More and more of the White Sox rebuild is taking pages out of the Cubs’ rebuild, with the latest being “sign a guy on a minor league deal, flip him at the deadline for actual prospects, chuckling quietly to yourself as you twist a mustache.”
In the offseason, the White Sox picked up righty Anthony Swarzak on a minor league deal, and then he proceeded to put together the best half season of his career, posting a 2.23 ERA, a 2.34 FIP, and a 3.68 xFIP. His 28.0% strikeout rate and 7.0% walk rate are excellent, and he’s giving up almost no hard contact.
The 31-year-old broke out, and now the Brewers have paid a price to get him:
#WhiteSox getting Ryan Cordell back from Brewers for Anthony Swarzak.
— Dan Hayes (@CSNHayes) July 25, 2017
Cordell is the 17th ranked prospect in a good Brewers system, coming over from the Rangers at the PTBNL in the Jonathan Lucroy deal. The 25-year-old 3B/OF is currently hitting reasonably well at AAA, but probably wasn’t going to have a spot in the near-term in a dense positional group with the Brewers.
As for the Brewers, they improve their bullpen, whose ERA and FIP are in the bottom 12 in baseball, and bottom half in the NL. Their performance of late, in particular, has been troubling to the front office, I’m sure. By adding Swarzak, they may have just improved considerably without parting with the kind of upper tier prospect the best relievers on the market would cost.
Minor side bonus? The White Sox just lost yet another of their few remaining productive players with two games to go against the Cubs. *extreme Arnold Schwarzenegger voice* GET TO DA BULLPEN!