The White Sox selling was expected, and most of the players moved out of Chicago on Tuesday were long likely to be traded.
But the Jake Burger trade was a bit of a surprise – including for Ozzie Guillen.
Chicago has been a mess all season, and a selloff was imminent. They made the expected moves, offloading Lucas Giolito, Lance Lynn, Kendall Graveman and a few other arms as part of the firesale. But later in the afternoon they flipped Burger to the Marlins for pitching prospect Jake Eder.
Rick Hahn insisted that they’re trying to compete as soon as 2024. Guillen was hugely skeptical of that Wednesday on The Mully & Haugh Show – taking particular issue with the decision to move Burger.
“Nope, they’re not going to compete next year,” Guillen said. “It’s going to take a lot of money to compete, those guys. First of all, people got too excited about the trades, OK? There was only one trade, only one, that shocked me. Everywhere else, anyone that follows the organization knows they’re going to get traded. Giolito is going to get traded, Graveman gonna – all those guys, they know they’re going to get traded.
“One guy I never thought was going to get traded was Cheese Burger. That was a shock to me. But besides that, it was a normal thing. Are they going to compete next year? I hope they do, it will make my job easy and make everybody happy … (but) it’s going to take a little while to convince that they’re going to compete next year.”
The White Sox ultimately traded six pitchers off the big league roster ahead of the deadline. They effectively have to rebuild their pitching staff, and one guy who might well be in the rotation to start next season is Eder.
The 24-year-old Vanderbilt product was Miami’s No. 4 prospect and already had reached Triple-A, where he had a 2-1 record with a 3.94 ERA across six starts. Perhaps the idea of moving Burger was made palatable by the thought of getting a potential Major League starter in return.
Still, Burger was one of the more productive offensive players the White Sox had, and he won’t even reach arbitration until after the 2025 season.
“First of all, this kid did not make the ballclub out of spring training,” Guillen said of Burger. “That’s the first thing to look at. Second thing, he worked his tail off to be what he was. The trade, to me, is good for Cheese Burger because that means he has some value, and people like him and people want him.
"Listen, there’s a lot of things you can go through. A lot of people say oh we like this guy because he’s great in the clubhouse, because he’s an awesome teammate – well, they just traded one of the best teammates they have. …
“I think Burger will be OK, man. He plays the game right, he plays hard, he plays the way you're supposed to be playing. He has fun, he enjoys it. Wait until he starts to learn the league, learns how to hit, that kid has a chance to be special.”
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