Erick Fedde, Tommy Pham … Eloy Jiménez? When White Sox trade candidates might be playing elsewhere

We’re still two months from baseball’s trade deadline.

But it’s understandable if the idea of a midseason yard sale colors nearly everything surrounding the Chicago White Sox right now.

Tommy Pham delivers another multi-hit game? That only ups his trade value. Eloy Jiménez goes to the injured list? That could prevent Chris Getz from getting anything for him at the deadline.

It makes sense, considering the White Sox are at the outset of another long-term rebuilding project. While there are plenty of eyes on what the team already has in the minor leagues — highly rated prospects like Colson Montgomery, Edgar Quero and Noah Schultz — there are more on who might be added to that group and which currently employed veterans could be swapped for long-term assets.

So it’s nowhere near too early for White Sox trade talk, which is why Getz is already getting asked about trades on Memorial Day Weekend.

“We’ve had conversations with other clubs, teams have reached out to us,” the first-year general manager said Friday. “Similar to the offseason, if we feel like there’s opportunities to make our club better, we’re going to look at those opportunities.

“I do think the urgency may pick up as we get closer to the deadline. The standings are still taking shape. Clubs are still getting to know their own teams and what their needs are. You certainly don’t want to force anything, let things play out a little bit. We anticipate an attraction from clubs with some of the players we have on our team.”

So who’s getting traded?

It could be just about anybody. Getz confirmed there’s really no such thing as an “untouchable” on this roster, even if any attempt to pry away someone like Luis Robert Jr. would require a massive return package. But while guys whose contracts won’t have them here past the end of the year are obvious candidates, depending on the level of interest — Pham, Paul DeJong, Mike Clevinger, Chris Flexen, Nicky Lopez, Michael Soroka, to name a few — don’t assume anyone with more control than that will be sticking around, which is why Erick Fedde, Michael Kopech and Garrett Crochet could go, too.

“There’s some players on the team that I think make a little more sense than others,” Getz said. “As the season progresses or you head into the offseason, you’ve got to weigh your upcoming season, what you have in the farm system. Those types of things can change fairly quickly based on the needs you have internally. It’s got to match up with other clubs.

“But we’re open on players on our clubs just because we know we’ve got to make strides to get back into a competitive team here at the AL Central.”

But that would be a pretty brief and relatively uninteresting bit of analysis if we stopped there, right?

So here’s a deeper look at three guys and the likelihood of them changing uniforms this summer.

When will the White Sox trade Tommy Pham?

Pham makes the most sense as someone who will be departing in a summertime trade, both because the White Sox seemingly signed him (to a minor league deal after the season began) with the intention of trading him and because he’s played well enough to warrant outside interest from teams hoping to chase down a playoff spot.

Pham has been great in a White Sox uniform, heading into Sunday’s game with a .327/.374/.477 slash line in 27 games. His 141 OPS-plus ranks as the best on the team. And since his arrival, though far from exclusively his doing, the team has played a lot better baseball, bouncing off rock bottom’s 3-22 record for 12 wins in the 28 games since.

“Having Tommy around these younger players, or just the team that we have on the field right now, you can go person to person in the clubhouse and they would tell you that they admire the way he goes about his business,” Getz said. “He hasn’t taken a pitch off on the offensive and defensive side. He doesn’t take anything for granted. He’s a guy that’s had success in this game and continues to have success as he reaches his late 30s, and that’s a testament to his determination.”

But given that Pham is that proven player — with postseason success as recently as last year’s World Series with the Diamondbacks — and is hitting well, he figures to net the White Sox something before the deadline.

“Is he a guy that’s going to be with our club in the future? Right now, we want to take advantage of having Tommy Pham on this roster,” Getz said, seemingly sidestepping the obvious. “When we were able to sign him and insert him into the lineup, he made an immediate impact. We’re going to take advantage of Tommy while he’s here and hope there’s an osmosis effect to the rest of the clubhouse based on the performance that he brought to the team.”

