White Sox Notes: Robert, Wilson, Benintendi
Luis Robert Jr. has been the subject of trade rumors for well over a year. With the White Sox in a full rebuild, it has felt like a matter of time before the 2023 All-Star would head elsewhere.
That has been complicated by Robert’s recent play. He missed a couple months early last year with a hip flexor strain and hit .224/.278/.379 with 14 homers in 100 games. The Sox held him over the offseason, maintaining a high asking price in hopes that he’d rebound and emerge as a key deadline trade chip. That hasn’t happened, as Robert’s numbers have only further spiraled. He goes into tonight’s game with a .186/.281/.308 line over 180 plate appearances. Robert has taken walks at a career-best 11.7% rate, but he’s striking out 29% of the time and not hitting for his usual amount of power.
Robert acknowledged that the lack of production is tanking his trade value. “Right now, as my season is going, I don’t think anybody is going to take a chance on me,” he told reporters through an interpreter (link via Kyle Williams of The Chicago Sun-Times). There are a little over two months for Robert to turn things around before the deadline. He remains a capable defensive center fielder and leads MLB with 17 stolen bases. Robert still has intriguing physical tools, but he hasn’t come close to his 2021-23 numbers (.287/.331/.511) in the batter’s box.
The Sox owe Robert what remains of his $15MM salary. He’s controlled via $20MM club options for another two seasons, but it’s increasingly difficult to see the team exercising those.
In other news out of Chicago, the Sox finalized their one-year deal with righty Adrian Houser this afternoon. He drew right into the rotation and held Seattle scoreless over six innings in a 1-0 victory for his team debut. Manager Will Venable confirmed that the Sox were moving Bryse Wilson back to the bullpen as a result of the signing (link via Scott Merkin of MLB.com).
Wilson had begun the year in relief but drew into the starting five after the Martín Pérez injury. He had a 5.28 ERA over 10 relief appearances. He struggled in four starts, surrendering 13 runs across 17 2/3 innings. Wilson is out of options, so the Sox needed to keep him on the MLB roster or designate him for assignment. He’s likely to work as a long man.
Meanwhile, Andrew Benintendi began a rehab assignment with Triple-A Charlotte this evening. He went 0-4 with a strikeout while working as the designated hitter. Benintendi has been out for two weeks with a strained calf. He’d hit .224/.298/.400 with five homers through his first 24 games. Austin Slater is the primary left fielder in Benintendi’s absence.
White Sox Designate Yoendrys Gomez For Assignment
The White Sox announced Tuesday that right-hander Yoendrys Gomez has been designated for assignment. His spot on the roster goes to veteran righty Adrian Houser, whose previously reported major league deal with the South Siders has now been formally announced. Chicago had just claimed Gomez off waivers from the Dodgers ten days ago.
The Sox were Gomez’s third team of the still-young season. A former top prospect in the Yankees’ system, he’s bounced from the Bronx to L.A. to Chicago’s South Side. Along the way, he’s totaled 17 2/3 innings and allowed 13 runs (6.62 ERA) on 20 hits and 13 walks with 13 strikeouts. He tossed 3 1/3 innings with Chicago and allowed three runs on five hits, two walks and a hit batter. Gomez has now pitched 31 innings in the majors and yielded a 5.23 ERA.
Lackluster major league track record notwithstanding, Gomez sports near-identical ERAs of 3.64 and 3.67 in Double-A and Triple-A, respectively. Those have come in samples of 83 1/3 innings and 81 2/3 frames. Gomez has fanned 27% of his opponents in Triple-A against an 11.3% walk rate, and his Double-A rates (28.3% and 12.6%) are again quite similar.
Any team that claims or acquires Gomez will have to plug him right onto the MLB roster. He’s out of minor league options and can’t be sent down without first clearing waivers. The once-promising righty’s development has been slowed by the canceled 2020 minor league season and a Tommy John procedure that wiped out most of his 2021-22 campaigns. He could potentially benefit from some additional time in the upper minors, but it’s not a luxury teams can pursue until he passes through waivers. If Gomez goes unclaimed this time around, he’ll stick with the Sox as a depth option; he lacks the major league service time or the prior outright assignment needed to reject an outright assignment in favor of free agency.
White Sox Sign Adrian Houser
May 20: The Sox announced today that they have signed Houser to a one-year, $1.35MM deal. Assuming that’s prorated, Houser will get about $950K. James Fox of FutureSox previously reported that Houser was expected to start tonight’s game for the Sox, indicating it would be a big league deal. The Sox designated right-hander Yoendrys Gómez for assignment as the corresponding move.
