Given that the 2025 White Sox are struggling to clear 50 wins for initial over-unders in the sportsbooks, they're projected to experience their share of adversity.
Perhaps that's why they just traded for Cam Booser, because no matter what they throw at him, he's one of the few MLB players who is guaranteed to have seen worse. Yhoiker Fajardo, an 18-year-old right-handed who struck out 64 in 50 2/3 innings in the Dominican Summer League is headed to the Red Sox. Fajardo is interesting, but still at a point where maturing into a Booser-level reliever at some point would be a developmental triumph. It didn’t portend good things for Corey Julks when the White Sox kept signing new outfielders to guaranteed contracts, and getting designated for assignment four days before Christmas to clear a 40-man spot for Booser would qualify as a not good thing.
Booser, who made his MLB debut in 2024 just two weeks shy of his 32nd birthday, is a tale of overcoming obstacles. He had Tommy John surgery in college, and that was the most standard of his problems.
Booser’s injury history is exhaustive. His sophomore year of high school, he broke his femur playing football and had knee surgery. His senior year, he fractured a vertebra during an overzealous session in the weight room. He had Tommy John surgery his freshman year of college and then, after that procedure didn’t go as smoothly as it should have, an elbow scope his second year in pro ball. His third year, he tore his labrum, requiring another surgery. It’s like he was hit by a car.
And then there was the time he was, well, hit by a car. That was in December of 2015, as he was rehabbing at the Twins’ spring training facility following shoulder surgery. He was on his bicycle when a motorist ran a stop sign and plowed through him. “I rolled on his hood, broke his windshield, slid off, slid into traffic,” Booser says. He wound up with a broken sacrum, a bone near the base of his spine.
He ended up taking time away from baseball, joining the carpenters union in the Seattle area and working in construction, dabbling with baseball instruction on the side. When he realized he was able to throw 96 mph, he resumed training in earnest. Booser rejoined professional baseball with the Chicago Dogs in 2021, striking out 39 of the 99 batters he faced. His re-entry to the majors was delayed because the Twins last held his rights and refused to release him until before the 2022 season. The Diamondbacks signed him, but released him after 26 walk-plagued innings in Double-A Amarillo.
The Red Sox then picked Booser up before the 2023 season, and while he still didn't stand out at Triple-A Worcester, he cut his walk rate in half while maintaining his strikeout rate, with homers the only problem. That was enough to buy him another year, and after opening the season by striking out 15 of his first 25 batters at Worcester, the Red Sox called him up, making him the oldest player to make his MLB debut for Boston in 77 years.
He spent most of the season in the majors, posting a 3.38 ERA with 43 strikeouts against 16 walks over 42⅔ innings, the bulk of them coming in low leverage. After the season, the Red Sox gave Booser their Tony Conligliaro Award, which recognizes "a major leaguer who has overcome adversity through the attributes of spirit, determination, and courage that were trademarks of Tony C."
He features a three-pitch arsenal, leading the way with a 95-mph fastball, backed up by an 88-mph cutter against righties, although he'll throw his low-80s sweeper more frequently than any other pitch to lefties.
Booser will give Will Venable a third left-handed option alongside Fraser Ellard and Jared Shuster, and since all of them have at least one option year remaining, the 2025 White Sox bullpen can still take its time achieving its final form. For the time being, any urgency driving the deal probably stems from one team with 40-man roster pressure finding a team with plenty of room for auditions. And the White Sox have regularly proven themselves willing to accept potential long-term commodities in exchange for facilitating the Red Sox’s more immediately pressing ambitions.