“While he’s here” might not end up being long. As Getz mentioned, deals typically happen closer to the deadline, even if the White Sox have already made a trade, sending Robbie Grossman to the Rangers. Memorial Day, though, often has a reputation of being a date when teams decide whether they’ll be competing for the postseason or not.

But Pham is the poster child for the White Sox’ short-term bets potentially paying off. That Clevinger hasn’t completed five innings yet and that Soroka has been moved to the bullpen are examples of those bets going the other way. But that Getz got something for even Grossman speaks to the possible vastness of what he’ll be selling this summer.

How valuable is Erick Fedde as a White Sox trade chip?

Fedde is also currently striking as a pretty obvious trade candidate, but unlike the guys on one-year deals, he signed a two-year free-agent pact in December that could theoretically make him part of the White Sox into the future.

But that hinges on Getz’s belief that he could turn things around quickly enough for the South Siders to be contenders in 2025, and that’s not looking super likely, considering how poor the team has played this year and Getz’s own description of his project as no “quick fix” earlier this season.

Fedde, though, could be another way to boost the organization’s fortunes through a midseason trade, as he’s been fantastic in his first year back in the bigs following his 2023 success pitching in South Korea, where he won that league’s equivalents of the MVP and Cy Young Awards. In 11 starts, he’s got a 2.80 ERA with 58 strikeouts and only 18 walks.

“It’s really good to see that what he did last year has translated really well to the major leagues,” Pedro Grifol said Sunday. “It just goes to show you that professional baseball is professional baseball. Whether you’re in Korea, Japan, wherever it is, it’s hard to play this game. When you have a player or pitcher who puts up those kinds of numbers and that kind of year, there’s something to that and you have to respect that.

“To watch him come over here now and have it translate similar to what he was doing over there, it’s pretty cool. … I’m a little bit surprised, but I can’t tell you that I didn’t expect that.”

Fedde’s value to teams around the league would perhaps be even greater than Pham’s, considering not just the annual need for starting pitching across baseball but that any team acquiring Fedde would be getting an entire second season instead of just a two- or three-month rental.

So given the White Sox’ seemingly slow-paced climb back into contender status in the AL Central, Fedde is probably more valuable as a trade chip than as an anchor in the South Side rotation.

Does Eloy Jiménez injury prevent a White Sox trade?

At season’s start, you would have guessed that Jiménez would be traded, if possible. His home-run power can make him a valuable midseason addition to a lineup, and his $16.5 million option for the 2025 season seemed to price him out of the White Sox’ long-term plans.

But it was contingent on him staying healthy, which he hasn’t.

Jiménez’s career-long bad luck on the injury front hasn’t gone anywhere, and an early-season trip to the injured list has now been accompanied by a more significant injury, a hamstring strain that is expected to sideline him for the next four to six weeks.

That’s probably enough to keep him from getting much interest as a trade target, even if he can produce when he returns.

It also likely finalizes the expected end of his White Sox career, even if he’s not thinking of it that way.

“I’m never thinking about going away from the White Sox. I know this is a business, but that’s not my thought,” he said Saturday. “I want to be great for the team, I want to be great for the fans, and I want to help the team win a World Series. That’s my mindset. Since I was traded here, that was my mindset, and it never changed.”

Jiménez’s words paint him as someone dedicating to reaching his potential at the major league level, but time has most likely run out on him being able to do so in a White Sox uniform. The timing of this latest injury has perhaps bought him a two-month farewell tour after the trade deadline, but he’ll likely be a free agent this winter and attempt to convince another team he can make his injury history a thing of the past.

“I said, ‘Not again.’ That was my reaction,” he said of straining his hamstring last week in Canada. “But I said, ‘I’m not going to sit here and be sorry for myself. I’m just going to work hard.’

“I know one day I’m going to find the answer to this. This is going to be just a bad dream, a nightmare.”

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