May 19: The White Sox are nearing an agreement with free agent righty Adrian Houser, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. It’s not clear if he’ll jump right onto the big league roster or head to Triple-A Charlotte. Houser, a client of BBI Sports Group, was granted his release from a minor league contract with Texas last week.
Houser signed with the Rangers during the offseason. He has worked out of the rotation at Triple-A Round Rock, tallying 39 1/3 innings across nine appearances. While his 5.03 earned run average is pedestrian, that’s not all that uncommon in the Pacific Coast League. Houser has stronger peripherals. He struck out a decent 22.8% of opponents while running an excellent 57.3% grounder rate.
Ground balls are Houser’s speciality. He has gotten grounders at a near-52% clip over parts of eight seasons in the majors. That was up in the 58-59% range during his best seasons with Milwaukee but has been down to a more normal 46-48% mark over the past few years. That caught up to him last year, as he allowed 5.84 earned runs per nine across 69 1/3 frames with the Mets. Houser had begun the season in New York’s rotation but was kicked to the bullpen after seven starts. His results in relief were much better. He carried an ERA north of 8.00 as a starting pitcher but turned in a 3.28 mark across 35 2/3 relief innings.
Texas signed him as rotation depth, which seems likely to be his role in Chicago (assuming the deal is finalized). The rebuilding White Sox have baseball’s least experienced rotation. Bryse Wilson is the only member of the current starting staff who entered the season with even one year of MLB service. Wilson, who had begun the year in the bullpen, stepped into the starting five after Martín Pérez suffered a forearm injury. He has allowed a 6.62 ERA with nearly as many walks as strikeouts over four starts.
Rule 5 pick Shane Smith has been the team’s best pitcher, turning in a sterling 2.05 ERA with average strikeout and walk numbers over his first nine MLB starts. Davis Martin and Jonathan Cannon have each been a little worse than average. Opening Day starter Sean Burke has struggled, though he’d been better this month until giving up six runs to the Cubs on Saturday. If Houser jumps right onto the MLB roster, he could nudge Burke or Wilson from the rotation. Burke still has a full slate of minor league options. Wilson is out of options and would need to be designated for assignment for the Sox to take him off the big league roster.
White Sox Outright Jacob Amaya
TODAY: Amaya has cleared waivers and been outrighted to Triple-A, according to Sox Machine’s James Fegan.
MAY 16: The White Sox announced Friday morning that infielder Jacob Amaya has been designated for assignment. He’ll be the corresponding roster move for Chicago’s previously reported acquisition of reliever Miguel Castro. The Sox also added infielder Vinny Capra, whom they claimed off waivers from the Brewers, to their active roster. Left-hander Jared Shuster was optioned to Triple-A to clear a second roster spot.
Amaya, 26, originally came to the White Sox via waivers last August. He was briefly jettisoned from the 40-man roster in January and claimed by the Orioles. The South Siders claimed Amaya back from Baltimore two weeks later when the O’s tried to pass him through waivers themselves.
Amaya is regarded as a gifted defender but offers little with the bat. He’s appeared in 56 games with the ChiSox and totaled 139 plate appearances but has just a .140/.174/.155 batting line to show for it — including a .097/.119/.113 slash in 68 plate appearances this season. Though he’s yet to provide any offense in the big leagues, Amaya has a more palatable (albeit still below average) .246/.342/.380 batting line in 1219 plate appearances at the Triple-A level.
Because Amaya is out of minor league options, the Sox couldn’t simply send him directly to Triple-A Charlotte. He’d first need to pass through outright waivers for the Sox to be able to assign him to a minor league affiliate. Major League Baseball’s DFA window lasts a week, and the Sox are free to explore trade possibilities or place Amaya during that time. Waivers are a 48-hour process, however, so if they find a trade partner it’d need to happen within the next five days. Given Amaya’s struggles this year, waivers seem likelier, but a team with a short-term need at shortstop could show some interest.
White Sox Place Tyler Gilbert On 15-Day Injured List
The White Sox announced that left-hander Tyler Gilbert has been placed on the 15-day injured list due to a sprained left MCL. Southpaw Jared Shuster has been called back up to Chicago’s 26-man roster in the corresponding move, just a day after Shuster was optioned to Triple-A as part of another collection of roster moves.
This is the second time this season that a left knee issue has sidelined Gilbert, as he began the year with a 15-day stint on the IL due to bursitis. The MCL sprain arose yesterday, as the lefty made it two batters into a relief appearance against the Cubs before he had to be removed from the game. The length of Gilbert’s recovery timeline will depend on the severity of the sprain, and more details on that front should arise when manager Will Venable meets with the Chicago media today.
