It’s official: Dallas Keuchel is a South Sider.
The White Sox officially announced the free-agent signing of the veteran starting pitcher Monday, adding Keuchel to an offseason haul that already included catcher Yasmani Grandal and reportedly will soon include slugger Edwin Encarnacion.
Keuchel gets a three-year deal worth $55.5 million, with a $20 million team option for a fourth year in 2023 that could make his contract the richest to date in team history, $1 million more than the four-year deal given to Grandal in November. Keuchel will earn $18 million for each of the three guaranteed years on the deal. If the White Sox decline his 2023 option, Keuchel receives a $1.5 million buyout.
Keuchel's signing and the reported signing of Encarnacion, more so than even the big-money deal for Grandal, show the White Sox are definitively in win-now mode, attempting to win the division, make the playoffs and compete for a World Series title in 2020. The ingredients previously existed for the transition from rebuilding mode to contending mode to occur during the upcoming season, thanks to the breakout campaigns for so many of the team’s young core members in 2019. But adding the soon-to-be 32-year-old Keuchel and the soon-to-be 37-year-old Encarnacion prove Rick Hahn’s front office is planning for the future to arrive now rather than a year or more down the line.
Keuchel brings a dependable veteran presence to a pitching staff that despite its high ceiling still has plenty of question marks. The addition of the 2015 AL Cy Young winner and 2017 World Series winner should help stabilize a rotation that, outside of an All-Star campaign for Lucas Giolito, had very little success last season. Keuchel made 19 starts for the NL East champion Atlanta Braves in 2019, with a 3.75 ERA and 91 strikeouts in 112.2 innings.
He figures to slot in alongside Giolito at the top of the South Side starting staff, with Reynaldo Lopez, Dylan Cease and Gio Gonzalez, another left-handed veteran addition made this offseason, behind the top two in some order. Michael Kopech, who missed the 2019 season while recovering from Tommy John surgery, also figures to be a part of that starting group in some capacity over the course of the 2020 season, though the team does have plans to limit him in some fashion.
While Keuchel fits the mold of a veteran joining a team that's ready to win, his addition over the next three or four seasons shows the White Sox view him as a long-term contributor, as well. Someone who can help power the rotation through an extended period of their contention window.
MLB
"We viewed Dallas as one of the premier free-agent pitchers available this winter and so are thrilled to add him to this team and to our starting rotation," Hahn said in the announcement. "Dallas is a great competitor who we foresee throwing valuable innings in meaningful games for us over the next several years and leading our entire pitching staff through his example day in and day out."
The big splash of Keuchel teamed with the big splash of Grandal teamed with the pending big splash of Encarnacion teamed with all those breakout seasons from the young players already on the roster show the White Sox could be in position to compete with the best. A lot of questions will have to be answered positively, both in the starting rotation and the everyday lineup, for that to happen. And they’ll have to make it to October first before finding out if they stack up with the New York Yankees or Keuchel’s old team, the Houston Astros. But a season-long battle with the Minnesota Twins and Cleveland Indians, thanks to moves like these, seems to be one the White Sox are, on paper and if things go right, capable of winning.
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