White Sox Sign Seranthony Domínguez

Last week, the White Sox admitted defeat in their handling of Luis Robert Jr.’s contract, shipping him out to the Mets for two lottery tickets and salary relief. That salary relief must have been burning a hole in their pocket, though. Or perhaps someone looked at their books, said “Guys, we play in Chicago but we’re projected for the lowest payroll in baseball and people are going to talk,” and handed GM Chris Getz a list of players who hadn’t yet signed. In any case, Seranthony Domínguez and the White Sox have agreed to terms on a two-year deal worth $20 million, as ESPN’s Jeff Passan first reported.

The right-handed Domínguez is no stranger to high-pressure relief work. In both the 2022 and 2023 postseasons, he appeared in mid- and high-leverage situations for the Phillies, and he handled them quite well (1.13 ERA, 0.78 FIP in 16 innings). In 2024, Philadelphia didn’t have much use for his services after his slow start, and so they sent him and Cristian Pache to the Orioles for platoon bat Austin Hays (whom they promptly non-tendered after the season). The O’s employed Domínguez for a year (he made two appearances for them in the playoffs), then dealt him and cash to the Blue Jays in exchange for Juaron Watts-Brown, a 40-FV relief prospect. He pitched for the Jays in October, and memorably had some ups and downs in their long run.

In other words, playoff teams have been employing Domínguez for years, but they haven’t been placing particularly high importance on his performance. He’s twice been traded to contenders in deadline deals, and at no point did his suitors offer much to get him. Those teams considered him a mid-leverage option; even the Blue Jays had him as a second-tier option out of their weak-link bullpen that flailed its way through October.

Intriguingly, Domínguez’s most recent run at a ring was keyed by a brand new splitter that he threw 17% of the time in 2025. It propelled him to a new career high strikeout rate. Spectacular! The cost? Yeah, you won’t like the cost – a career-high walk rate, and one that increased by a whopping 5.6 percentage points year-over-year. For comparison, his strikeout rate went up by 3.6%. The new splitter is pretty much unhittable – and that’s a good thing, because Domínguez only landed it in the strike zone a quarter of the time. It’s a great pitch, but it doesn’t change my overall view of his talent level.

You might hear that Domínguez is a FIP-beater. Indeed, he’s posted a 3.78 ERA in the past three years, as compared to a 4.28 FIP. By FIP-based WAR, he’s not even one of the top 100 relievers in baseball over the past three years; he’s 136th, to be precise. By RA9-WAR, which cares about results on the field, though, he’s… 135th, basically the same. That’s because his “FIP-beating” is actually just a lot of unearned runs scoring. Eight of the 30 runs he allowed to score in 2025 were unearned, which will push your ERA way down and mask the true amount of runs on your ledger.

That’s especially worrying when you consider that Domínguez received a ton of help defensively. Per Statcast, fielders playing behind him were seven outs above average, the 14th-best mark in baseball. Everyone ahead of him on that list pitched at least 50 more innings than he did. On a per-inning basis, no major leaguer received better defensive help than Domínguez did last year. It puts the FIP-beating in perspective; many components go into beating or falling short of ERA estimators, and many of them are completely outside of a pitcher’s control.

Put that all together, and Domínguez looks to me like a pretty average reliever. That’s not meant to be a mark against him; there’s always plenty of work for average relievers in a league floundering for innings. That’s presumably Chicago’s plan here, in fact; keep him around for a few months, let him close, and hope that a decent ERA and some shiny saves make him an attractive deadline acquisition for some contender. If that contender offers the Sox the modern-day equivalent of Gleyber Torres or John Smoltz, or whatever famous trade blunder you want to reference, then bam! That’s what the White Sox are going for here.

Now, is that going to happen? I don’t think so. Domínguez is the 33rd reliever to sign for $2 million or more this winter. He’s getting the 12th-highest AAV, the eighth-highest guarantee. Generally speaking, relievers who sign this late in the process are reclamation projects or bargains. There’s a pretty clear pattern to free agency – early signees beat their projections, while late signees fall short. That’s not weird; typically, the guys who sign late are doing so because no one offered them what they wanted earlier in the winter. Domínguez beat his projections handsomely despite his late signing date, which is strange.

