The Chicago White Sox are one of the worst teams in Major League Baseball right now. They proved that on the field during the 2023 season when they went 61-101. They are also proving it off the field as they don’t do anything to make themselves better.
This team seems to be more interested in getting their payroll reduced while adding more assets for the future. This comes with just two playoff wins coming out of their last rebuild and we’re not talking about playoff series wins, either. They have won just two individual playoff games since their last rebuild started in 2016.
Chicago claims that they are not rebuilding, so they might do the thing where they add a bunch of mediocre players on the cheaper side to eat innings. That could lead them to a decent season or it could go down the drain again with the former being more likely.
The White Sox have a lot of issues from the top of the organization (the owner) down to the players. They don’t need to be adding any more problems to their group right now and that means they need to be very selective in the players they add even if they aren’t going to be pushing their chips in on 2024. These are the three players that they should stay away from in free agency:
Whit Merrifield
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The Chicago White Sox have been doing a lot of things wrong lately. One of them has been making themselves look like a Kansas City Royals wannabe.
They hired their bench coach to be their manager, Chris Getz has ties to the Royals, and they even signed Andrew Benintendi who spent lots of time there. There are even rumors that they could trade for Salvador Perez which is a disaster of an idea.
Another bad idea is the thought of them signing Whit Merrifield. He was a member of the Kansas City Royals from 2016-2022. During the middle of the 2022 season, he was traded to the Toronto Blue Jays. He finished that year with them and spent all of 2023 there as well.
Merrifield would be a bad idea for the White Sox because they don’t need to bring in former Kansas City Royals players who are aging. The Royals are the opposite of the Los Angeles Dodgers, Atlanta Braves, or Houston Astros in terms of winning so you don’t need to be mimicing them.
In 2023, Merrifield slashed .272/.318/.382 for a .700 OPS. He made the All-Star Game for the third time in his career, but that was a very curious selection to say the least. He was far from the prime version of himself which is why he only had a 0.7 WAR.
There is no reason for the White Sox to be bringing in a player like this. He is not needed because this team is far from turning the corner. If he had better stats in 2023, it might be something worth considering but it would just look like too much loyalty to the Royals at this point in time.
Corey Kluber
From there, Kluber started bouncing around a little bit. He spent 2020 with the Texas Rangers, 2021 with the New York Yankees, 2022 with the Tampa Bay Rays, and 2023 with the Boston Red Sox.
Based on his season with the Red Sox in 2023, he needs to be kept far away from the White Sox. They are not going to be the organization that fixes him after a disaster of a year with the Red Sox. If he wants to continue his career in MLB, he should be seeking help with a much better franchise.
Kluber is the definition of a typical White Sox signing. He is an older player who was super-elite at one point and is now cheap. However, it is time to refrain from making a bad signing like that.
In 2023 with the Red Sox, he had a 3-6 record with a 7.04 ERA and 1.636 WHIP. He had a -0.8 WAR because of his overall impact. He was a bad pitcher on a good team but they missed the playoffs entirely. Now, Kluber is looking for a new home.
Signing him would probably lead to him making way too many starts for this team. We don’t know about the rotation in 2024 as Dylan Cease could be traded while Michael Kopech could be headed for the bullpen.
They need people to pitch but Kluber should not be one of the names considered because he just isn’t good enough anymore.
Joey Gallo
One of the biggest critiques of the Chicago White Sox rebuild was the fact that they had too many players that fit the “1B-DH” type.
That includes players like Andrew Vaughn, Jose Abreu, Jake Burger, Gavin Sheets, and Eloy Jimenez amongst others. All of these guys had amazing moments for this team but it was always hard to get the most out of them because of the fact that they all do the same thing well.
It is a very unbalanced franchise right now and it has been for most of the rebuild. They were not good on defense for most of this stretch and this is a big part of it.
Adding someone who fits that mold in free agency is not a good idea. That is why they should stay away from Joey Gallo. He is coming off a decent year with the Minnesota Twins but it wasn’t good enough to consider bringing him in.
Gallo would have been a perfect target a few years ago but not now. He started his career with the Texas Rangers in 2015 and he remained there until the 2021 season when he was traded to the New York Yankees ahead of the trade deadline.
From there, he had a short-term stay with the Yankees, the Los Angeles Dodgers, and Minnesota Twins. Things haven’t been amazing for him since those first few years since being traded by the Rangers.
2023 was an interesting season for him as he slashed .177/.301/.440 for an OPS of .741. He hit 21 home runs, had 40 RBIs, and 39 runs scored. His average was low but the production was there when he did make contact. Gallo is a perfect example of why batting average is a bad stat.
His WAR was 0.5 which isn’t horrific but it isn’t game-changing by any means either. This was also his first halfway decent year since 2021 as he seems to be declining as a player.
The Chicago White Sox should not trust that he gets back to being a good player and they should not be bringing in any “1B/DH/OF” types unless the entire roster has a major overhaul. Gallo has been a good player in his career but this is someone that they should avoid at all costs.
