Ten minutes before the deadline, the White Sox made their second and final trade of the period by sending Adrian Houser to the Tampa Bay Rays for infielder Curtis Mead and two right-handed pitching prospects, Duncan Davitt and Ben Peoples.
The White Sox made no other deals besides Wednesday's Austin Slater-Gage Ziehl swap. With Luis Robert Jr. remaining in the fold for the remainder of the season -- and perhaps beyond, if the White Sox exercise his $20 million option -- the team's biggest haul will come from the player who wasn't even a part of the organization until the second half of May.
The White Sox signed Houser off his stint at Triple-A Round Rock after he opted out of a minor league contract, and he couldn't have done more with his time on the South Side, going 6-2 with a 2.10 ERA over 11 games, nine of which counted as quality starts. James recently wrote about his reinvention, and the lucky timing that made Houser's minor-league numbers look worse than he felt. He closed out his White Sox career with a victory over the Cubs, and then was scratched from his scheduled start on Wednesday as he awaited his final destination.
He'll head to Tampa, with three players coming back.
Mead, 24, is a .238/.307/.322 hitter over 111 games spread out over three MLB seasons, including a .226/.318/.339 line over 49 games while rotating between first, second and third base in 2025.
He was a Baseball America Top 100 prospect three years running, ranking 33rd before the 2023 season, and 55th entering 2024, on the strength of his hit tool. He's had no problem at Triple-A, hitting .290/.369/.497 over 190 games with the Durham Bulls, so the initial reaction is that they're simply re-running the Miguel Vargas playbook, except this time it's a two-team trade, and the White Sox get three players back while only sending out one.
Regarding the other two, Davitt, 25, is an overachieving $25,000 18th-round senior signing out of Iowa in the 2023 draft. He earned a promotion to Durham after posting a 3.55 ERA with 81 strikeouts to just 15 walks over 83⅔ innings with Double-A Montgomery, but he's allowed 14 runs and five homers over his first 20 Triple-A innings, and Charlotte could pose further problems for a game that's centered around strike-throwing.
Peoples, 24, will also slide over from Durham to Charlotte, although he's spent the entire season in the bullpen for the first time in his career. He'd previously experienced sporadic success as a starter, but missed the second half of the 2024 season with an injury. Neither Davitt nor Peoples ranks on top-30 lists, but Peoples did make it to No. 38 on FanGraphs' list on the strength of his delivery.
He creates near perfect backspinning action on his fastball, which lives above the zone, and off of that Peoples tries to drop hard, upper-80s slider/cutters into the top of the box. He lacks a plus secondary weapon right now, but his changeup looked good in limited 2024 action, and that pitch might have another gear with time and increased usage. We’re betting on Peoples’ athleticism and delivery here, and still think he has a future as a fastball-heavy up/down reliever who has a chance to entrench himself in a more regular big league role if one of his secondary pitches improves.
Neither prospect is on the 40-man roster, but both are Rule 5 eligible should they make a case for it.
