After a brief detour to acquire an outfielder, Chris Getz got around to adding an experienced catcher to the mix, landing Joey Bart from the Atlanta Braves for right-hander Duncan Davitt, who was DFA'd earlier in the day to make room for the unexpected Brenton Doyle trade.
To make room for Bart on the 40-man roster, the White Sox DFA'd Everson Pereira, whose existence was jeopardized by the addition of Doyle, a right-handed outfielder who has a history of being plus in center.
Bart hasn't lived up to the billing that had him drafted second overall by the Giants in 2018, but the 29-year-old has carved out a journeyman career, playing in 376 games for the Giants, Pirates and Braves over the last seven seasons. He opened the season in Pittsburgh, but the Pirates traded him to Atlanta for right-handed reliever Hunter Stratton in June, when they opted to go with the tandem of Henry Davis and Endy Rodríguez behind the plate.
Bart then appeared in 20 games for the Braves as they scrambled for solutions while Drake Baldwin and Sean Murphy were injured. He'd been backing up Baldwin for the last month and a half, and now Murphy's return is imminent, which means the out-of-options Bart would be in line for DFA once again.
Instead, Bart, who is hitting .226/.303/.377 over 119 plate appearances evenly split between the two NL teams, is heading to the White Sox, where he should find stability that neither of his previous teams could offer him this year.
Bart arrives to hopefully shore up a catching situation that is the worst in baseball according to FanGraphs, whether judging by all slash-line categories (.172/.248/.260), wRC+ (44), or fWAR (-1.1). Since his last homer on May 25, Drew Romo is hitting .096/.146/.133 with one RBI over 27 games, and yet when he's paired with Edgar Quero, he still gets the majority of the starts due to his work behind the plate. Quero is hitting just .194/.257/.235 thus far, which is superior to Romo, but apparently isn't enough of an edge to offset the defensive disparity.
Kyle Teel has missed all but 19 games of the season -- first for a hamstring strain and knee injury, then for a high ankle sprain -- but the White Sox hadn't signaled any intention of exploring an alternate future, and Bart is indeed more of a stopgap option. Statcast grades him as slightly below-average in receiving, but decent at blocking and throwing, which puts him closer to Romo than Quero on the spectrum of trustworthiness.
As for Davitt, he'd reached the majors on two different occasions and thrown a low-leverage final inning both times, but in between was messy at Charlotte, where he posted a 6.22 ERA over 21 games and 59⅓ innings. An ability to eat innings was his hallmark as a prospect, but after a shaky start, he was relegated to three-inning bulk appearances out of the bullpen. It's a role that was working better for him as of late, but without the kind of bread-and-butter pitches that made him more suitable for short relief, he wasn't able to distinguish himself from the White Sox's other depth options. If nothing else, the sequence of the past 48 hours -- a return to the majors, a second MLB appearance, his first career strikeout, an optioning to the minors, a DFA, and now a trade -- should give him plenty of column material for his family's newspaper in Iowa.
With the departure of Davitt, all three players acquired for Adrian Houser are no longer with the organization. Curtis Mead was traded Boston Smith, who was flipped to Seattle for Luis Castillo, and Ben Peoples was traded to Texas for catcher Ben Hartl.
Pereira, who came to the White Sox with Tanner Murray from the Tampa Bay Rays for Yoendrys Gómez and Steven Wilson last November, had his South Side stay beset by a series of injuries, limiting him to a .225/.284/.438 line and 30 strikeouts over 88 plate appearances. He did offer flashes of what the White Sox saw, including a four-RBI game against his previous employer on Sunday. Depending on the outcome of the DFA, that might be him leaving on a high note.
