White Sox still searching as other teams snap up starting pitching

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There’s a great gag from “The Simpsons,” which has since been turned into a reliable GIF.

In the episode where the Simpson family is overrun with dozens of greyhound puppies, Homer sits on the couch, attempting to eat a bag of chips, only for a different puppy to leap into the air and grab every chip on its journey from the bag to his mouth.

Well, the White Sox are hungry for starting pitching. But it’s all the other teams around the league that are filling up on chips.

An avalanche of pitching acquisitions has occurred since the offseason began, though none has ended with a new member of the South Side starting staff.

Gerrit Cole signed with the New York Yankees. Stephen Strasburg returned to the Washington Nationals. Madison Bumgarner stayed in the NL (and NL West) in signing with the Arizona Diamondbacks. Zack Wheeler spurned the White Sox's richer offer to pitch for the Philadelphia Phillies. Cole Hamels got $18 million to pitch for the Atlanta Braves. The Texas Rangers traded for Corey Kluber and signed both Kyle Gibson and Jordan Lyles. The New York Mets added Michael Wacha and Rick Porcello. Jake Odorizzi and Michael Pineda both returned to the Minnesota Twins. Tanner Roark got $24 million to be a Toronto Blue Jay for the next two seasons.

So how many chips are left in the bag?

We just went through a Winter Meetings in which two national writers predicted the White Sox would end up with Dallas Keuchel, and perhaps they will. Though expectations were high and predictions flowed before the White Sox departed for San Diego, they returned with nothing more to show for their efforts than outfielder Nomar Mazara.

That doesn’t mean the meetings weren’t productive, and perhaps the groundwork was laid for another move coming down the road. Rick Hahn placed the focus on trade talks, and there was buzz about a potential deal that would add David Price to the South Side starting staff. The White Sox, with their much discussed financial flexibility, certainly seem like a good trade partner for the Boston Red Sox, who are intent on shedding payroll this winter.

Price would undoubtedly be an upgrade to Chicago's rotation, but he comes with some red flags that make you wonder. If Boston included a young player who could fold into the White Sox core, obviously a deal would be more attractive. But MLB.com’s Mark Feinsand reported a Price deal including someone like Andrew Benintendi didn’t sound realistic.

Considering all the money the White Sox have to spend -- and their declared intention to spend it, even if not all in one place -- the free-agent market has seemed the best route to land impact players, and they did just that with Yasmani Grandal, giving the free-agent catcher the richest contract in club history before Thanksgiving. They tried to do the same with Wheeler.

But fans then got irritated when the Winter Meetings came and went without mention of the White Sox being connected to the three biggest names on the free-agent market: Cole, Strasburg and third baseman Anthony Rendon. That doesn’t mean the Sox didn’t go after them, but as Hahn is quick to remind, folks don’t want to hear about what did or did not happen, they just want the player. Well, the White Sox didn’t get any of those three players, hence the frustration.

Moving on to what is obviously a backup plan, given that adding Wheeler was the primary objective, is not necessarily as easy as just pulling up the MLB Trade Rumors free-agent rankings and signing the next name on the list. The White Sox might not view someone like Keuchel or fellow free agent Hyun-Jin Ryu as the same kind of ideal fit for what they’re building. But while there’s plenty of time left to solve the need for a pair of arms in the starting rotation, the options are thinning in a hurry.

Keuchel sure seems like he’d bring a lot to the table. He's a World Series champion and Cy Young winner who earns rave reviews for his presence in the clubhouse, not to mention that he’s still a very good pitcher. He posted a 3.75 ERA in 19 starts after signing with the Braves in June. Ryu, meanwhile, has plenty wary of his recent health issues, but he’s posted fantastic numbers when healthy. The 32-year-old lefthander was baseball’s ERA champ in 2019.

Both, of course, are represented by Scott Boras, and while the uber agent inked gargantuan deals for his three biggest clients at the Winter Meetings, everyone still has Bryce Harper staying unemployed deep into last February fresh in their minds. That sparks legitimate worries that there could be Boras guys who wait around for just the right offer. And it might mean the White Sox either have to wait and see whether they can complete their rotation or move on to other options.

If Keuchel or Ryu aren’t the guys, who is? Julio Teheran? Wade Miley? Alex Wood? These are not the splashy names White Sox fans were hoping for, not the kinds of guys who get a rebuilding effort over the hump.

And that, in turn, puts pressure on the pitchers the White Sox already have to carry the load. There’s a ton of promise for what those pitchers can do, and we’ve seen, with Lucas Giolito, how dominant one of these homegrown guys can be when it clicks. It’s thrilling to think about what might happen if Michael Kopech and Dylan Cease follow a similar path.

But Kopech has pitched in just four major league games and sat out more than a year while recovering from Tommy John surgery. His usage in 2020 is already slated to be limited in some fashion. Cease got his first taste of the majors in 2019 to less-than-ideal results. A Giolito-Kopech-Cease 1-2-3 could one day dazzle. But is it a trio ready to carry a rotation in 2020?

Hence the search for additions. But the search is becoming more difficult by the day, as more and more options to help those guys along go to other teams. This isn’t to say the White Sox are dragging their feet or that they aren’t in pursuit of the right pitcher. This could all end with the kind of addition that is exactly what this team and rotation need.

But as we sit here right now, there’s a whole host of teams sating their starting-pitching appetites, while the White Sox remain hungry.

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