James Paxton could be Sox backup pitching plan originally appeared on NBC Sports Chicago
The starting-pitching section of this winter’s free-agent supermarket has one big-ticket item — and the teams that don’t get Trevor Bauer are going to be left scouring the shelves for under-the-radar finds.
Bauer is far and away the best arm out there in a group of available pitchers that got thinner after Marcus Stroman and Kevin Gausman accepted their teams’ qualifying offers and took themselves off the market. But only one team is going to sign Bauer, the NL Cy Young winner. So what happens if that team isn’t the White Sox?
They’ll be left with a tough question: How much better would any addition to the rotation be than what they already have, a trio of promising but unproven arms in Dylan Cease, Dane Dunning and Michael Kopech? The questions surrounding those three are sending the White Sox to the free-agent market in the first place, of course. And fans will likely clamor for any alternative after the lack of a dependable third starting-pitching option had the biggest hand in the White Sox early exit from last month’s postseason.
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Well, while there might not be any slam-dunk staff aces on the market past Bauer, there’s a one-time ace who could prove alluring. James Paxton, when healthy, has shown he can be a rotation-topper, and pairing the healthy version of Paxton with Lucas Giolito and Dallas Keuchel could be a non-Bauer way to get the White Sox starting staff to a championship level.
From 2016 to 2019, Paxton posted a 3.60 ERA with the Seattle Mariners and New York Yankees, a stretch highlighted by an exquisite 2017 season in Seattle, which he finished with a sub-3.00 ERA. The following season, he topped 200 strikeouts.
But making all his starts has proven a problem for Paxton, who averaged just 25 starts a year during that four-season stretch. His career high in innings is just 160.1, reached in 2018. He made only five starts during the shortened 2020 campaign, roughed up to the tune of a 6.64 ERA in those 20.1 innings.
Paxton is a Scott Boras client — just like Keuchel — and the super agent has already touted Paxton as “back to normal” following rehab from the forearm injury that ended his 2020 season. But coming off yet another injury, Paxton could be viewed as a low-risk type signing.
The White Sox are on the hunt for dependability as they enter the 2021 season with championship expectations, so fliers aren’t exactly the kind of thing they’re doing at this point in their rebuilding project. But Paxton has been there before, a veteran of the Yankees’ 2019 playoff run. He made three starts that October and got the win thanks to six one-run innings in Game 5 of the ALCS against the Houston Astros.
Obviously, Paxton’s resume — no matter what you think of it — doesn’t tantalize like Bauer’s. The truth is that no free-agent pitcher’s does. So if the White Sox aren’t the winners of the Bauer sweepstakes and still seek starting-pitching additions, they’ll need to look to the Paxtons of the world. The good news is it could pay off handsomely. The bad news is there’s no guarantee it will pay off at all, not exactly the kind of lottery ticket a team in the market for reliability is dreaming of.
