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So What If The Offers Just Aren't There?

The narrative of the White Sox offseason thus far has been "the Sox are finally going to engage in a rebuild!" But the Sox have yet to make a major move and it takes two to tango. Rick Hahn indicated that the Sox may be hitting re-set, with the caveat that the market would indicate if, and to what degree, the White Sox would be sellers:

"Should we go to the position of selling off assets, looking toward a more long-term future, the market will dictate how deep of a cut that is."

Hahn wisely points out that the Sox can't make a blockbuster deal all by themselves. Instead, a team is going to have to make a worthwhile offer to kick off a long-overdue overhaul.

The White Sox's tradable asses fall into two categories. First, there are the cornerstone-type players. The return for players in this category should be staggering. After all, each player on the list is in their prime, on a relatively affordable deal with years of team control remaining, and offer varying degrees of surplus value. These primo assets include: Sale, Quintana, Abreu, and Eaton.

But what if no team is willing to give up the requisite haul to make a deal happen? Dealing any of "core four" solely for the sake of making a deal does little to bring the White Sox closer to their objective of putting together a (consistent) championship-caliber team, especially because the White Sox don't need to make a deal. What the White Sox do need is to fix a weak farm system that struggled to produce position players, and the best way to achieve this in short order is through a major trade. Said another way, the Sox need to make the right deal, not just any deal.

I am firmly in the camp hoping that the White Sox find this deal. Here's the problem: when it comes to these players, the Sox may be a victim of their own success. The assets in this first group may be too valuable (especially Sale, Q, and Eaton due to their below-market contracts), that teams are not willing to give up the prospects necessary for a "reasonable" return. GMs may prefer to make marginal upgrades and hope that their own prospects can cover the difference, lest they end up pantsed and sacked like the Diamondbacks front office after the Shelby Miller trade pillaging. For example, its not that Sale isn't worth a major chunk of the Red Sox farm system, but that the Red Sox simply aren't wiling to deal its farm system at the moment.

This brings us to the second set of trade chips: flawed but useful players who can still help a contender without costing an arm or a leg (or really much more than a fingernail). This list includes: Robertson, Frazier, Jones, and Melky (though reports that Melky passed through waivers last year without being claimed lead me to believe that his trade value is negligible). This group also poses a problem: the prospects from this group likely won't move the needle in a meaningful way.

In an ideal world, Robertson gets dealt for three low A pitchers who develop into the Braves "Big Three" from the '90s. But the odds of that happening are slim. The more likely outcome is a return of organizational depth. Something akin to the great Ray Durham for Jon Adkins trade of 2002 (yes, Durham was dealt at the deadline but you catch my drift).

Let's face it: the Sox may be stuck. Just when it looks like the front office is finally willing to embrace a rebuild, the current market means it may not be prudent.

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