The White Sox don’t have the luxury of treating their 40-man roster like a blank canvas anymore. Success has crowded the room, injuries have filled the margins, and what used to be a simple offseason reset now looks like a tighter, more uncomfortable puzzle.
Right now, the club is carrying 46 players on the 40-man roster because six players are on the 60-day injured list and will have to be reinstated after the season. That number happens to line up with the team’s upcoming free agents, which means the Sox won’t have to make any roster trims just to satisfy basic accounting. They avoid the kind of squeeze the Giants are dealing with, since San Francisco has 17 players on the 60-day injured list.
The calendar still brings pressure. Nov. 17 is the deadline to protect players from the Rule 5 draft, and Nov. 20 is the non-tender deadline. Those dates usually create easy openings to shuffle the roster, and they did last year, when the Sox made moves that led to the trades for Murray, Everson Pereira and Chris Murphy.
This year may not allow for that kind of patience. With the hot stove season potentially frozen on Dec. 2 if Major League Baseball locks out the players, the White Sox may have to move before those deadlines force their hand. That pushes the injury list into the center of the conversation much sooner.
There are still a couple of places where the Sox can create room without touching the injured players. Junior Pérez looks like an obvious candidate after striking out in 37 percent of his plate appearances at Charlotte, and the trade for Brenton Doyle added another right-handed center fielder to the mix between Pérez and the 26-man roster.
Joey Bart also appears vulnerable, since the Sox already have three other catchers on the 40-man roster. Whether he goes by non-tender or trade, it feels more like a matter of who makes the call than whether the call gets made.
Beyond that, the list gets thinner fast. Rikuu Nishida and Jonathan Cannon are the only other healthy players on the 40-man roster who did not spend significant time in Chicago.
The Sox could try to outride either one, but Nishida’s versatility, Triple-A production and personality make him useful to the system, and Cannon logged 125 innings for a team that had trouble getting innings. Those are not the kind of decisions the White Sox are likely to rush into.
If the club keeps drilling deeper, then the injured players start coming into focus, and the question becomes which of them might have worn a White Sox uniform for the last time.
Cam Booser is the most exposed. He had Tommy John surgery in August, and his second UCL repair knocks him out for 2027 as well. The White Sox non-tendered Tim Elko last November under similar, though less severe, circumstances, and Booser’s arbitration status puts him on the same kind of chopping block.
Then come Emmanuel Berroa and Prelander Bush, who have combined to face just one batter in game action over the last two seasons because of Tommy John surgeries and recovery setbacks. Berroa walked the only hitter he saw before his lone rehab outing with the ACL White Sox on May 13 was cut short.
He was supposed to resume throwing in September, but that never happened. Bush’s path was worse: he hit a setback while trying to build back up, then was shut down for the season with a strained lat.
Both were once notable pitching prospects, but they’ve gone a long time without throwing.
The White Sox could also take a hard look at Shane Baldwin and Murray. Baldwin missed the entire season after Tommy John surgery, while Murray had season-ending surgery after fracturing his shoulder on a diving catch in April.
Still, that seems less likely. After watching Colson Montgomery and Luisangel Acuña over the final two months, the Sox don’t appear to be in a position to cast aside possible in-house shortstop options, especially ones with minor league options left.
The one player who seems safest is Grant Vasil. He had Tommy John surgery in spring training but did not miss the season, and his time spent as a dugout presence won’t show up on Baseball-Reference.com.
Still, if the White Sox kept him that close while he was sidelined, it stands to reason they’ll give him every chance to win back his bullpen spot. For everyone else, the clock is ticking.
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