It was only three years ago the Chicago White Sox looked as if they could have a solid rotation for years, headed by Carlos Rodon, Lucas Giolito, Dylan Cease and Michael Kopech.
All four had no-hit stuff, and Rodon and Giolito recorded no-hitters in White Sox uniforms.
But the best-laid plans of former general manager Rick Hahn didn’t pan out. Rodon left as a free agent, Giolito was dealt to the Los Angeles Angels last summer and after Wednesday’s trade of Cease to the San Diego Padres for prospects, Kopech is the last one standing.
Meet the new rebuild. Same as the old rebuild?
General manager Chris Getz has been reluctant to label his plan as such, but by dealing his ace two weeks before the season begins, there’s really no other way to look at it. The Sox are coming off a 101-loss season with little chance of competing for a postseason spot this year, and Cease was their best trading chip.
Getz wisely held on to Cease at the Winter Meetings in December when he couldn’t find the right deal, and Cease’s value only rose during spring training with some big-name pitcher injuries driving up the price tag. With the organization in flux, it was a move he had to make.
Two top free-agent starters — former Padres ace Blake Snell, the reigning National League Cy Young Award winner, and the Texas Rangers’ Jordan Montgomery — remained unsigned as of late Wednesday, making Cease the most sought-after starter for teams looking to add pitching without paying the high asking price of agent Scott Boras.
With two years left before free agency and a relatively affordable salary of $8 million, Cease should fit in well in San Diego, giving the Padres another ace to go along with former Cub Yu Darvish.
The four-player haul the Sox received includes 23-year-old starter Drew Thorpe, the No. 5-ranked prospect in the Padres organization, according to MLB Pipeline; and Jairo Iriate, a 22-year-old right-hander with a 98 mph fastball who ranked No. 8 in the organization. They also got 19-year-old Venezuelan outfielder Samuel Zavala, ranked No. 7, and reliever Steven Wilson.
Thorpe was acquired from the New York Yankees last winter in the Juan Soto trade and ranked No. 85 on MLB Pipeline’s Top 100 list. He was MLB Pipeline’s Pitching Prospect of the Year in 2023 with a 2.52 ERA and 182 strikeouts over 139 1/3 innings in High A and Double A. Thorpe, a 6-foot-4, 212-pound right-hander, was projected to be ready at some point in 2024, so he could join the Sox rotation as early as this season.
White Sox pitcher Dylan Cease delivers against the Guardians on July 27, 2023, at Guaranteed Rate Field. (Trent Sprague/Chicago Tribune)
The loss of Cease was seismic for Sox fans, even as they knew the possibility was strong he would be dealt at some point this season. Cease spent the entire winter on the trade market, but the Sox announced him as the opening-day starter in late January, leaving him in limbo throughout spring training.
Cease, a deep thinker who appreciates art and writes poetry in his spare time, handled his situation extraordinarily well. He went through camp acting as if he would start the season on the South Side, even when he likely knew he was a goner.
The Sox rotation currently is headed by Kopech, who struggled in 2023 and has not been cemented as a starter by manager Pedro Grifol; followed by free-agent signee Erick Fedde, who excelled in Korea; and trade acquisition Mike Soroka, looking to make a comeback.
Reliever Garrett Crochet, who has looked strong this spring in his bid for a rotation spot, also has a shot. The Sox might want to limit his innings after he missed most of last season rehabbing from injuries, but otherwise Crochet, a first-round pick, has the stuff to be a front-line starter.
Cease won’t be soon forgotten. He arrived in the Sox organization in 2017 as part of one of the more one-sided crosstown deals in memory, when Hahn sent starter Jose Quintana to the Cubs for Cease and outfielder Eloy Jiménez. It was a move that juiced up a rebuild that began the previous winter when Hahn dealt Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox in a deal that brought back Kopech and Yoán Moncada.
Jiménez looked like a breakout star in 2019 before injuries set him back the last four seasons. He’s now a designated hitter who also can increase his trade value this season with a hot start. Cease was part of the Sox rotation that won the 2021 American League Central title and he finished second to the Houston Astros’ Justin Verlander for the 2022 American League Cy Young Award.
While he failed to follow up on that brilliant season, Cease’s slider remains one of the best in the game and most feel his best years are ahead of him. But now Jiménez is all that’s left from the famous deal and his future is up in the air as Getz looks to upgrade the farm system and erase the memories of a nightmarish two-year stretch by the Sox.
Getz put his faith in Grifol — the manager he inherited from Hahn — who had a difficult rookie year that included a lot of losing and clubhouse issues that reflected poorly on him. Now Grifol is in charge of guiding the next rebuild, just as Rick Renteria was put in that unenviable position in 2017.
Renteria managed to get the Sox to the postseason by 2020 but was fired after a wild-card-round loss to the Oakland A’s and replaced by Tony La Russa, a personal friend of Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf. La Russa won in 2021 but left due to health reasons after the 2022 season. He has been in Sox camp this spring as an adviser to Grifol.
As opening day nears, the Sox will bring a lot of new faces to the South Side, hoping fans will accept the rebuild with the same attitude they showed from 2017-20. They embraced the call-ups of Luis Robert Jr., Moncada, Jiménez, Kopech and Cease and felt it was similar to the Cubs’ rebuild that led to a World Series title in 2016.
It looked for a while as if the Sox would be set through the rest of the 2020s, and Hahn even talked about the championship parade — prematurely, of course.
But that optimism was erased by the summer of 2022, and finding Sox fans excited about Rebuild 2.0 figures to be a much more difficult task for Getz.
