The Lance Lynn trade: An interim reassessment

With an eye toward winning the American League Central and more in 2021, the Chicago White Sox, on December 8, acquired veteran right-hander Lance Lynn from the Texas Rangers.

At the time the deal was made, Lynn was seen as precisely the missing mound piece that the White Sox needed. At age 34, Lynn is a 10-year major league veteran with a .607 winning percentage and a reputation for durability.

More than one-third of the way through the 2021 season, the trade looks pristine for the White Sox. Lynn is 7-1 in 10 starts with a 1.23 ERA that would lead the AL if Lynn had enough innings to qualify: he’s literally one out short.

Having said that, the Rangers – who traded Lynn in part because he was to be a free agent at season’s end – can also look at the deal as a benefit for them. The Rangers got two pitching prospects from Chicago in exchange for Lynn, one of whom is already making his own major league mark.

Positives for the White Sox and Rangers after the Lance Lynn trade

Dane Dunning, the lead prospect sent to the Rangers for Lynn, Is not performing at anything approaching a Lynn-like level. He’s 2-4 with a 4.26 ERA in a dozen starts. But the Rangers, whose prime task this season is to collect pieces they can at some point shape into a contender, are probably happy with that. In a classic front-liner-for-prospect trade, they got a prospect who’s actually capable of retiring major league batters right now.

Then there’s the age issue: Dunning is 26, eight years younger than Lynn. Finally there’s the money issue. Lynn was going to make close to $10 million in 2021 when the Rangers let him go. Dunning works for not much more than the major league minimum, about $570,000.

Unlike other big names traded over the winter who either were or could be locked up long-term by their acquiring teams – think Nolan Arenado and Francisco Lindor – the White Sox have no long-term attachment to Lynn. His contract still expires at season’s end.

That means their only window of gain is to make his acquisition pay off over the next couple of months.

There are several reasons to feel comfortable in the expectation that Lynn’s hot start will be followed by a hot middle and hot finish. Most importantly, he has no history of fading as the pennant race tightens. He has a 3.67 ERA in April, a 3.84 in June, a 3.69 in August, and a 3.65 in September. You will search a while before finding a more consistent performance line than that.

Nor has he appeared to give anything up as he has aged. Using ERA+ as a metric, Lynn’s two best seasons have been his last two: 141 in 2019 and 138 in 2020. He produced a 2.5 WAR over the 60-game 2020 season, and is at 2.2 59 games into the 2021 season. Stretch that through to September and it comes out to a 6.0 WAR pace.

For the deal to also work for Texas, two things have to happen. First, Dunning must continue to develop. Thus far, that development has been spotty. At times, Dunning has looked good, such as Sunday, when he held the Tampa Bay Rays to no runs and three hits over five innings.

But there have been less enthusiastic performances. Ten days ago, the Los Angeles Angels lit into Dunning for seven runs in four innings.  Two starts before that the Houston Astros tagged him for four runs in four innings.

The second thing that must happen for this deal to work in Texas’ favor is beyond Dunning’s direct control: His team must improve. The Rangers, 23-38, have one of baseball’s worst records. Even granting that Adolis Garcia looks like a star, that Kyle Gibson is having a comeback season, and that Isiah Kiner-Falefa might be a front-line guy, when do the pieces all come together?

The third player included in the deal, minor league pitcher Avery Weems, might eventually be part of Texas’ solution. To date, Weems has made five starts at High-A Hickory with a 3.77 ERA. But even the Rangers only consider Weems to be their 13th highest-rated pitching prospect, and don’t project him to make an impact prior to 2023, if then.

The real bottom line on this trade will be written during the 2021 postseason, when Lynn either takes the mound for Chicago in a succession of increasingly high-pressure assignments or tries to figure out where he wants to pitch next year.