How much might Zack Wheeler cost? And would that price tag be too steep for White Sox?

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The White Sox are rumored to be in pursuit of free-agent pitcher Zack Wheeler.

And though he might not be grabbing the same kind of attention that’s going to Gerrit Cole and Stephen Strasburg — the Cy Young types at the tippy top of this winter’s free-agent market — he’d be a high-quality upgrade to the South Side starting staff.

The question is whether what’s expected to be a hefty price tag would be too steep for the White Sox.

Wheeler won’t command the same kind of gargantuan deals that Cole and Strasburg end up signing. But he won’t come cheap, either. The White Sox just gave out the richest deal in franchise history when they signed Yasmani Grandal to a four-year contract last week. They might need to break that record in order to land Wheeler.

Would they? Historically, they haven’t rushed to hand out lengthy contracts to starting pitchers, and while Rick Hahn has been keen on smashing any and every preconceived notion about his team he can find — the idea the White Sox aren’t willing to spend fell by the wayside with the Grandal deal — he acknowledged why any team might be hesitant to sign starting pitchers to such contracts. He also kept with his theme of the offseason, suggesting actions speak louder than words, as well as keeping the door open to every kind of move.

“With all these moves, free-agent moves, specifically with pitching, it's going to come down to pricing and what's accessible and what's the price and what level of risk we're willing to bear,” Hahn said during the GM meetings earlier this month in Arizona. “There's a heightened level of risk with free-agent starting-pitching signings. It's just the nature of the category.

“But anything I say right now about ‘we're willing to do X’ or ‘you'll see us do this,’ it's meaningless until we actually do it. So if we actually go out and convert on a free-agent pitching target, we'll talk about how we wound up with the term and why.”

Well, if they want Wheeler, they might have to venture into territory they haven’t before. As the free-agent starters around him keep aiming for more money — or signal that they and their representative, Scott Boras, would be willing to wait deep into the offseason — Wheeler’s price might go up. Speculation that he could fetch a deal worth $100 million has not been uncommon, and that includes from SNY’s Andy Martino, who joined the most recent edition of the White Sox Talk Podcast to talk all things Wheeler.

"The Nathan Eovaldi deal with Boston was their comp in season. I believe that was four (years) and $68 million. I believe at this point, given where the pitching market is at, Wheeler's bar is going to be raised from that quite a bit,” Martino said. “If you're not getting Gerrit Cole, I don't know where you turn for a potentially really high-end guy other than Wheeler. So I think he could get into the $100 million territory at this point, based on the way the market's going.

“I don't think it will eliminate competition overall for him because there's a lot of teams that need pitching and want an upgrade, whether it's the White Sox, the Reds, the Angels, the Padres. And these are teams that sometimes have been having trouble convincing players to take their money. So they've got checks to write, it's just a matter of where's Wheeler going to choose.

“So I do think it will continue to be a robust market, even at a pretty high number for a guy who's really good but doesn't have a super long track record."

Grandal’s contract is worth $73 million, a new high-water mark for the franchise, but only by $5 million. Just for example’s sake, if Wheeler ends up getting a $100 million deal, that is $27 million more than what Grandal got, a sizable increase.

The White Sox know they’ll have to pay big to make the kinds of upgrades that could vault them from rebuilding mode into contending mode. They’ve vowed an aggressive approach in their quest to land impact talent from outside the organization, and they just proved it by signing Grandal early in an offseason that’s been mighty slow to get going in recent years.

Would Wheeler be worth a similar approach? When healthy, he’s been pretty darn good. A 3.54 ERA and 187 strikeouts as a 24-year-old in 2014 was a long time ago, and it preceded the two full seasons he missed due to Tommy John surgery. After a not-so-smooth return in 2017, he was excellent in 2018, with a 3.31 ERA and 179 strikeouts in 29 starts, including a 1.68 ERA after the All-Star break. In 2019: a 3.96 ERA and a career-high 195 strikeouts in a career-high 195.1 innings.

Though he’s about to enter his age-30 season, the reviews are good, describing a pitcher who’s still getting better and one who could be one of the best in the game.

"He's a 1A or a 2, with the potential to be more," Martino said. "In the second half of 2018, the year that deGrom won the Cy Young, Zack Wheeler's numbers were better over the entire second half of that season than Jacob de Grom's were. He was actually the ace of that staff for a couple months.

"He took a small step back this year from that high level of elite excellence. But he's a guy who's really become a polished pitcher. ... He's really turned himself into a top guy after facing some adversity with injuries and a little bit of a later bloomer than people expected him to be.

"He's got a good fastball-changeup combo that when it's working makes him one of the top pitchers in baseball. It's not working in combination frequently enough for him to be considered one of the best pitchers in baseball, but he has that kind of talent and he's become more refined. So there's a real ceiling there."

That all sounds mighty promising, and it sounds like the kind of guy who would go well with Giolito, Michael Kopech and Dylan Cease in the White Sox rotation. His age and the long-term deal he's likely to get do line up perfectly with the White Sox plans of perennial contention into the future. Martino probably sweetened the deal for White Sox fans, too, suggesting that the Mets could regret sticking with Noah Syndergaard and Marcus Stroman over Wheeler.

But money does the talking this time of year. The White Sox, despite spending $123 million in two days last week on Grandal and an extension for Jose Abreu, still have a lot of that much discussed “financial flexibility” intact. Would the White Sox pay the steep price in the name of bolstering their rotation?

“That's a tough price tag,” Martino said. “When you're in free agency, it's sort of an irrational market, so it may not be worth it in dollars and cents, but the idea of snagging a guy like that, especially if you're trying to jumpstart your franchise or take it to the next level, as the White Sox are, then there's an intangible benefit to spending that money.”

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