The Chicago White Sox has a couple of positional needs to fill this offseason.
Second Base:
With Nick Madrigal being traded away, the White Sox are going to need to find a permanent long-term option that will be a better player than him. That’s not going to be easy to do but there are a lot of options on the 2021 free-agent market with Marcus Semien being the most obvious example.
Semien played for the White Sox before and has spent his whole career in the AL so that would make him a good fit. The best thing about him is the 45 home runs he hit in 2021, a massive upgrade over Nick Madrigal’s 2 and Cesar Hernandez’s 3.
The White Sox power numbers sagged both in the regular and post-season, so they could really use 40 extra home runs. Signing Semien would also help correct what is easily one of Rick Hahn’s worst-ever trades. That said, besides Semien, there are a lot of options the White Sox can go with.
Free Agent Middle-Infielders sorted by 2021 bWAR:
Carlos Correa 7.2
Marcus Semien 7.1
Trea Turner 6.5
Javier Baez 4.5
Trevor Story 4.2
Cory Seager 3.7
Preferably, the White Sox would sign one of the top 3 guys rather than the bottom 3 but if they don’t sign at least one of these 6 guys I would consider this offseason to be a failure. Semien does make the most sense as he would probably give you the most bang for your buck while fulfilling a positional need.
Right Field:
Well, I don’t want to beat the dead horse on this too much but the White Sox should have absolutely signed Bryce Harper. While the White Sox got replacement-level performances from the right field this year, Bryce Harper was a top-tier MVP candidate putting up nearly 6 WAR.
Those 6 extra wins would have given a home-field advantage to the White Sox in the playoffs and helped them score more runs. Would it have been enough? We’ll never know but it was a mistake not to sign him.
In the meantime, the White Sox have to find a left-handed bat that can give them 25 home runs and play right field to at least platoon with Andrew Vaughn. One option could be trading for Cody Bellinger (it would be great if they could trade Kimbrel for him) but I don’t think that will happen. Another option would be to sign Kyle Schwarber which the Sox should have done last year.
Kyle Schwarber is a great option for the White Sox. He’s still only 29 years old, hits extremely well in the playoffs, and would ease the pain from Cubs fans bragging about having Nick Madrigal. He hit well with the Red Sox so I don’t think it will be too hard for him to adjust to the American League.
The one problem is that he isn’t really a right fielder but if he can learn the position to be at least average he’ll be worth getting. I hope the Sox sign him to a 2-year deal. There are other options for right field but I think that Kris Bryant is too expensive and Nick Castellanos likely won’t opt out of his current contract. As a result, the best ex-Cub outfielder to get is Kyle Schwarber.