As a team that doesn’t figure to be in the mix for any star free agents this offseason, the White Sox will have to get creative to bring talented pitchers to the South Side. One new opportunity to do that has emerged. Jon Heyman of the New York Post reported that left handed pitcher Foster Griffin, formally of the Yomiuri Giants in Japan, is looking to return stateside and secure an MLB contract.
Griffin’s Player Profile
Griffin, 30, was originally a first round pick by the Royals in 2014. He spent parts of eight seasons in the minor leagues and the extent of his big league career is a total of eight innings. In an unfortunate stroke of luck, he got hurt after his MLB debut and went down to Tommy John surgery a couple weeks later. He never found his footing again after that, bouncing around minor league teams in the Royals and Blue Jays organizations.
While his MLB career is nothing to write home about, Griffin took his talents to Japan in January 2023 and has blossomed there ever since. Across 54 games over three seasons in NPB with the Yomiuri Giants, he pitched to a 2.57 ERA, 1.03 WHIP, 2.0 BB/9, and 9.1 K/9 across 315.2 innings pitched. Even in a league that is very pitcher friendly, the left hander stood out amongst his peers.
Erick Fedde Parallels
If the White Sox signing an American born pitcher out of Asia sounds familiar, that’s because it is. The organization used the same approach to bring in Erick Fedde from Korea in December 2023, and he ended up being one of the team’s best free agent signings in recent memory.
Griffin differs from Fedde in that he hardly has any MLB sample size to his name, as well as the fact he pitched in Japan instead of Korea. Still, he could represent a logical free agent target for the White Sox.
Logical For Both Sides
A marriage between Griffin and the White Sox could make sense for multiple reasons. From the team’s perspective, starting pitching will be at or near the top of the priority list this offseason. They also don’t figure to be big spenders, so Griffin’s virtually non-existent MLB track record should put him in their price range.
For Griffin, choosing to sign with a rebuilding team like the White Sox could be his best option at this juncture of his career. Signing with a rebuilding team instead of a contender would give him more time to adjust and figure things out if he struggles early on without fear of getting booted from the rotation. The pressure and expectations of a contending team would not afford him that luxury. Fedde signed with the White Sox instead of the Mets for this reason, and Griffin could follow suit.
Good Fit For White Sox
Fedde signed a two-year/$15 million contract with the White Sox despite being far more experienced at the MLB level and putting up a more dominant season in Korea than Griffin did in Japan. As such, it’s reasonable to conclude that Griffin’s price tag should be less than what Fedde got.
The White Sox have dipped their toes into the Asian reclamation pitcher market before and it paid massive dividends. Foster Griffin’s desire to return stateside is a storyline worth monitoring, and it makes logical sense for the team to roll the dice on him.
