Chicago White Sox: Gerrit Cole would be franchise-changing signing

With a plethora of young talent already on the roster, signing Gerrit Cole this offseason would be a franchise-changing move for the Chicago White Sox.

It’s hard not to make comparisons between the current state of the Chicago White Sox and where the Chicago Cubs were in the 2013 or 2014 season. Both teams were loaded with potential and the arrow was trending upwards. But it took the Jon Lester signing during the 2014 offseason for the Cubs’ rebuild to take that final step to make them a competitive team.

The White Sox have a ton of talent in Eloy Jimenez, Yoan Moncada, Tim Anderson, and other position players but have lacked the necessary starting pitching, finishing with the ninth-worst ERA in baseball last season in terms of their rotation.

It was quite a drop off from the 2018 season when they ranked 5th best in the league but the loss of Michael Kopech certainly didn’t help things. Combined with the regression of Reynaldo Lopez, Ivan Nova, and Dylan Covey and the underwhelming rookie season of Dylan Cease, it’s fairly easy to understand why the rotation took a step back. If not for the emergence of Lucas Giolito as a potential Cy Young candidate, that ERA would have been even worse.

This offseason will be extremely important for the White Sox who are looking to take that next step in their rebuild. After missing out on both Bryce Harper and Manny Machado last offseason, they have another shot at landing one of the most coveted free agents in quite some time, Gerrit Cole.

Cole, 29, is coming off a career-year in which he may very well take home the Cy Young Award, finishing with an American League-leading 326 strikeouts and MLB-leading 2.50 ERA in 33 starts. Let’s get one thing out of the way. Cole is going to cost a lot of money, so the White Sox cannot skimp on price or options which burned them in the Machado offer.

Cole would be that Jon Lester signing that the Sox need in their rebuilding process. Their offense still has a ways to go but the arrival of Luis Robert should certainly help things. They will have to make a decision on Jose Abreu this offseason and whether they would like to keep the American League leader in RBI’s around for another season or two.

But the face of the matter is that without significant improvement to the starting rotation, it won’t matter how much the offense scores if the pitching gives it all back.