The White Sox Are Brenton Over Backwards to Make Their Outfield Work

Ron Chenoy-Imagn Images The Chicago White Sox are in a position to buy at the deadline for the first time in Chris Getz’s three seasons as GM. And Getz sure is getting his money’s worth. First Luis Castillo, then Huascar Brazobán, and now an outfielder: Brenton Doyle, late of the Colorado Rockies. Doyle, 28, is not so much a unique player as the most extreme sustainable version of the all-glove/no-bat center field archetype. He’s making $3.1 million this year as a first-year arbitration guy, and he’s under team control through 2029. Getz parted with quite a bit to get him: right-handed pitcher Mason Adams and shortstop prospect Carlos Vielma. Doyle was a fourth-round pick out of Division II Shepherd University; he’s that school’s only big leaguer in the past 50 years, but the name fits because he plays center field like a border collie. From Doyle’s debut in 2023 to the end of last season, he led all outfielders in FRV with 44. Pete Crow-Armstrong, Jacob Young, and Ceddanne Rafaela have been better on a per-inning basis, but that’s the kind of rarefied air Doyle has been playing in. Elite defensive center fielders (which Doyle indisputably is) exist on a continuum of value. I’ve written about this in the context of PCA about 10 times during his brief career, but I’ll summarize the argument briefly. A plus-plus defender in center can hit not a lick and still be playable based on speed and defense alone (like Young or Billy Hamilton). They can put up league-average offensive numbers and provide All-Star value (the 60th-percentile Jackie Bradley Jr. year or PCA last year). Or they can combine elite defense with middle-of-the-order offensive production and get MVP consideration (PCA this year, peak Lorenzo Cain, Byron Buxton for 61 games in 2021 before he got hurt again). The Rockies, with Coors Field’s giant outfield, love a speedy, slap-hitting center fielder. Of those, Doyle is the best defender. And in 2024, he tantalized us with a 97 wRC+, 23 homers and 30 stolen bases in 149 games. That season notwithstanding, however, Doyle is off the left end of that Young-to-PCA continuum: You Aren't a FanGraphs Member It looks like you aren't yet a FanGraphs Member (or aren't logged in). We aren't mad, just disappointed. We get it. You want to read this article. But before we let you get back to it, we'd like to point out a few of the good reasons why you should become a Member. 1. Ad Free viewing! We won't bug you with this ad, or any other. 2. Unlimited articles! Non-Members only get to read 10 free articles a month. Members never get cut off. 3. Dark mode and Classic mode! 4. Custom player page dashboards! Choose the player cards you want, in the order you want them. 5. One-click data exports! Export our projections and leaderboards for your personal projects. 6. Remove the photos on the home page! 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Brenton Doyle’s Offensive Production Season G PA BB% K% AVG OBP SLG 2024 149 603 7.6% 25.4% .260 .317 .446 2026 45 129 9.3% 32.6% .214 .287 .282 Career 458 1701 6.5% 28.5% .233 .284 .385 Career Minus 2024 309 1098 5.8% 30.1% .219 .266 .353 Doyle has struggled both defensively and offensively this year, but he went on the IL in late May with an oblique injury and only came back on Friday; I’m inclined to treat the first four months of the 2026 season as a write-off. The Rockies, not so much. Because while Doyle was hurt, Cole Carrigg came up and made center field his own. Compared to Doyle, Carrigg hits like Frank Robinson: .305/.389/.525 in his first 44 big league games, good for a 134 wRC+. After two months of that, I get why the Rockies weren’t eager to go back to talking themselves into living with a 70 wRC+ in center field. And to be clear: Doyle’s offensive skill set, such as it is, contains a long list of things a manager would have to make his peace with. Doyle swings and misses a lot. He has a longish swing with average-at-best bat speed. He chases outside the zone more than average and doesn’t walk much. In 2024, he actually got his money’s worth out of his contact by putting the ball in the air and to the pull side. Since then, he’s regressed back into more of a ground-and-pound contact style. On the one hand, he’s just not a good hitter. But if you’re taking an optimistic approach, rock bottom is a perfect place to start if you want to rebuild a player from scratch. And the White Sox are only in a position to buy at the deadline because they’ve gotten huge production out of players with either a track record of offensive mediocrity or massive tool-based red flags. Miguel Vargas — once Rey Ordonez’s bat in Casey Blake’s body — is now an All-Star with a 128 wRC+ and 24 home runs. Munetaka Murakami is still just on the right side of the Joey Gallo Line. Out of 187 hitters with at least 300 plate appearances this year, Murakami’s in-zone contract rate is dead last by 6.7 percentage points, a gigantic margin. But he’s walking enough, and doing enough damage when he does make contact, to support a 154 wRC+. If the White Sox can turn those guys into dangerous middle-of-the-order sluggers, I think they’ve earned the right to see if they can rebuild Doyle into a merely bad hitter instead of a historically awful one. If it works out, well, Doyle was worth 3.6 WAR in 2024. As a buy-low reclamation project, Doyle’s worth a kick of the tires. But the White Sox gave up enough in this trade to make me second-guess the buy-low label. Adams is a big league-ready middle reliever. A 2022 13th-round pick out of Jacksonville University (alma mater of Austin Hays and the other Mike Baumann, among others), Adams has gradually climbed the ladder to the verge of the majors. His numbers this year aren’t eye-popping: 3.86 ERA and 24.0% strikeout rate over 49 innings across two levels. And Adams doesn’t have impressive velocity, with a fastball that sits in the low 90s. What he does have is a funky low-three-quarters short-arm delivery that gives his heater an uphill angle, and the ability to throw multiple breaking balls for strikes. It’s not potential closer stuff, but it’s good enough to miss bats in the high minors. The Rockies’ bullpen situation being what it is (i.e. Jordan Romano is the closer), Adams ought to get a shot in the majors soon. Vielma is just shy of his 17th birthday; a native of Venezuela, he’s currently playing at the White Sox complex in the Dominican Republic. His date of birth, August 12, 2009, puts me in the mood to shop for a coffin, and he won’t be ready for the big leagues until the 2030s, if he gets there at all. Vielma is a stocky 5-foot-10 infielder who played every infield position except shortstop in the DSL, looking slick (at least for the time being) at both second and third base. There’s not much power now, and Eric Longenhagen’s scouting report indicates that we shouldn’t hold our breath waiting for Vielma to develop corner infield-worthy power down the line. But what he does have excellent hand-eye coordination and bat control. Vielma hit .337 in 34 games in the DSL, with even better on-base numbers. The state of pitching in the DSL is such that a hitter can go months without seeing a strike, so take this for what it’s worth: Vielma walked 32 times in just 134 plate appearances, and posted an OBP of .507. Adams, the low-ceiling finished product at Triple-A, makes an amusing contrast to the embryonic Vielma. Neither is a knockout prospect; Eric put a 40 FV grade on Adams and a 35 on Vielma. But neither is a throwaway player. Great center field defense is rare, but it isn’t unattainable. Given that Doyle is coming off an injury in the midst of a bad season, and he’s making $3.1 million this year with a raise due in the offseason, I think it’s fair to wonder if the White Sox overpaid a little here. With that said, the most likely outcome is that Doyle continues to excel in the field while hitting like a pitcher, while Adams plugs along as a low-leverage arm and Vielma doesn’t get this much attention in a FanGraphs article ever again. In which case, everyone would walk away from this trade with a shrug. Oh well. Nothing ventured, nothing gained.