White Sox Willing To Include Cash In Benitendi, Robert Trade Talks

The White Sox, sporting a 23-52 record, will operate as deadline sellers once again. They don’t have as much to offer as many other potential sellers around the league — partly because they’ve already sold off many desirable assets earlier in this rebuild but also due to the significant salaries of some of their remaining veterans. To that end, Ken Rosenthal and Will Sammon of The Athletic report that the South Siders are willing to include cash to help pay down the salaries on pricey outfielders Luis Robert Jr. and Andrew Benintendi.

Heading into the season, GM Chris Getz surely hoped that wouldn’t be necessary with regard to Robert, in particular. The 27-year-old has performed at a superstar level in the past when healthy. As recently as 2023, Robert slashed .264/.314/.542 (128 wRC+) with 38 home runs, 20 steals and elite center field defense in 145 games. That’s the only season in Robert’s career where he’s played more than 100 games, however. Injuries have repeatedly dogged the electric young outfielder, and he’s now been hitting poorly for more than a year.

Since Opening Day 2024, Robert has turned in an anemic .212/.276/.351 batting line (75 wRC+). He’s fanned in 32.5% of his plate appearances and, in 2025 specifically, been extremely prone to harmless infield pop-ups; 11 of Robert’s 155 batted balls this season (7.1%) have been infield flies.

Despite the run of awful production, there are some reasons for cautious optimism. Robert’s strikeout rate is enormous but not too much higher than the 29% he posted during that brilliant 2023 campaign. He’s also walking at a career-high 9.8% clip and chasing pitches off the plate at a career-low 31.3% rate, per Statcast. He’s hitting the ball as hard as ever, averaging 90.3 mph off the bat with a 42.9% hard-hit rate. Both are his second-best marks in any season of his career. His 11% barrel rate isn’t far behind his career 11.9% mark.

One might expect a player with Robert’s speed to slow down after a 2023 MCL injury and a Grade 3 strain of his hip flexor in 2024, but that’s not the case. Robert is 22-for-27 in stolen base attempts in 2025, and Statcast measures his sprint speed at 28.8 feet per second. That’s actually his fastest mark since his 2020 rookie year and places him in the 87th percentile of big leaguers. Given that plus speed, it’s not surprising to see Robert way up in the 97th percentile in terms of outfield range (as measured by Statcast).

Robert is hitting…