White Sox hit the trade market to fix catching crisis

The White Sox were supposed to have their catcher of the future locked in. Instead, Kyle Teel is on the shelf, and Chicago is now doing exactly what a team in first place shouldn't have to do this late in July: scrambling for a fix behind the plate.

MLB Trade Rumors

@mlbtraderumors

White Sox Looking For Catching Help t.co/wgfu4oUcd1

Teel suffered a high ankle sprain on a play at the plate against the Rangers, and manager Will Venable pegged the recovery window at 6 to 12 weeks. The short end gets him back in early September; the long end could push him deep into a potential postseason run. Either way, the White Sox are burning through their best-case scenario without their preferred guy behind the dish.

For a team currently sitting atop the AL Central, that's not a small thing. Drew Romo and Edgar Quero have been thrown into the everyday mix in Teel's absence, but Sox catchers as a group have graded out as one of the least productive units in baseball this year — and that was before losing their best option for potentially the rest of the regular season.

MLB Trade Rumors

@mlbtraderumors

With Kyle Teel likely out at least into September, #WhiteSox are looking to the trade market for catching t.co/PFP0kgu8P8

That's a notable shift in posture. Teams that plan to buy at the deadline don't usually go looking for stopgap catchers unless they mean it — and with the division lead in hand, Chicago has real incentive to patch the roster instead of standing pat and hoping Romo or Quero turns into something more than a placeholder.

The catching trade market tends to move fast and quiet once contenders start calling around, and the Aug. 3 deadline gives the White Sox roughly a week and a half to find someone who can actually hit a little and catch pitchers who are trying to hold a division lead. Watch for names to surface as rival teams gauge Chicago's farm system in return.

Teel's injury complicates what looked like a tidy long-term answer behind the plate for the White Sox, but for now the calendar says deadline, not offseason — so this is a right-now problem, not a someday one.