White Sox Must Soon Answer Luis Robert, Jr. Question

It will cost the White Sox $20 million to keep center fielder Luis Robert, Jr. on the roster in 2026. It will cost them a chance at getting any kind of prospect return if they decline his option and just let him walk in the offseason.

Neither choice is great, but the White Sox have to pick one, and fairly soon.

Free agency won’t officially begin until November, but as the White Sox season is winding down this week, they will soon set their sights on 2026. They are a franchise that has taken a positive step forward from last year’s record-settingly bad campaign, but the next two offseasons will be crucial ones for their rebuild.

They will be crucial because, even as the Sox have moved in the right direction in the last year, a bad winter could derail the little progress they have made. And that would jeopardize the support of a fanbase that was just starting to come back to the ballpark: attendance at Rate Field in Chicago increased from 1,380,733 in 2024 to 1,445,750 this season.

“It kind of gives us the motivation to be better,” outfielder Andrew Benintendi said of the improved fan support. “The more games you win, the more people show up. I played here against the White Sox in 2021 when they won the division, and the place was rocking. They’re passionate about the team, and it’d be great to put a winner back out there for them.”

A part of putting a winner back on the field will be making the right decision with Robert, Jr.

On one hand, picking up his $20 million team option for next year wouldn’t exactly put a significant dent in their overall payroll. According to Spotrac, the White Sox are projected to have a total commitment of under $50 million in 2026 before their arbitration numbers get settled during the winter. That will, of course, raise the total payroll, but probably not enough to move the overall total much higher than where it currently stands.

So in a strictly financial sense, there’s not a particularly strong argument against keeping Robert, Jr. On a team with greater payroll obligations, the $20 million price tag might be too high given his injury history and substandard performance at the plate this season, but the White Sox have plenty of room to pick up his tab.

From a performance standpoint, there’s also reason to consider keeping Robert, Jr. True, he once again struggled to stay on the field because of injuries and put up a 1.2 fWAR this season, but Robert, Jr. just turned 28 and could conceivably have several good years ahead of him if he can stay healthy.

The White Sox have danced around trading Robert, Jr. or not for quite some time, and another reason to pick up his option is the fact that by not doing so, they will have lost any opportunity to get players in return for him in a trade.

White Sox general manager Chris Getz has indicated that his intention is to keep Robert, Jr. for at least 2026 (there is another $20 million club option for the following year) while at the same time suggesting that by picking him up, there will not be as much money to go toward improving the team in other ways this offseason.

That might be the case, but Getz has also said that he is not expecting to be especially aggressive in the free agent market this offseason regardless.

“You have to get an understanding of what the free-agent market is,” Getz told reporters. “Obviously, what other clubs are trying to accomplish in regards to working out a trade to help out each club. So, time will tell. You need to kind of get a sense of how quickly the market is going to move.

“More than anything, you look at the free-agent market, you look at the pitching and the hitting, and what we feel like can be a fit here. It’s a little too early to predict how everything will play out. I think all areas of the team can be improved.”

Keeping Robert, Jr. on the roster in 2026 wouldn’t necessarily hurt the White Sox – even if he has another injury-plagued down year, they are still more or less where they are right now – and there’s real potential for him to help the team. He is capable of a 4+ wins above replacement season, and if he comes out performing anything like that in the first half of next season, suitors will probably be lining up at the trade deadline.

If that happens, the White Sox will be nicely positioned to keep their rebuild moving forward via trade, all while setting themselves up to go into the 2026/2027 offseason much more assertively. Waiting until then to spend on free agents would make more sense with the Sox rebuild timeline, anyway.

So for the time being, there are a lot more reasons for the White Sox to keep Luis Robert, Jr. in the organization than not.