White Sox Trade Aaron Bummer to Braves for 5 Players
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Just before 11pm central, Jeff Passan tweeted or Xed or whatever about the first trade of the Chris Getz GM era. The White Sox traded Aaron Bummer to the Braves for Mike Soroka RHP, Jared Shuster LHP, Braden Shewmake SS, Nicky Lopez UTIL and Riley Gowens RHP.
Getting this many players for a reliever many fans deemed as a bad contract, is on its face a good deal. So let’s go player by player in this trade, starting with Aaron Bummer.
Aaron Bummer
If you’re a Braves fan checking this out, the good in Bummer is that he’s team controlled through 2026, he has a very high groundball rate (65.8% career), and he rarely gives up home runs. He’s only given up 18 home runs over 7 years in the bigs and 272 innings pitched. This leads to his eye popping ERA+ across most of his career. However, the bad is his command. If he starts walking batters, he is an absolutely frustrating watch. Last year, he had his worse BB9 since his rookie year with 5.6. While you’d normally look at Bummer, see his GB% and think, it was mostly the White Sox bad defense. They surely didn’t help, but his walks were the problem. If he gets that under control, the Braves have a really good reliever.
Mike Soroka
Soroka was a non-tender candidate in Arb year 4 with the Braves. MLB Trade Rumors projects roughly a $3 million salary for 2024 for ole Mike. He was terrific before the pandemic, finishing with a 171 ERA+ in 2019 over 174 1/3 IP, which was good enough for 6th in the NL Cy Young voting and 2nd in NL Rookie of the Year voting behind Pete Alonso’s precocious 53 dongers! Since then he’s been mega injured. Below is a list of those injuries.
Jared Shuster
Shuster was the object of our eyes in one of our White Sox trade with every team blogs that you can read HERE. I will not bore you with those gory details again. Here’s the cliff’s notes, he’s a crafty lefty with plus command and change up, unfortunately that plus command has evaded him the last 18 months so something potentially for Brian Bannister to work on. He also uses deception was part of his skill set (not seduction, get your head outta the gutter). Bannister has talked extensively about this in pitchers, so I am curious if he was a request by the knew capo of pitching for the White Sox. Lastly, goddamnit, he has 2 minor league options. Feels like forever since the Sox had a cornucopia of back end starters with minor league options, but maybe this is a start.
Braden Shewmake
Shewmake is a glove first short stop, that is a 60 runner with meh results at the plate. That’s right, the bat has failed him on his ascension up the minor league ladder and that’s why he’s available to the White Sox today. He still makes a lot of contact, just most of it isn’t good. He is 6’4″ 190 lbs, I kinda wonder how much of this is a grab this guy and completely remake the swing to unlock the power or at least adjust the plate approach for less terrible contact. Curious how this one goes. If nothing else, he can glove it in Charlotte as needed to give those pitchers back some self esteem.
Nicky Lopez
I think we all know about the kid from Naperville. Glove first, no power utility infielder. For Lopez, it’s gonna be all about his ability to walk. If he’s living in the 8-10% range, he’ll be a valuable player. Especially if he’s stealing bases. If he’s in the 6-7% range, it will be more of the same that we’ve seen at second base for the White Sox.
Riley Gowens
Just drafted in 2023 and already 24 years old, he’s basically Paul Blake.
He’s got a big fastball paired with a solid curveball. He works out of the stretch which is fine since he is a reliever for sure. His strikeout to walk ratio is really good, which the Sox farm system can use. Side note, he’s from Libertyville. So Getz is really racking up the hometown kids.
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chorizy
Section 108 Row 13, Bassist for Barren Plains, Acclaimed drunkard