Trading Kimbrel Could Help Chicago White Sox Add Free Agent Hitters

Are the White Sox willing to keep Craig Kimbrel as baseball’s highest-paid set-up man?

That’s the biggest question Jerry Reinsdorf’s South Side powerhouse will face once baseball’s lockout ends. It’s not the only one, of course, but to have a possible over-supply issue loom so prominently speaks well for the Sox’s chance to dominate the American League Central.

They won the division with 93 wins a year ago, scoring a Central-best 4.9 runs per game while allowing only 3.9 per game, the fewest in the league. They appear to be parting ways with fragile lefty Carlos Rodon (although he is among the unsigned free agents remaining on the glutted market) but otherwise are mostly intact from last season.

Versatile switch hitter Leury Garcia received a three-year deal to stick around before the lockout froze the market. He’s the best current option to replace the dealt-away Nick Madrigal as the everyday second baseman but would add value as a super utility man if General Manager Rick Hahn acquired an upgrade at the position.

The White Sox have a similar situation in right field. The right-handed-hitting Adam Engel could serve as the primary player there but the spot could also be used to get at-bats for 2021 rookies Gavin Sheets and Andrew Vaughn.

Sheets, a left-handed hitter who had 11 homers and 46 RBIs in 60 games, fills a need by breaking up the right-handed bats in the middle of the lineup. But like Vaughn he’s primarily played first base so a veteran left-handed hitter could better serve in a platoon with the defensively gifted Engel (although Engel has held his own against right-handed pitchers the last two seasons, making him an everyday option).

This brings us to Kimbrel, whose $16-million option was surprisingly picked up by Reinsdorf/Hahn even though he was largely ineffective after being acquired in the deal that sent Madrigal to the Cubs.

The 34-year-old with a Hall of Fame argument as a closer could not get comfortable working in front of Liam Hendriks, who has two years left on his $54-million deal. The belief is the Sox only kept him off the free-agent market so they could trade him, as they signed another right-handed set-up man, Kendall Graveman, to a three-year, $24-million deal a few weeks after exercising Kimbrel’s option.

Kimbrel is one of seven White Sox players with an eight-figure salary but is an outlier among relief pitchers, as the Yankees’ Aroldis Chapman ($18 million) is the only one with a bigger salary. Kimbrel, Hendriks, Graveman and lefty Aaron Bummer account for almost $40 million of an Opening Day payroll that projects to $175.6 million, with a Competitive Balance Tax record of $194.2 million, per calculations by the website Cots Contracts.

This is an unprecedented investment by White Sox ownership. The 2021 team set a franchise mark with an Opening Day payroll of $128.7 million, which ranked 15th in the majors. The Sox currently project sixth in spending, behind only the Mets, Dodgers, Yankees, Padres and Red Sox.

Kimbrel could fill a need for multiple teams, with the closer situation unclear in San Diego, Philadelphia, Washington, San Francisco, St. Louis, Seattle and Boston. The free agent market was thinned out considerably before the lockout brought a signing freeze, with Raisel Iglesias accepting a Qualifying Offer to return to the Angels and Mark Melancon signing with Arizona.

Given how Kimbrel lost track of the strike zone in his 2021 stint with the White Sox — he walked 10 in 23 innings while allowing five home runs — he might need to audition for a trade with his work in exhibition games. He presents a continuing dilemma for manager Tony La Russa if he struggles in Arizona.

On the bright side, Kimbrel gives the White Sox late-inning depth that arguably no other team will be able to match when the regular season begins. This could prove to be a huge advantage after an abbreviated spring training when pitchers were not able to accumulate their ideal workload.