A month after the trade deadline, White Sox's additions haven't added up

By JIM MARGALUS

It's never a good sign for a trade deadline haul when a team might've been better off making zero trades than the four that went through. Or that the most productive player of those four was hurt in his third game, and might not be available the rest of the season.

As James wrote in the wake of the trade deadline, Chris Getz tried to balance immediate and longer-term interests by acquiring players -- Luis Castillo for the rotation, Huascar Brazobán for the bullpen, Joey Bart for catching, Brenton Doyle in the outfield -- who addressed 2026 needs without being pure rentals, but with a prospect cost the team could tolerate.

The White Sox tried to thread the needle, but one month after the deadline, they've instead poked themselves in the eye with it.

It's hard to say it could be going much worse. Castillo was brought aboard to settle a rotation spot, but he's failed to complete five innings in five of his six starts, including six runs over four innings in the loss to Houston on Thursday. Even with his seven scoreless against the Cincinnati Reds included, he has a 7.52 ERA with the White Sox, and opponents are hitting .325/.379/.605.

Brazobán came to the White Sox having limited hits, walks and homers with the Mets. All three immediately took a turn in the wrong direction after coming to Chicago, and now he's working his way back from a lat strain that sent him to the IL.

Doyle has popped a couple of homers in Chicago, giving him one more than he hit for the Rockies, but his lack of a plate approach has become his defining characteristic. It's not just that he's yet to draw a walk with the White Sox, he's seldom seeing a ball these days. He's 0-for-6 with four strikeouts over his last three games, and 14 of the 15 pitches he's seen have been strikes.

That leaves Bart, who went 0-for-6 with a walk and four strikeouts over nine plate appearances before a pitch to the hand resulted in a broken finger. That at least allowed the White Sox to claim Jake Rogers when the opportunity presented itself, and while Rogers is just 4-for-30, one of those hits was a very cool walk-off homer.

The best thing you could say about Getz's half-in deadline moves was that he left himself options. Those options are literal in the case of Brazobán and Doyle, both of whom can be sent down. Bart couldn't have been so freely moved from the roster, but it only cost a DFA'd player to acquire him, and Teel's return offered the a natural opportunity for revisiting the position regardless of how Bart fared.

Castillo is the exception, and an increasingly awkward one due to the cost.

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