The White Sox made their mandatory decisions to add Rule 5-eligible prospects to the 40-man roster, but that only accounted for but a portion of their transaction activity at today's deadline.
Along with adding Tanner McDougal and Duncan Davitt to the 40-man roster, Sox Machine can confirm the White Sox acquired left-handed pitcher Chris Murphy from the Boston Red Sox for Ronny Hernandez, which fills a vacancy for a southpaw reliever created by the unexpected retirement of Fraser Ellard.
But the reason this is now a co-byline affair is because Sox Machine can also report a four-player trade with the Rays, in which swingman Yoendrys Gómez and reliever Steven Wilson are headed to Tampa in exchange for outfielder Everson Pereira and infielder Tanner Murray.
If you recognize a name there, it's probably because Pereira, 24, was a former top-100 prospect (per Baseball America) in the Yankees system. His athleticism and build suggested huge potential as a power-hitting centerfielder, but bust-level hit tool concerns were emerging before he needed internal brace surgery in 2024. He was flipped to Tampa at the deadline for José Caballero and struck out a ton in another big league cameo, but did hit a combined .256/.359/.508 in 78 games at Triple-A last year. Murray, a 26-year-old non-shortstop utility infielder type, is complementary to Pereira in the sense that his swing can level out to handle elevated velocity. Otherwise he's more of a 'tweener; contact has largely been Murray's most intriguing skill working through the minors, but he easily set a career-high with 18 homers for Durham last year. It was a pyrrhic victory, as his strikeout rose correspondingly and excessive chase drove a .241/.299/.400 Triple-A batting line.
Murray was Rule 5 eligible this winter and the Rays added him to the 40-man roster earlier Tuesday, but Pereira is out of options, as the Sox collect a critical mass of bats who will be entering spring on put up or shut up status. For that, the Sox offered two men who combined to provide over 100 innings of serviceable big league work in 2025, but didn't cleanly project for bigger and better projects in their current form.
Gómez provided a badly needed late-season patch for the Sox rotation in the final two months, stringing together a 4.60 ERA over nine starts, but his shaky control loosened when pushed much beyond two trips through the order and he's a better fit as a swingman. Wilson put together a 123 ERA+ as a middle leverage reliever in 2025, but his mechanics and stuff were depreciated upon arrival as part of the Dylan Cease trade in 2024 and this past year represented only a partial recovery. He struck out 25.4 percent of hitters in two years in San Diego, and 21 percent in two years in Chicago while working innings where such a difference is deeply felt.
Nevertheless, those are innings that will need to be replaced and time will tell if the three other pitchers added to the mix on Tuesday will be enough to account for it.
Murphy made 43 appearances over two seasons with Boston. Those seasons were in 2023 and 2025, as he lost all of 2024 to Tommy John surgery. He fared decently in 23 games after returning in June, although he experienced the typical post-surgery command issues with a spike in his MLB walk rate (8.5 percent to 13 percent). He was able to successfully work around it and posted a Chicago-like 3.12 ERA, and given that he was tasked mostly with low-leverage opportunities and had the length to pitch upwards of three innings, it all worked well enough.
As for what he throws, it's fastball-slider (or cutter) to lefties, and fastball-curveball to lefties, and he's able to keep more than half the contact on the ground, which is interesting. He also seems to be a tinkerer, so his arsenal may further evolve.
Hernandez, who turned 21 earlier this month, is heading to Boston, and he feels like more of a known entity than the last low-minors player they sent to the Red Sox for a lefty reliever. Unlike Yhoiker Fajardo, who went from the White Sox's DSL team to two stateside affiliates with the Red Sox and enjoyed success at both in his age-18 season, Hernandez has spent the last two years at Kannapolis, and his production went the wrong way in 2025. He hit .251/.344/.336, which represented a jump in power, but at the expense of contact and average, and he spent the last few weeks of the season on the injured list. Hernandez's struggles controlling opposing running games (205 stolen bases in two season) are gradually moving in the right direction, but also put plenty of pressure on his ability to stay behind the plate.
Murphy is effectively a direct replacement for Ellard, whom the White Sox placed on the voluntary retired list. No reason has yet been given.
Pereira, Murray and Murphy join Tanner McDougal and Duncan Davitt as the newest members of the White Sox 40-man roster. McDougal's protection was expected after a breakout season in which he posted a 3.26 ERA with 136 strikeouts against 49 walks over 113⅓ innings split between Winston-Salem and Birmingham. Davitt was more of a surprise, but he did throw 152 innings over 28 starts last year, including 68 ⅓ between Durham and Charlotte. He's the kind of pitcher who is on the cusp of making spot starts at the major league level, although his 5.40 ERA and 10 percent walk rate at Triple-A reflected a pitcher who needed to figure out the finer points of handling upper-level hitters. The White Sox acquired him from the Tampa Bay Rays in the Adrian Houser trade, and perhaps that reflected their interest in making sure he'd be around for further development.
His status is mostly surprising because of the players the White Sox didn't add, namely Peyton Pallette and Shane Murphy. Pallette, the White Sox's second-round pick out of Arkansas in 2022, posted a decent relief season in 2025, most of which was spent at Charlotte. His three-pitch mix seems like it should be able to handle major league hitters in some sort of role. Murphy is in the same group as Davitt, except he's a pitchability lefty instead of a pitchability righty. He posted the second-lowest ERA in the minors at 1.66 over 135⅓ innings, but the White Sox kept him in Birmingham for nearly the entire season before two late-season starts at Charlotte.
McDougal, Davitt and Chris Murphy are all official, putting the White Sox 40-man roster at 37, and that'll still be the case after the Rays trade becomes official, unless they make any additional moves in the interim.
