White Sox move on without their ace

GLENDALE, Ariz. — The band-aid has been ripped off.

The reality that Dylan Cease won’t be part of the 2024 White Sox has sunk in.

Traded Wednesday for three of the San Diego Padres’ top prospects and a major league reliever, Cease caught a plane for South Korea Thursday to join his new team. And the Sox, who weren’t expected to be very good with their ace pitcher, carried on without him after months of speculation that he would be traded.

“You gotta get to the next day, I think that’s the biggest thing,” first baseman Andrew Vaughn said. “Gotta move on, next man up. Gotta keep grinding.”

“It’s tough when you have a relationship with the guy, but it’s a good opportunity for him, it’s a good opportunity for us here,” said pitching coach Ethan Katz, who formed a close bond with the 2022 Cy Young runner-up and had dinner with Cease hours after the trade for pitching prospects Drew Thorpe and Jairo Iriarte, outfield prospect Samuel Zavala and right-hander Steven Wilson was made. “He’s really excited about the opportunity.”

There was a glint of emotion in Katz’ eyes, but upstairs, general manager Chris Getz was saying he woke up very happy knowing he reeled in “a very good haul of talent” for one of the most talked about trade chips of the last four months.

“You’ve got a value line that you’re aiming for, and we felt like the Padres met that,” Getz said. “There’s different ways to shape a deal. There were different deals that we were evaluating. You’ve got a group of players that can be impactful with your major league team right out of the gate and offer some ceiling, and then you’ve got a [19-year-old] player in Zavala where the sky’s the limit. An opportunity to help your major league club out of the gate, certainly to add to our farm system that’s continued to improve. We feel like it was a very balanced deal.”

Getz suggested all but Zavala, a left-handed hitter with power and decent speed but too young right now, could play this season.

“We have been able to accomplish a significant amount in a short period of time,” said Getz, who acquired 14 players plus a No. 68 overall draft pick in trades for Aaron Bummer, Gregory Santos, pitching prospects Cristian Mena and Matthew Thompson and Cease. “We certainly prioritized our defense, players that understand how to play this game. We’ve got impact on this roster. It’s going to be a much cleaner style of play.”

The three prospects in the Cease trade are all in the Sox top-ten list, raising their farm system from 20th to middle of the pack status. On paper, it looks like a good deal for Getz, who couldn’t run the risk of a health problem while weighing offers from other teams including the Rangers.

“Taking it toward the [mid-season trade] deadline, what type of return does that look like?” Getz said. “That’s a risk. Were we willing to take that? Of course. However there’s no denying that a lot of things could happen on a baseball field throughout a season. We had a highly motivated team in the San Diego Padres that wanted to start the year out with Dylan Cease. And I understood that. It made sense for both sides.”

If it seems like the Sox were just here several years ago with Rick Hahn and Ken Williams in charge, it’s because they were. So here we go again, although this rebuild has a different tenor with Getz orchestrating it in his first year.

But like the first one, which produced two postseasons but no advancements, this one promises a lot of losses again this season. Two weeks from Opening Day, Katz said there are 10 possibilities for the starting rotation. Erick Fedde, signed to a $15 million, two-year deal in the offseason, is the leading candidate to start Opening Day, although manager Pedro Grifol wasn’t ready to name him Thursday.

The thought of losing Cease was still sinking in.

Getz couldn’t wait any longer.

“We felt it was the right time to make this trade,” Getz said. “We had a threshold that we felt that needed to be met. Up until [Wednesday], we didn’t feel like we had a deal on the table that met the mark. It finally came together and we moved on it.

“To inject this type of talent into the organization, I woke up excited today.”