Acquired in a January trade with the Phillies, Gilbert has a 4.85 ERA over 13 innings and appearances for the White Sox this season. (Three of those appearances were “starts” as an opener, and the other 10 came out of the bullpen.) Five of Gilbert’s seven earned runs came over back-to-back rough outings against the A’s and Red Sox on April 16 and 18, as he has otherwise been pretty solid, allowing just two ER over his other 10 2/3 frames of work.
Gilbert has a strong 30.8% strikeout rate but control has been a problem, as the left-hander has a 13.5% walk rate. While acknowledging the small sample size, both statistics are far different from Gilbert’s career norms, as he had a 16.5% strikeout rate and 7.3% walk rate over his 100 career MLB innings heading into 2025. Of course, a good chunk of that prior experience came as a starting pitcher, and Gilbert has increasingly transitioned into being a full-time reliever over the last two seasons.
White Sox Acquire Miguel Castro From Astros
May 16: The White Sox announced the trade. However, rather than the cash considerations indicated by Brown, the Sox announced that they’re sending international bonus pool space back to Houston in the swap. Pool space must be traded in $250K increments unless a team is emptying out a bonus pool that has under $250K remaining (in which case the entire remainder is sent).
Given the Sox’ position and long-term outlook, it seems likely that they’re sending at most $250K or perhaps that they had less than that amount remaining. Notably, no actual cash changes hands when pool space is traded. The Astros are simply acquiring the right to spend an additional block of cash on international amateur free agents.
May 15: The White Sox are acquiring right-hander Miguel Castro from the Astros, reports Robert Murray of FanSided. Astros general manager Dana Brown tells Chandler Rome of The Athletic that Houston receives cash considerations in return.
Castro, 30, signed a minor league deal with the Astros in the offseason. He has since pitched 19 2/3 innings at the Triple-A level with a 2.29 earned run average. His 10.1% walk rate is a tad high but he’s striking out 25.3% of opponents while getting grounders on 44% of balls in play.
Despite those solid numbers, it seems the Astros weren’t planning to call him up, so they’ve traded him instead. Per Ari Alexander of KPRC 2, Castro’s deal had an upcoming opt-out date on June 3rd.
The White Sox are rebuilding and don’t have a strong relief group. Collectively, their bullpen has a 4.42 ERA, putting them in the bottom third of major league teams. Given that they are 14-30 and at the bottom of the American League standings, they presumably plan to install Castro into the bullpen and see if he can pitch his way into being a midseason trade candidate. Assuming they plan to call him up before his opt-out, they will need to open a 40-man spot for him.
Castro has occasionally been a useful pitcher in the big leagues, though with declining results in recent seasons. His ground ball rate has been fairly consistently near 50% and his walk rate has usually been a bit higher than average. The strikeouts have been high at times but there’s been a clear downward trend. He peaked at 33% in 2020 but that figure dropped to 25.4% in 2021, 23.7% in 2022 and 22.4% in 2023.
Last year, he started with the Diamondbacks but landed on the injured list due to shoulder inflammation in the middle of April. He stayed there for about three months, getting reinstated in July but was released in early August. Around the IL stint, he tossed 13 2/3 innings with a 5.93 ERA and 12.5% strikeout rate in that small sample. Based on his minor league numbers this year, it’s possible he has put the shoulder problems behind him and is back in good form.
Photo courtesy of Reinhold Matay, Imagn Images
White Sox Release Brandon Drury
The White Sox released Brandon Drury from his minor league deal, according to the MiLB.com transaction tracker. He has been on the injured list since May 8.
Drury hasn’t played a game for Triple-A Charlotte since April 26. Their manager, Sergio Santos, told Jeff Cohen of Future Sox last week that Drury had injured his wrist on a hit-by-pitch. At the time, Santos said that Drury was able to field without issue but experienced soreness when he was taking swings. He’d only been able to appear in 10 games before the injury. The veteran infielder hit .179/.319/.282 with one home run across 47 trips to the plate.
The Sox signed Drury to a minor league contract shortly before the opening of Spring Training. He looked well on his way to breaking camp when he raked at a .410 clip through 13 exhibition contests. That was scuttled when he broke his left thumb in the final few days of Spring Training. Chicago granted him his release but brought him back on a new minor league deal in mid-April once he’d returned to health.
There aren’t many specifics on his latest injury, but it stands to reason that Drury will find renewed minor league interest whenever he’s healthy. He won a Silver Slugger in 2022 and remained an above-average hitter as recently as ’23, when he hit .262/.306/.497 with 30 doubles and 26 homers for the Angels. The wheels fell off last season. His bat cratered to a .169/.242/.228 showing across 360 plate appearances, limiting him to minor league offers.
