Sox Populi Podcast 193 — The Adrian Houser Debate — 2025-08-08

After some of Brett Ballantini's idiotic, angry and/or questionable ramblings in our staff discussions, Malachi Hayes suggested a ... debate? ... of sorts, centered around the White Sox trade of Adrian Houser to the Tampa Bay Rays at the deadline last week.

You don't have to listen to the podcast to determine who won the debate: If you are a "gut" fan, you might like my arguments, while if you like reasoned analysis and optimism, Malachi is your guy. (By the way, first round went to Hayes, as Houser had his worst start of the season to open his Rays career.)

This was mostly Houser and related debate, but we did move on to other things:

Shout-out to pandemic-era media, as multiple technical snafus found the two of us back on Zoom for the podcast!

Some of the crux of Brett's biscuit with Houser comes from some raw (albeit small sample-size) stats: No pitcher of 11 games or fewer with the White Sox has ever done better than Houser's 3.0 WAR — and you have to get to 18 games before you find a better (short) season. Additionally, over 125 seasons of White Sox history there have been just 18 better 11-game stretches better than Houser's 2.10 ERA ... and just seven have come in the DH era, and two this century

Malachi counters that such stats make it even more urgent/compelling to deal Houser now, without (much) regard to the return. While Brett largely rejects the logic, Malachi pointed out that this deadline runs along the lines of 2024's, where a similiar-ish trade was made in sending out Erick Fedde for Miguel Vargas

At some point, do you start collecting quality players rather than continuing to build for the future? Whether Houser is one of those guys, or Fedde was, SOMEONE has to be a building block instead of a trade piece

Through process of elimination Brett isolated Malachi's best-case competitive window opening for the White Sox to be 2027. Brett is more of the 2029 belief

As time ran out on our free Zoom, Malachi and Brett discussed some of the brighter developments of 2025: Edgar Quero, Kyle Teel and Colson Montgomery

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