlotte warps offensive production, road games in the International League should provide a sense of progress with regards to contact if that's indeed where he starts the season.
Either Fletcher or DeLoach pairs well with Kevin Pillar, assuming Pillar breaks camp with the White Sox on his minor-league deal. Getz's references to Fletcher's potential to be the strong side of a platoon certainly invites such assumptions. Throw in fellow non-roster invitees Brett Phillips and Rafael Ortega, along with what's left of Colás' potential, and the White Sox have seemingly conducted enough activity to present Sheets from making appearances in right field before the 11th inning of major-league games. What all that sound and fury signifies remains an open question, but that's the welcome kind of uncertainty for this 26-man roster, and it could use even more of it.
