Chicago White Sox: Team options for Kimbrel and Hernandez are decided

The Chicago White Sox are in a weird spot with a few different positions. Everyone knows the team’s offseason needs and a lot of them are because of a few mistakes made in 2021. A few of those mistakes are trade deadline acquisitions in Craig Kimbrel and Cesar Hernandez. The White Sox had to make some offseason decisions for them and their team options.

They decided to pick up Craig Kimbrel’s option and decline Hernandez’s. Cesar will be a free agent now and Kimbrel, for now, will stick with the team. There are rumors, however, that the White Sox will trade Kimbrel at some point this offseason. It will be interesting to see if that ever happens.

At the time of the deals, both were the right moves. The White Sox looked like they had a chance at the trade deadline. Unfortunately, they ran into the Houston Astros and made everything look bad in one series. The White Sox know that their window is wide open and are trying to take full advantage of that fact.

Trades like that are going to happen every year that the White Sox are good. The hope is that they finish off the deed in at least one of the years that they have in the competitive window. There will be more good trades made and there will be more bad trades that don’t work out well.

The Chicago White Sox made some decisions on their players with team options.

We now have to hope that the White Sox are able to get something nice for Kimbrel. With that said, if they can’t, it might be better to just give him a try next season and see if he can return to form. He clearly can’t be a setup man but there is nothing wrong with having two closers.

He was awesome as the Chicago Cubs closer in 2021 but was a disaster as the White Sox’s setup man. Whoever Kimbrel pitches for next season should make sure that they give him the best chance to be successful because we know how good he can be in certain roles.

As for Cesar, there are many different options for him. He was so good with Cleveland before coming to the White Sox and he just got ice cold when he put on the White Sox uniform. Sometimes those things happen when baseball players change teams mid-season.

It isn’t fun that it happened this way but there are options to be better replacements for him in free agency. They will also have to find a legit setup man for Liam Hendriks as the closer of the team as well. Both of these things will certainly be addressed and these two team option decisions are only the beginning.