LAKE BUENA VISTA, Fla. — The lobby of the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort is a neverending din of strivers, job-seekers, reporters and the occasional actual baseball executive, who have been keeping the bar running on something close to a 24-hour basis. But in terms of headlining moves, it’s been a rather quiet winter meetings, especially in terms of real, live White Sox business. And if it seems quiet, that’s because it actually is.
Advertisem*nt
“There’s been nothing close,” said a league source, who indicated that besides some light inquiries around Avisail Garcia, talks around the White Sox assets have remained quiet.
Rick Hahn’s response to whether anything’s been close, or whether clearing Giancarlo Stanton off the trade block drove any teams to target his players more vigorously, was to dispute the very concept of trades being close or far.
“It’s sort of binary for me. It either happens or it doesn’t,” Hahn said. “We’ve had a lot of things at various winter meetings over the years or at various times throughout the calendar that have been extremely close and then nothing happens. And we’ve had things that materialized and come to fruitionin 20 minutes. I tend not to get into handicapping the likelihood of anything happening. We remain engaged, and you never know.”
Everyone likes staring into the flickering electrical fire flames that are the Marlins’ desperate salary purge, where they have renounced anything resembling trade leverage as they shop valuable players in their prime for all the world to enjoy. But there remains potential — as seemingly low as it still might be — that someone like Christian Yelich and his five years of remaining control might offer the rare situation where the Sox could deal for a major leaguer that fits into their competitive window.
“It’s conceivable, yes,” said Hahn, playing along with a carefully worded hypothetical. “Frankly we’ll probably be in a little better position for deals like that a year from now. I think we’ll have a much better understanding of which of this group is going to be taking a step forward. We’ll certainly have a better understanding of what the timelines are and where potential holes may exist. To do such a trade at this point would be a little bit conjecture in terms of, ‘Hey we think there’s going to be a hole there, we think we have depth there,’ whereas a year from now, we’ll have a lot more information along those lines.”
Rick Renteria didn’t seem too concerned on Tuesday about the possibility of first baseman Jose Abreu being involved in trade talks. (James Fegan/The Athletic)
This year the White Sox seem a lot more interested in scouring the crop of buy-low relievers and picking fourth in the Rule 5 draft on Thursday (expect them to add someone) than pulling off something fun in Orlando. Perhaps “interested,” is not the right word. Maybe “resigned” is better.
After all, Hahn has said the key to this offseason will be patience, and not throwing away a year’s worth of work to build a future because some new and shiny opportunity to rush their timeline up becomes available. Similarly, any premature interest in the pending free agent Manny Machadowould have to clear the hurdle of securing an extension to guarantee more years of control, which would take a tremendous amount of unlikely events to come together.
Advertisem*nt
Because of that, and because Hahn ducked any questions directly regarding targets or offers, his media session switched to prospect talk pretty quickly, as any discussion of the White Sox is wont to do these days. Without giving anything away about his arrival time (hint: not opening day), Hahn used the phrase “best pitching prospect in the game” in a sentence about Michael Kopech.
“The kid is not only an extremely hard worker, extremely diligent, wants to be great, is willing to pay the price to be great,” Hahn said. “But once he ultimately gets to Chicago and establishes himself here, he’s going to be a favorite of our fans, given his personality and how badly he wants to be a champion as a member of the White Sox.”
Kopech’s prospect stature has outstripped many of the arms the White Sox have spent first round picks on, but Hahn said that Carson Fulmer should be expected to be in the 2018 White Sox rotation barring any new acquisitions pushing him out. Hahn left open the possibility of Fulmer contributing to the bullpen,but also felt he overcame a personally difficult year and is confident in him going forward. Fellow first-rounder Zack Burdi is doing “really well” in his rehab from Tommy John surgery according to amateur scouting director Nick Hostetler, and if anything will need to be held back from trying to pitch this spring training, rather than in 2019.
“He’s been in [University of] Louisville a little bit, the pitching coach down there was gushing about how hard he was working,” Hostetler said. “I spoke to him through text the other day, typical Zack, joking around, he’s ready to go. The hard part for Zack will be listening to doctor’s orders, taking that full year.”
With a midseason arrival date speculated by Hahn, the question is whether Burdi will arrive to a White Sox team that has unloaded more veteran leadership. Rick Renteria wouldn’t opine on that, as usual, but he did show that by the time Burdi is healthy again, he might not recognize the name his first baseman is being called.
“I’m not concerned about Petey,” Renteria said, referring to Jose Abreu. “Petey’s a White Sox until otherwise stated. I know nothing new or speculative in regards to Pete. Pete’s our first baseman.”
