How Jake Odorizzi could fit into Sox pitching plans originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
Trevor Bauer is the dream addition to the starting rotation for many White Sox fans.
But only one team is going to end up with the NL Cy Young winner, the guy who's far and away the best arm on the free-agent market. If that team isn't the White Sox, they'll still be on the hunt for starting pitching after their 2020 playoff run ended thanks to the lack of a reliable third option after Lucas Giolito and Dallas Keuchel.
Unfortunately, after Bauer, the number of free-agent options that would provide a significant upgrade to what the team already has — a trio of talented, if unproven, arms in Dylan Cease, Dane Dunning and Michael Kopech — is not large, and that could send the White Sox to the trade market in search of a championship-caliber improvement.
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But there are other free-agent starting pitchers that could give the White Sox what they're looking for, even if they represent less of a sure thing than Bauer in an offseason where the South Siders are shopping for dependability.
Jake Odorizzi is among that next tier of free-agent pitchers. An All Star in 2019, the White Sox know him well after seeing him chuck for the division-rival Minnesota Twins the last three seasons. He finished 2019 with a 3.51 ERA before taking the Twins' qualifying offer last winter and sticking around for another division-title campaign. Odorizzi was better in the first half of that 2019 season than he was in the second half, with a 3.15 ERA compared to a 3.97 ERA. In 2020, he managed 13.2 innings across four starts while battling injuries.
A 30-year-old Illinois native, Odorizzi might not excite the way the prospect of adding Bauer does. But he's been decently consistent throughout his career, averaging 30 starts and roughly 165 innings with a 3.88 ERA between 2014 and 2019.
If the White Sox can't make a pitching splash like signing Bauer or trading for an ace like Blake Snell, they'll have to figure out whether whatever pitcher they'd target next would be an upgrade over their trio of young starting pitchers. That's a difficult question to answer, of course, because while the ceiling of someone like Odorizzi might only be so high, the team is no longer in position to let youngsters like Cease or Kopech take extended time to figure out how to reach their own ceilings.
It's win-now mode for these White Sox, as they established by swapping Rick Renteria for Tony La Russa in the manager's chair. Dependability and reliability are the name of the game. Does Odorizzi bring that? Maybe. Certainly he brings more of it than Cease, Dunning and Kopech at this point in everyone's respective careers. But does he bring enough of it to be a dependable part of a championship-caliber rotation?
That's what the White Sox will have to figure out if they can't land someone like Bauer.
