How the White Sox Trade Chris Sale
This winter is a intriguing one in baseball, as it seems exceedingly likely to bring about change in the way the game is thought about. Andrew Miller's postseason efforts, (and in a similar vein, Zach Britton's) have proved the value of a shutdown reliever, a trend Aroldis Chapman and Kenley Jansen both look poised to profit off of. The game is also continuing to value above all position players with strong defense and consistent on-base abilities. Speedy center fielder Dexter Fowler is apparently not yet convinced by a 4 year $60 million offer from Toronto, while the National League's reigning home run king, Milwaukee's Chris Carter, was designated for assignment last Tuesday. While these developments in baseball are fascinating in how much the evaluation of a player's production and value to his team has advanced, the most exciting part of this winter is the drama around the Chicago White Sox and Chris Sale.
First off, why would Sale, the 27-year-old, five time all-star, Randy Johnson impersonator, and a guy who's finished in the top-6 in Cy Young voting all five years he's been a starter in this league, be someone the White Sox want to move? Simply put, it's timing. There are two things in this situation we know very well. The first is that Chris Sale is very good. His career 1.065 WHIP tells us that. The second, is that the White Sox are very bad, even with the single lefty in baseball who deserves mention right after the Dodgers' Clayton Kershaw pitching their every fifth game. After a couple big splashes last winter and a 23-10 start, the White Sox ended up losing six more games than they won. Letting go of manager Robin Ventura seemed to be among the final necessary indicators that this team truly doesn't believe it's on the path to postseason success anytime soon. With Sale's contract expiring in three years, there's practically no guarantee the team will be able to make any real use of his talent while he's here, so why not ship him away for future prospects and a fresh start?
While this seems heartless and depressing to the ten-year-old White Sox fan in me who saw their last World Series win in 2005, the fact of the matter is that other teams will put forward some high-level prospects to acquire a guy under one of baseball's most team-friendly contracts. Among the fiercest teams in their pursuit of Sale are Boston and Atlanta, both of them have the pieces to put together a deal, but both of them also might be, and also should be, at least somewhat intimidated by GM Rick Hahn's asking price.
Simply put, a guy like Sale doesn't become available via trade very often. Sale is much younger than Roy Halladay was when the Blue Jays packed his bags to Philly, and his career trajectory seems to be a lot more reliable than Johan Santana's was when the Mets picked him up from the Twins in a deal that years later looks to have benefited neither team.
Realistically, if it wasn't for how unfathomably good Sale's contract looks, a potential trade would look a lot more like what the Tigers paid for David Price in 2014, a three-team deal that saw Detroit giving up only Austin Jackson. At that point, Jackson had been for years viewed as a top prospect and possible star, he'd been the young centerpiece of the deal that moved Curtis Granderson out to the Bronx in 2009. Tampa received out of this deal Willy Adames and Drew Smyly for giving up one and a half years of their ace. Unsurprisingly, that sort of return is hugely unhelpful to any rebuild effort, as the Rays still struggle to make anything of themselves, and seem to be in the same predicament with Chris Archer. The toughest part to remember is that dealing with prospects, no matter how much value you think you have, it's all ultimately a crapshoot. Not everyone ends up being the Cubs.
All that said, it seems as though Sale is on his way out any moment in Chicago, a reality perhaps not entirely divorced from his falling out with certain team administrators. That leaves Hahn with a lot of work to do, and leaves about 29 other GMs with their own due diligence to do in investigating just how conceivable adding a perennial Cy Young candidate to their team might be. For the past decade or so, Chicago has had one of the weakest farm systems in all of baseball, and in today's game it seems almost impossible to win that way.
The craziest part is that hardly ever in baseball is a trading chip so valuable, and actually willing to be parted with. Sale is going to make $12 million next year, then team options for $12.5m and $13m after that, which practically laughs in the face of the word "option." Price was let go while making $14m, and that was before the market's recent inflation and with only one more year at $19.75m left of control. Baseball players quite like Sale, with contracts quite like Sale's, simply haven't ever been on the market like this. Hahn can change the team's longterm outlook in one fell swoop, or he can just be letting go of the most exciting player the South Siders have had since Frank Thomas. Ultimately time will have to tell.