3 early-season trades White Sox must make
There’s no escaping it at the moment—the Chicago White Sox are a dumpster fire. Less than three years removed from a 93-win season and an AL Central division title, the Pale Hose are the first team in baseball to reach 20 games under .500, with little promising talent at the big league level and MLBPipeline’s 20th-ranked farm system.
In short, it’s fair to say things are bleak on the South Side of Chicago at this moment in time. But the good news (if there is any) about the White Sox being so bad is that they have the first go at the trade market this season and can sell off their pieces at as high a price as possible. And since the farm system clearly needs replenishment, it’s essential the White Sox stockpile as much young talent as possible before the 2024 Trade Deadline.
Chicago kicked off its firesale Wednesday by sending Robbie Grossman back to the Texas Rangers, where he won a World Series just last year. Today, let’s send all the other valuable assets the White Sox should realistically trade to teams that will make better use of their talents and project what the prospect packages would look like in return.
Trade Eloy Jiménez ANYWHERE
Yesterday, we ran the Rangers’ version of this piece in which we declared Eloy Jiménez would make a mighty fine Arlington resident. But there are six to eight other teams who should at least consider sending the White Sox a couple of solid prospects for Jiménez, because at his best, Jiménez has game-changing power that every organization covets in today’s MLB.
It’s fair to say Jiménez isn’t having a very good start to 2024. His .626 OPS and -0.3 bWAR tell that story pretty clearly. But he’s still in the 79th percentile of average exit velocity, which is at the bottom end of what his normal expected range would be. He owns a career .802 OPS and averages 33 home runs per 162 games, which alludes to his real problem: health. The teams interested in acquiring Jiménez would all have varying levels of concern about his injury history and that will likely affect the quality of offers heading Chicago’s way.
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