This week is SoxFest week, if you can believe it.
Part of the calendar confusion is for a good reason. Todd Steverson's Arizona minicamp usually didn't collide with SoxFest, but this year 13 White Sox prospects are heading back from a potentially life-changing trip to the Dominican Republic.
Steele Walker continues to show his 70 quote tool, whether it's in that James Fegan story ...
“It’s an experience of a lifetime,” said last year’s second-round draft pick Steele Walker. “You come to a place like this, you help the kids out, you go to an orphanage, you do all these things, you see a culture you’ve never seen before, you’re going to leave impacted more, a lot of the times than the people you actually saw. That’s what I’ve experienced. First time out of the country, obviously I’m going to remember it forever. Hopefully I made a difference in kids’ lives, people’s lives, but they definitely made a difference in mine.”
... or this one about Eloy Jimenez.
Steele Walker, in the friendliest way possible, takes a question about whether Jiménez’s skill level jumps out to him in practice as a challenge to his baseball acumen.
“Does it jump out to you?” Walker asks in response.
Well, yeah.
“Then it definitely jumps out to me,” Walker said, laughing. “Did you see the home run he hit yesterday over the center-field wall? Come on, bro. I didn’t even want to see that. I didn’t need to see that. Good for him, though.”
But the greater source of disorientation is ... you know. Manny Machado. Bryce Harper. The second-tier free agents waiting for Machado and Harper to sign somewhere so they can sell themselves as serving a similar purpose for a fraction of the commitment. The guys like Dallas Keuchel who play an unrelated position but still remain on the market.
In accordance with the prolonged free agent timeline, guys like Joc Pederson are still being dangled on the trade market, as opposed to part of a firmed-up roster.
The White Sox and Dodgers have matched up on trades before, but not for players of a higher profile. While guys like Matt Kemp, Yasiel Puig and Jose Abreu have been described as potential targets for rumors that fizzled out, they've instead connected on more lesser names like Luis Avilan and Manny Banuelos. That Pederson revised his swing with newly appointed White Sox hitting analytics instructor Matt Lisle is a novel development, but also one that could give a rumor more heat than it actually has.
(For what it's worth, Jon Heyman says the Braves have talked to the Dodgers about Pederson, so perhaps the Sox are caught up in a very wide net.)
Pederson showed up on a couple rosters of our Offseason Plan Project because he might be considered expendable by his current team. He also plays center field -- at least nominally -- and does damage from the left side, even if left-handed pitching eats him alive. That's a great combination for the White Sox, with only his relative lack of team control (two arbitration years) keeping him from being a perfect fit for what figures to be a digestible price.
But perfect is the enemy of the good and the White Sox are neither, so I'd be for it -- at least assuming the Sox are also intent on landing Machado. With Machado, a multi-year solution like Pederson becomes far more effective, regardless of him merely meeting the bare minimum for "multi-year." Without such a win-now booster rocket of a signing, acquiring a Pederson type would still be viewed more about who the Sox gave up than who they got in return.
