Hearts is an ironically titled card game given how much playing time is spent avoiding that specific suit like the plague.
It's like how despite the obviously outsized effect of player salary and organizational finances on trade values, MLB executives often find themselves performing verbal gymnastics to explain how a deal's merits actually transcend dollars. Trumpeting that the Mets took on Luis Robert Jr.'s full $20 million salary for 2026 usually isn't the way a team would sell fans on the individual merits of Luisangel Acuña.
But in describing a trade Sunday that could crudely be summed up as the White Sox buying a near-ready pitching prospect in David Sandlin at the cost of absorbing a reported $16 million of Jordan Hicks' salary over the next two years, Chris Getz is attempting some version of shooting the moon.
"We view this repurposing of the Luis Robert money. Adding a Sandlin is essentially part of a Luis Robert return," Getz said. "Then on top of that, being able to get an upside arm in Jordan Hicks, that if he re-establishes himself as a high-leverage arm or an impact arm, he has a chance to really benefit us in a lot of different ways as well."
The White Sox are hardly the first team to publicly signal their financial limitations, but with the unparalleled on-field struggles of the last three years and the fan base's well-established exhaustion with the baseball operations budgets handed down by ownership, Getz is performing for an audience most primed to appreciate his front office's recent display of working within their limitations. And with the Robert trade triggering a flurry of moves that will see four players added to the 40-man roster in the last two weeks once the Austin Hays signing goes official, few teams have ever made such a straightforward display of allocating money they just freed up; and in turn, such a clear suggestion that they did not have that money to allocate until they flipped Robert.
"There was a lot of action over the weekend," said Getz, who spent part of his Saturday panel at SoxFest talking around the pending acquisition of Hays. "With the payroll flexibility that we gained through that move, we wanted to utilize that money toward players that could help us for the long term as we continue to take the next step. There are different avenues to do that."
On the heels of three straight 100-loss seasons, Getz certainly didn't need to spend much time explaining the value of improving the 2026 team to beat writers who sat through 2023-25. But in a world where hoping for an 80-win season still counts as ambitious talk, it was fair to wonder how much the long-term goals of the Sox rebuild could be served by a one-year deal for the 30-year-old Hays, or a two-year deal for the 31-year-old Seranthony Domínguez. Using payroll room to acquire Sandlin, with Getz touting his rotation potential and six years of team control, theoretically threads the needle of deepening the 2026 pitching staff and potentially adding to their long-term core.
Sandlin's injury history (oblique and forearm strains in '23 and '24 respectively) and secondary shortcomings make his long-term fit in the White Sox rotation just as speculative as meaningful trade deadline returns for Hays or Domínguez. But fastball playability and strike-throwing are the biggest ingredients for being able to start, and Sandlin touched 100 mph last year and held high-90s heat throughout a season that saw him run yet another sub-10 percent walk rate over a career-high 106 innings.
It went all the way down to team employees last year remarking how much more they preferred working in an environment full of players they knew would be around for a while, over the parade of cast-offs and waiver claims into which the 2024 season devolved. Now in 2026, the cast-off of the trade gets second-billing, and is still a guy who says he touched 99.5 mph in his last bullpen.
"My body’s in a great place, probably the best it's been since 2023," said Hicks, who had injured list stints with toe inflammation and shoulder tendinitis last season. "I’m fit for whatever role that the team needs me in. I think that I can do very well in both. I’m just excited for the opportunity mostly, and ready to get back on the field."
Hicks appeared on a Zoom call with media from Arizona, where he's been spending much of his offseason at PUSH Performance in Tempe. If that facility name sounds familiar at all to this audience, the likely reasoning is the level of praise Erick Fedde heaped on the trainers there for helping him rework the mechanics of his delivery ahead of his breakout 2023 season in the KBO.
Hicks' peripheral numbers were better than his results before he got shoved into the return of the surprising Rafael Devers trade to the Giants last season, but it's also accurate to say that he had negative trade value because of his 6.95 ERA and the $24 million remaining on his contract. The White Sox are still in the sort of rebuilding phase where giving Hicks' still-premium velocity a chance to get on track in the bullpen is worth a roster spot for them, and Getz had enough respect for his new pitcher's ambition to show how good and healthy he is that it was very, very hard to get him to commit to saying he'll be a reliever.
"I know for a fact that I'm at my peak athleticism," Hicks said. "The next few years I'm really excited about. I feel like I'm going into my peak. Not my peak, but the best version of me. I feel like I can really be that in the next two years for the White Sox. Everything is a learning experience and struggle is probably the biggest one I learned from. Just to be able to mentally get through that, in one of the harsher environments with the Boston Red Sox fans and all that, I'm just extremely blessed to be here in Chicago now. Just ready to show what I can do."
Getz's terming a potential Hicks revival as something that could "benefit us in a lot of different ways" makes it sound like the White Sox have also considered a world where they are unburdened of his salary one day as well. And in my experience, fans are skeptical when GMs try to submit extra credit assignments to pump up their test scores. A key player returning from injury is usually not viewed as a trade deadline acquisition, despite how many executives have tried to make that comparison across the league, so I suspect Getz's success in getting a trade for Sandlin and Hicks considered to be part of the return for Robert will be mixed.
The roots for this trade tree are already ensnarled with that of the swap of Austin Slater for Gage Ziehl that enabled it, and Jairo Iriarte getting designated for assignment as a corresponding move also brings the shortcomings of the Dylan Cease trade into greater relief. As someone who has done this for a living for a bit, it's a short path from to here to a dark basement, where we stand in front of a bulletin board with photos and news clippings connected by different colored strings and wonder what Getz knew when he told Slater that he was their "top target," and when did he know it?
A more apt summary -- and it may well be a complete offseason summary with the way the White Sox have talked about using the Robert money -- is that as clearly as they've made their payroll limitations, they've made their efforts to get things done within those borders just as easily perceived. It can sound sage to say that it only matters how it all plays out on the field, but in 2026, making fans feel like their team is also part of the frenzy to add talent that the league promotes throughout the offseason is an element of the product too.
"Every offseason is a unique one," Getz said. "It can change on a dime. You’ve got to stay close to it, you’ve got to have a pulse on it. As we reflect back through the offseason, couldn’t be more excited about what we were able to accomplish. You look at some of the long-term goals we have, we’re working towards those. And in the near-term, we’ve got a chance to take even a more meaningful step forward this upcoming season, too."
