Cincinnati Reds left fielder Tommy Pham (28) in the fourth inning of a baseball game Friday, April ... [+]
The White Sox are off to their worst start in franchise history, having won just two of their first 16 games. They are also already plagued by injuries to key players; Eloy Jiménez was just activated Monday from the 10-day injured list, and Luis Robert, Jr. and Yoán Moncada are both out for an extended period of time.
The Sox are struggling to win in large part because they are not scoring runs. They are in dead last in Major League Baseball with 34 runs scored through 16 games. The Oakland A’s, one step above them on the runs-scored leaderboard, have scored 48. The White Sox have been shut out six times already this season, putting them in historically bad company:
There are hitters in the minor leagues, but none on the current 40-man roster who can have a significant impact on the big league club’s offense. That is likely the reason they are taking a flyer in outfielder Tommy Pham. The team announced Tuesday that they had signed Pham to a minor league deal and that he’ll head to Triple-A Charlotte on Wednesday.
Pham has spent 10 years in the major leagues with seven different teams, most recently the Arizona Diamondbacks. He hit .241 with 6 home runs in 50 games for the Diamondbacks in 2023, and he has a career .786 OPS. He is reportedly set to earn at least $3 million:
The White Sox also signed Mike Clevinger earlier this month on a one-year, $3 million deal to help their starting rotation, and it is expected that he will join the big league club by the end of April. With the team firmly in a rebuild phase, relatively low-dollar, short-term contracts to veterans like Clevinger and Pham are most likely just to fill roster holes for the team’s immediate needs.
According to Spotrac, the Sox active payroll is just over $133 million this season. They are well south of the first tier of the luxury tax threshold, but owner Jerry Reinsdorf has never been one to hand out large contracts — outfielder Andrew Benintendi’s five-year, $75 million deal is the largest in team history — and this is not a group expected to compete in 2024. They traded Dylan Cease to the Padres in mid-March, signifying what was probably the last step in moving on from the teams that had promise but ultimately disappointed in 2020 and 2021.
The Sox are balancing opportunities for young players while also trying to field a competitive team. They have several intriguing prospects in their system and a handful of players with promise in Chicago right now, but as for the latter, things are not going well. The 2024 season might come to represent the nadir of the franchise — they are on pace to do way worse than the 1932 White Sox who had a winning percentage of .325 — but the early results from this year’s squad have been disastrous.
Signing players like Pham might help with offensive production, which is one step toward winning a few more games.
