Chicago White Sox need to be among busiest teams this offseason

The Chicago White Sox enter their most critical offseason in years as they try to transition into a top-tier team. 

With that being the case, the only way the White Sox can turn a 2019 team that went 72-89 into a playoff contender next season is by being among the most active teams in baseball this offseason in what will be Rick Hahn’s most important one of his GM career to date.

The White Sox were involved in the first trade of the offseason on Thursday when they sent Welington Castillo and $250K in international money to the Texas Rangers for minor leaguer Jonah McReynolds as detailed by Evan Grant of the Dallas Morning News.

In the grand scheme of things, that trade was extremely minor and did little to change anything, although it did allow the White Sox to evade paying Castillo his $500K buyout.

But, with only a hair over $47.9 million on the books for the 2020 season (Spotrac), the White Sox need to be active and that was certainly a good sign.

While they certainly have much of their core in place already with Lucas Giolito, Tim Anderson, Yoan Moncada, Eloy Jimenez, Nick Madrigal, and Luis Robert, the White Sox need to build around that this offseason.

And if they want to compete in 2020, the team must have strong backups in case some of these players experience significant growing pains.

So, while their shopping list implies that they maybe need one or two starters, a first baseman, a right fielder, and a DH, they really need to be active in terms of finding quality backup options and depth too.

Most of those guys probably won’t come from within, with Leury Garcia, Zack Collins, and maybe Yolmer Sanchez proving to be the only internal options to help assuage those types of concerns.

Having all of those needs requires the organization to be active on the trade front and willing to spend money, The latter shouldn’t be the hurdle, though, given their favorable payroll situation.

On top of it, they have the assets to be active on the trade front too and if the right situation presents itself, they should not be hesitant.

How the Chicago White Sox are constructed in 2020 is up to GM Rick Hahn, but if they fail to be active this winter they might not see the instant success they are hoping for.