For White Sox fans who have wanted the team to leverage its rock-bottom payroll to effectively purchase prospects by taking on other team's onerous contracts, today is your day.
In a move that is now official, the White Sox have acquired Jordan Hicks and right-handed pitching prospect David Sandlin from the Red Sox for Gage Ziehl and a player to be named later. Hicks is the player with a brand name, and the White Sox using some of their Luis Robert Jr. savings to take on a portion of his contract is the impetus for this trade, but Sandlin is the get of the deal. In order to make room on the 40-man roster, the White Sox designated Jairo Iriarte and Drew Romo for assignment.
Hicks, who had established himself as one of baseball's hardest throwers as a member of the St. Louis bullpen, then signed a four-year, $44 million contract in January 2024 with the San Francisco Giants, who had a notion of paying a high-octane reliever price for a high-octane starter. The experiment succeeded initially, but the wheels flew off after his first two months with the Giants, and nobody's been able to recover them.
This is the second time Hicks' salary has been dumped over the last year. After he opened the 2025 season with a 6.47 ERA over his first 13 games, the Giants sent him to the Red Sox as a way to balance the finances of the Rafael Devers deal. The Red Sox used Hicks solely as a reliever, but he produced even worse results, with an 8.20 ERA and just 15 strikeouts against 31 baserunners over 18⅔ innings.
The White Sox will be covering $16 million of the remaining $25 million owed to Hicks, and its unclear whether he can even thrive in relief at this point, though the White Sox will give some runway to a revival. So what's the appeal of this deal?
Enter Sandlin, who joins the White Sox coming off a promising season at Double-A Portland at age 24. He posted a 3.61 ERA over 17 games and 82⅓ innings, striking out 86 batters against 27 walks. The Red Sox then promoted him to Triple-A Worcester at the end of July, but moved him to relief shortly after. Whether the Red Sox were motivated more by slowing what was easily a career-high in innings or preparing him for a potential late-season call-up, the move didn't agree with Sandlin, who got shelled to the tune of a 7.61 ERA with the WooSox.
At 6'4" and 215 pounds, Sandlin has an ideal starter's build and can maintain mid-90s velocity late into games, and he has a suite of secondary pitches he can control to varying degrees. The question is whether his fastball can ever play up to its velocity from a visible three-quarters slot, or if he'll have to be more reliant on spinning his way to success. The latter tends to create efficiency issues that make relief the more likely MLB role, but the White Sox have the time and space (Sandlin was just added to the 40-man last November) to let him keep starting and see for themselves.
Sandlin's ranking in Red Sox system hovers around No. 10 ...
... and he represents an upgrade in the White Sox system over Ziehl, whom the White Sox acquired from the Yankees in the Austin Slater trade at last year's deadline. Ziehl pumps tons of strikes (19 walks over 107 innings in 2025), which is impressive for a guy who has to hide a lower-90s fastball behind a cutter and a slider. But if he didn't miss bats in A-ball, it's hard to see how far he can keep managing contact.
Hicks and Sandlin are both on the Red Sox's 40-man roster, and the White Sox still have yet to announce the impending signing of Austin Hays, so they'll have to clear three roster spots in order to make these moves official.