The reason isn’t that wild if you think about it long enough, though. It’s the White Sox tax. Would you, a competent major league baseball player, willingly agree to play for a team that is actively trying to be one of the worst clubs in the majors? Presumably not, at least not if all else were equal. To sign Domínguez, the White Sox made all else unequal; they offered him a nice fat sack full of money.

Like I said, I think that the Sox had some ulterior motives here. Their payroll was so comically low after trading Robert that I imagine there was some internal consternation about how that would look. That’s how you end up giving one of your team’s biggest free agenct contracts of the 2020s to a solid-but-not-elite reliever when you’re a 100-loss team. If we’re evaluating this deal based on making the South Siders look less penny-pinching, it has to get high marks. Domínguez is going to be more than 10% of the club’s payroll this year, one of only three guys making eight figures. The Sox have a less egregious salary commitment today than they did immediately after trading Robert, and that definitely counts for something.

If they’re trying to win on the baseball field with this move, though, I don’t quite get it. I could be wrong, of course. That’s a key thing to remember when you read analysis of a baseball decision. I don’t actually know what’s going to happen, any more than the players on the field do. Domínguez could be much better or much worse than our projections. But with that caveat in mind, I think it’s pretty clear that the White Sox should not expect a big return for Domínguez at the deadline.

Why not? Because he’s been traded at the last two deadlines! We definitely know the price of Seranthony Domínguez in a trade. It’s actually one of the best-known trade prices; he’s twice been swapped to a contender with a weak bullpen, and twice the trading team has gotten a mere pittance in return. The O’s even paid down some of his salary in their deal last year, and that was for a contract with a lower salary than this one and that featured no second-year guarantee.

Now, the Sox can showcase Domínguez a bit more than his previous employers. We have him penciled in as their closer, a role that he couldn’t reasonably expect on a playoff contender. They’re going to spotlight him as much as they can, and when another team calls to ask about anyone on the squad, they’re going to have to hear the pitch on Domínguez first. That’s why bad teams sign good relievers – to ship them out.

I’m a realist, though. My best expectation for what Domínguez will fetch in trade is heavily informed by what he has already fetched in trade. If he’s dealt at this deadline, I’d expect the Sox to retain a lot of his salary and also not get a ton in return. This is not a fringe prediction. It’s an easy one to make, based on a clear pattern. I’d be absolutely floored if a neutral observer saw it meaningfully differently.

Maybe that makes me sound like a pessimist, but I actually think that this deal is great for everyone. Domínguez is obviously the biggest beneficiary – he just got $20 million! That more than doubles his career earnings, mere months after running a 22% walk rate in the playoffs. How in the world could he say no to that?! It’s an easy win.

The Sox are also beneficiaries, because it’s hard to focus on their extreme aversion to spending when they’re splashing out well above expectations to sign someone. Are you mad at them for not putting a good product on the field? Well, they spent all of their salary savings on a guy who was in the World Series just last year. What else are they supposed to do? On the scoreboard of public opinion, I bet you the Sox come out ahead. Between this and the Munetaka Murakami deal from earlier in the winter, they’re real free agency players again for the first time in a while. That definitely counts for something, especially for Getz, who is in his third year running the team after the first two seasons produced 221 losses.

Even the rest of the league is a beneficiary. I think it’s pretty clear that no contenders were looking to spend this kind of money on Seranthony Domínguez. If they were, they would have signed him already! But now they can wait until July and trade for him if they’re in the playoff race. It’s not going to cost them a ton, most likely. Heck, if past is prologue, the Sox will have to assume a decent portion of his salary in a trade. What will it cost to acquire him? A plausible future major leaguer who is nonetheless not a top prospect, something that teams are perennially happy to trade for bullpen help.

So don’t think of this deal as an overpay by Chicago, though solely by accounting it is that. Think of it as proof that not everyone acts to maximize their long-term on-field expected value with every move. I’m certain everyone involved is happy with the way this one went down. Can you really ask for anything more?