Chicago White Sox: Better off without Fernando Tatis Jr.

A few days ago, you couldn’t turn around on the internet Chicago White Sox Twitter without seeing some sort of “on this day in history!” when it came to the trade that sent Fernando Tatis Jr. to the Padres back in 2016. A then 17-year-old Tatis Jr. was shipped over to San Diego so the Sox could milk the few possibly decent seasons out of James Shields’ right arm. It did not work out very well as the White Sox continually found themselves in baseball purgatory in the latter part of the 2010s.

The Chicago White Sox don’t really need Fernando Tatis Jr. anymore and that is good.

Trades like this are infamous throughout baseball history with countless famous All-Stars like Jeff Bagwell, Pedro Martinez, and Kenny Lofton being brought up seemingly every trade deadline as a stark reminder. Locally, the Chicago Cubs grabbing Aramis Ramirez in 2003 for some spare parts that were sent to the Pirates and even netting Kyle Hendricks as part of the Ryan Dempster deal in 2012.

The Cubs were so desperate to make any move in 2013 that they sent Scott Feldman along with backup catcher Steve Clevinger to the Baltimore Orioles for Pedro Strop and some middling starting pitcher named Jake Arrietta.

Even deals between the two teams like Jose Quintana for Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez will be weighed back and forth for the rest of the decade. You can’t really put a stamp on “who won” these types of deals but it still looks like the White Sox have a slight edge, especially if Cease pans out. Quintana did all right in a Cubs uniform but never quite had the results he did on the South Side.

It isn’t fair to handcuff the White Sox about the Shields deal. Yes, there wasn’t much left in his arm but it would not have mattered with the team record during those few seasons. The team had also not quite built up the armada of international prospects like Luis Robert and or high draft picks like Andrew Vaughn or Nick Madrigal. With Chris Sale’s litany of arm injuries, in a few years, the White Sox may have very well have had their own reverse version of the Shields deal seeing how well Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech have been playing.

Lastly, even though it is sad to see Tatis Jr. put up All-Star numbers, nobody could have predicted that explosion. More importantly, it doesn’t financially handcuff the White Sox for the rest of the decade. They are getting really good production from their left side of the infield in Yoan Moncada and Tim Anderson for a third of the price. That leaves tremendous flexibility to be able to acquire better talent and lock up their own for cheap. Having one of the best records in baseball is a testament to that.