When Chris Getz dealt Aaron Bummer to Atlanta for five players for his first real move as White Sox GM last November, the reviews weren't fit to blurb:
- "There's a bunch of blah on the surface"
- "This is merely an accounting measure involving a lot of moving trucks"
- "Change for change's sake"
And that was just from Sox Machine!
Admittedly, those blurbs were selectively edited to enhance my prescience. In the two posts about it, I covered the range of outcomes, because with two teams buying low on all six players involved, all it took was one guy defying his track record to change the discourse.
But that hasn't happened. Whether it's Bummer on the Braves, or Nicky Lopez, Michael Soroka, Braden Shewmake and Jared Shuster on the White Sox, everybody at the MLB level has mostly been as advertised.
| White Sox | bWAR | Braves | bWAR |
|---|---|---|---|
| Michael Soroka | 0.0 | Aaron Bummer | 0.2 |
| Nicky Lopez | -0.1 | ||
| Braden Shewmake | -0.5 | ||
| Jared Shuster | 0.7 | ||
| Total | 0.1 | Total | 0.2 |
If you had to declare a winner with half of the season in the books, it'd be the Braves without argument. Besides the slim WAR advantage, they cleared several roster spots they intended to open anyway, and they were paid a useful MLB reliever to do so.
There just isn't a Reynaldo López-grade renaissance here. Superficially, Bummer's 3.67 ERA suggests the Braves fixed something. Under the hood, he remains a confounding pitcher, with his arsenal still not quite working the way it should.
Just like in Chicago, Bummer is running an absurdly high BABIP (.397), and as Ben Clemens wrote on FanGraphs, he's extremely inefficient when it comes to putting hitters away. He's better at getting the first out of an inning this season, but he still has the same tendency to let problems snowball. Opponents are hitting .423 against him with runners in scoring position, and he's allowed five steals in five attempts under those circumstances as well. In a new wrinkle, lefties are hitting .333/.404/.429 against him this year, defeating the purpose of any sort of LOOGY deployment.
The Braves just don't live and die with Bummer's ups and downs because he's simply a less vital pitcher. Four relievers have a higher leverage index than Bummer, who mostly appears in the seventh inning or earlier. If he appears in the eighth or ninth, it's usually when the Braves are trailing by a little or leading by a lot. That's not a luxury Bummer would've been afforded in Chicago. Pedro Grifol's usage patterns -- eschewing innings-based roles in favor of throwing the same two or three relievers against the other team's best hitters at the most critical moments -- would probably lead to the same dead end, even 2023's 6.57 ERA would be difficult to replicate.
But while the Sox have had their reasons for not seeing a way for Bummer to thrive in Chicago, they've been dealing with the lack of upside that plagued the five-player package at the time of the deal. Soroka couldn't stick in the rotation, and while there might be some potential in relief, he's also a free agent after the season. Lopez doesn't have a starter's skill set anymore, even for a second-division team, which makes him a non-tender candidate. Shewmake hit .125 in Chicago and .152 in Charlotte, and now he's hurt. Shuster's a long reliever like Soroka, but he's been the most handy to have around, partially because his minor-league options means he doesn't have to be around.
If Shuster's lack of strikeout stuff comes back to bite him in the second half, then the deal effectively becomes Aaron Bummer for Riley Gowens, who was the fifth player the White Sox received. Gowens is having a nice year in Winston-Salem, with 79 strikeouts against 23 walks over 65⅓ innings in his first full professional season, but he's also a 24-year-old in A-ball. That said, he's enthusiastic about the tweaks to his arsenal, and he can only use his new repertoire against the opponents he's given.
Bummer's Bummer. Lopez is Lopez. Shuster is Shuster. Shewmake is Shewmake. Soroka ... his case isn't as tidy, and he has some searching to do, but he'll be able to pursue all potential landing spots to continue that quest after the season.
There isn't a firm idea of what Gowens is, and that makes him the lone loose end in this deal. If he follows Tyler Schweitzer's path from Winston-Salem to Birmingham and has some success at Double-A by the end of the year, then it's worth putting his name in front. He's still a lottery ticket, but at least the potential upside becomes the point of it. The others were supposed to supplement plans for a professional, respectable, ordinary below-average MLB team, and that dream died months ago.