White Sox Claim Vinny Capra
The White Sox announced that they have claimed infielder/outfielder Vinny Capra off waivers from the Brewers. He had been designated for assignment by Milwaukee last week. The Sox opened a 40-man spot recently by designating Gage Workman for assignment, so no corresponding move will be necessary there. Capra is out of options, so the Sox will need to open active roster space once he reports to the club.
Capra, 28, has been a good minor league performer in his career but hasn’t really had a chance to carve out a major league career. He has appeared in each of the four most recent major league seasons but has only been sent up to the plate 96 times over those campaigns. He has produced a dismal .105/.170/.163 line in those.
But on the farm, he received 1,287 plate appearances from 2021 to 2024. He drew walks in 11.4% of those while limiting strikeouts to an 18.6% clip. He had a combined .287/.376/.431 line and 118 wRC+ over those seasons. He also stole 25 bases while bouncing around the diamond. He has played every position except first base, though that includes just one inning as a catcher and just a third of an inning on the mound.
The Brewers apparently thought there was a chance of Capra being a useful big league player. They claimed him off waivers from the Pirates in 2023. Coming into 2025, he had exhausted his option years but earned an Opening Day roster spot by hitting .292/.358/.729 in spring training. However, he didn’t carry it over into the regular season, which nudged him off the roster and onto the waiver wire.
The Chicago roster is a bit of a motley crew right now. After losing 121 games last year, they are giving playing time to guys like Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Vaughn, with the club hoping those guys can build trade value in the coming months. Meanwhile, guys like Miguel Vargas and Chase Meidroth are attempting to establish themselves as bonafide major leaguers and form part of the next core. Capra will jump in there and can bounce around to multiple spots. If he can get some plate appearances and produce some offense like he has in the minors, he’ll be a nice pickup for the Sox.
Photo courtesy of Benny Sieu, Imagn Images
White Sox Return Rule 5 Pick Gage Workman To Tigers
Infielder Gage Workman has cleared waivers, and the White Sox have returned him to the Tigers, as reflected by his transaction log on MLB.com. He will report to Triple-A Toledo.
This hardly comes as a surprise after the White Sox designated Workman for assignment earlier this week. The Cubs initially selected Workman from the Tigers in the Rule 5 draft this past December. He made the Opening Day roster for the North Siders and suited up for the club in nine games over the first few weeks of the season. However, the Cubs no longer had a role for him after signing the much more experienced utility infielder Nicky Lopez to a big league deal in mid-April. Per the Rule 5 regulations, the Cubs could not simply option Workman to the minors, so they DFA’d him and traded him to the White Sox for cash considerations not long after.
Workman played just three games for the White Sox before landing on the IL with a right hip flexor strain. Upon reinstating him, the South Siders chose not to add him back to their active roster and DFA’d him instead. This time, evidently, no other teams were interested in giving him (and his .485 OPS through 17 PA) a spot on their active roster, so passed through waivers unclaimed. The White Sox then had to offer him back to the Tigers. As his original team, Detroit is not obligated to add him to its 26 or 40-man roster. He will return to the Tigers’ minor league system, where he thrived last year, hitting .280 with a 142 wRC+ in 126 games at Double-A.
White Sox Outright Nick Maton
May 12: Maton cleared waivers and was outrighted back to Charlotte, relays James Fegan of Sox Machine. He’ll again have the right to test free agency but seems likelier to accept another outright and remain in the organization.
May 10: The White Sox announced that infielder Nick Maton has been designated for assignment. First base prospect Tim Elko‘s contract was selected in the corresponding move, as was reported yesterday.
This is the second time in two weeks that the Sox have designated Maton, and his first trip through DFA limbo saw him clear waivers and then accept an outright assignment to Triple-A Charlotte. Maton had the option of becoming a free agent because he has been outrighted in the past, but chose to remain in the organization and wait for another crack at a spot on Chicago’s big league roster. That chance came when Maton’s contract was selected again as a corresponding move to Andrew Benintendi‘s placement on the injured list, though Maton’s latest stint with the White Sox lasted just a couple of days.
Maton has hit .167/.286/.315 over 63 plate appearances, and he has played in 25 of Chicago’s 39 games this season primarily as a first baseman and designated hitter. Since Maton is out of minor league options, the White Sox have to designate him and expose him to the waiver wire whenever they wish to send him to Triple-A, thus giving Maton repeated chances to elect free agency.
As a veteran utilityman on a rebuilding team, Maton isn’t likely to receive the benefit of the doubt when it comes to playing time, as the White Sox are obviously prioritizing young talent. That said, catching on with another team that has more established players also might not give Maton much time on the diamond. Maton’s lack of minor league options leaves him with little flexibility, so if he isn’t claimed on waivers this time around, he’ll face another decision about whether or not to stick with the White Sox or test the open market.