White Sox are working the waiver wire harder than ever before

With Ryan Rolison getting claimed by the Cubs on Wednesday, the White Sox quickly found a substitute to address their suddenly voracious hunger for former Rockies first-round picks by claiming catcher Drew Romo off waivers from the Mets on Thursday.

Romo, 24, was the 35th overall pick in the 2020 draft on the strength of his hit tool and big throwing arm, and a top-100 prospect at multiple outlets as recently as 2023, but has been trending toward a reserve future for a while now. While he has the defensive tools to latch on somewhere and his pure bat-to-ball ability is legit, Romo has below-average power with poor plate discipline (37.4 percent chase rate), and his .258/.323/.394 line at Triple-A Albuquerque -- which is nearly 30 percent worse than the bloated PCL average -- helped make him a nomad this winter after just 56 big league plate appearances. The Sox are the third team to claim Romo off waivers this offseason alone.

From a roster analysis standpoint, adding a fourth catcher to the 40-man roster fills a need whether you're still holding a torch for an Edgar Quero trade market the Sox claim to not be stoking, or simply anticipating losing Korey Lee on the waiver wire at the end of spring. Or Romo could breeze in and out of the organization without ever putting on a big league uniform. For example of the latter, infielder Ben Cowles was designated for assignment to make room for Romo having only accumulated 15 games of work at Triple-A Charlotte after being a waiver claim himself this past September. The acquisition of Tanner Murray in November's trade with the Rays already gave the Sox another middle infield depth option on the 40-man.

While mid-January is typically the time of year that a team-focused website would find itself posting articles about fifth outfielders and fourth catchers on successive weekdays, Romo's Sox career up to this point is more notable for being part of a trend. On the podcast earlier this week, my FanGraphs colleague Eric Longenhagen praised the Sox for doing what a rebuilding team is supposed in terms of marrying their weak 40-man roster with their enviable placement on the waiver wire claim order, handing opportunity to a lot of players who may or may not deserved more run than they got with their previous clubs.

Surely much of our audience saw a lot of themselves reflected in the lemur character from the 2024 Academy Award-winning animated film Flow; obsessing over our humble possessions, seemingly out of compulsion, while the world literally melts down around him. But after searching through 10 years of transaction archives, that chittering mammal's stamina for shuffling through trinkets of dubious value also mirrors the White Sox's recent uptick in waiver wire activity.

For the purpose of this accounting, we're going to count players the Sox traded for while they were on waivers after being designated for assignment. Typically this is done to jump the line on a player who otherwise might not get to the Sox on waivers alone, with Tyler Gilbert being a recent example, and if anything represents the club acting with even more intent on available players. Some teams root through the trash when it suits them; paying for the privilege is a little extra TWTW (the will to waiver-hunt).

By that measure, the Sox trading cash for outfielder Tristan Peters after the Rays designated for assignment, along with Rolison and now Romo, makes it three players they have plucked off waivers since the close of the 2025 season. If we use that same cutoff as a year endpoint, that's already more than the number of players on waivers that the Sox claimed or traded for before and during the 2021 season. But they're at most keeping pace with the frenzied past year of activity, including the part where Rolison has already moved on.

(Listed in order of most recent, players who saw time on the White Sox active roster are bolded)

Remembering this many guys all at once can be overwhelming -- remember when they had two Geo Sotos? Remember releasing Turner and re-signing him to a guaranteed deal? Remember the neverending Clarkin tug-o-war? Will they keep the streak going and acquire Amaya off waivers again this year?

So, let's try to break it down into chunks.

⚙️The WAR column is mostly beside the point; grabbing a guy off waivers is literally acquiring a replacement player, so pass or fail the price is still fair. It's also restricted to big league contributions from the year the player was acquired, hopefully for clarity's sake. Padilla and González debuted into starkly different situations than in which they were first added, and adding their later work to the totals or that of multi-season contributors like Cordero and Ruiz would just further render most trend analysis meaningless. Ruiz had his best season for 2021 team, but that year's roster was not built in the spirit of exploring new options. Also, not all WAR is created equal here. Santos' 1.2 WAR season in 2023 represented a found trade chip that could still bring back future returns in the form of Prelander Berroa and Blake Larsen. Toussaint's 1 WAR in the same year mostly just served to stave off some graying in Ethan Katz's beard.

⚙️ The main thing the WAR breakdown shows is how the contending window rosters eschewed waiver wire contributions entirely, since even Padilla didn't make his Sox debut (2023) until said window had already slammed shut. Since those win-now Sox teams were top-heavy with depth issues, it seems like that was an oversight in retrospect. But that excessive 40-man roster churn is a leaguewide trend of recent years is useful context to remember.

⚙️ It wouldn't be inaccurate to say that waiver wire dumpster diving is inversely related to organizational health. The two most inactive seasons for claiming players (2020, 2021) were the only two playoff teams here. It's when the major league roster produced historic lows that the Sox decided they weren't above trying anything once, and this article mostly exists to praise them for a thematically appropriate response to disaster. When the Sox were both trying to contend (2016) and using as many waiver claims as a rebuilding team to do so is when the truly garish results came.

⚙️Waiver wire curiosity peaked for the previous front office at a similar point of their own rebuild (2018), and those teams were considered plenty transactional for their day. Ruiz and Cordero pitched in playoff games, Palka finished fifth place in AL Rookie of the Year voting, and the new administration has yet to best those accomplishments with the results of all their foraging, at least not yet.

⚙️They can't be included by any reasonable standard, but signing Adrian Houser after he opted out of his minor league deal, waiting until Tyler Alexander was released to immediately sign him to a new contract, and buying Matt Thaiss from the Cubs before he could get squeezed off their roster were all waiver wire-adjacent moves that would have spiked the 2025 WAR total. Alongside truly negligible spending in free agency, in response to a threadbare budget, the Sox have just spent more time focusing on markets where the acquisition price is mostly just opportunity cost; a currency they have in surplus. It jibes with my developing thesis that the defining trait of the Getz-led front office is a pragmatic outlook, even if the GM is still trying to find the ears on selling it to the public.

Just like in our own lives, self-awareness doesn't make the reality any easier to experience, it only lends the comfort that time wasn't wasted pretending things were different.