SAN DIEGO — White Sox general manager Rick Hahn does not address the media until Monday evening. But I’ve been doing this long enough, and have heard him do this bit enough times, that I think I can cover this preamble for him until then. Or I could just dig up an old quote from my archives.

“There is nothing magical about doing a deal during the Winter Meetings,” Hahn said in 2018 and probably will again. “It doesn’t add more wins to the regular season if you do a deal this week.”

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The slate of scheduled media availabilities at the Manchester Grand Hyatt in San Diego over the next three days and the unrivaled majesty of the Rule 5 Draft mean that we will all be talking about the White Sox offseason and 2023 roster building a lot, but it doesn’t necessarily mean anything will happen. Because it is no longer 1985 and I can personally attest to the White Sox having a functional Zoom account and Hahn having a working cell phone, the Winter Meetings no longer represent a wholly unique opportunity to consummate signings or trades.

In 2016, the Sox traded Chris Sale and Adam Eaton on successive days to kickstart their rebuild, Hahn declared that “if we had our druthers,” they’d knock out three more trades while they were at the meetings, and they proceeded to not make another major trade until the following July. In 2019 — the last winter meetings humanity enjoyed — all the Sox pulled off during this magical week was a Nomar Mazara for Steele Walker swap that has proven forgettable for both sides, amid what was otherwise the most active offseason in their current contention cycle.

But with a new collective bargaining agreement in place, the top of the starting pitcher market already moving and a strong free agency crop, this actually is expected to be a very active Winter Meetings for the league at large. Loyal listeners to The Athletic Baseball Show got to hear venerable baseball scribe Ken Rosenthal say “orgy (of spending)” on a podcast about the coming week. And even though the deal was all but done a week and a half ago, history will always indicate that the White Sox officially signed new pitcher Mike Clevinger to a one-year deal with $12 million guaranteed on the eve of the meetings. His introductory media session revealed a little bit about the team’s strategy.

Jumping a market that only figures to get crazier

“I think other teams are still kind of waiting,” said Clevinger, who openly acknowledged that he battled injuries in 2022 and put together a second half and postseason that hurt his stock. “They expressed interest and what they saw in me, and it wasn’t really a matter of so much the monetary aspect as it was the place I wanted to be, the roster I wanted to set myself up with in picking my destination, versus waiting until it got down to the end and see if these other teams had me in their pecking order at the time. It was like: I know the White Sox want me. I know that’s a roster I want to be a part of.”

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Sunday’s announcement revealed that Clevinger will be paid $8 million in 2023 — equal to the money saved in the Sox budget when AJ Pollock declined his player option — and is set up to reach his $12 million guarantee via a buyout for a $12 mutual option for 2024. But the $12 million guarantee on the heels of a season where injuries limited Clevinger to 114 1/3 innings and a 4.33 ERA that was inflated by second-half struggles, has quickly been placed in the context of a market where Matthew Boyd got $10 million guaranteed after injuries limited him to 13 1/3 innings last year. Plus, Jacob deGrom barely beating Clevinger’s 2022 innings total over the past two seasons didn’t keep him from getting five years at top of the market average annual value. The market doesn’t figure to calm down from here.

As they have often done in the past, with Eaton in 2021 being a recent example, the White Sox were willing to lock in a bounce-back candidate at a price they liked early, when they found a player who also didn’t want to wait around to see what they would get as some other team’s fallback option. Clevinger cited a pre-existing relationship with pitching coach Ethan Katz, who was a coach in the Angels’ minor league system when Clevinger was a prospect. But more specifically that relationship is being entrusted to guide Clevinger back to front-of-the-rotation form after he missed 2021 with Tommy John surgery, and a right knee injury dogged him so badly in 2022 that he had trouble walking after some late-season outings. Clevinger said he did not need surgery, but received a platelet-rich plasma injection to address his medial collateral ligament, and he underwent a biomechanical assessment at a lab in San Diego to give Katz information to look over.

“Kind of the hardest pill to swallow is the arm held up great the whole year,” said Clevinger, who pitched to a 3.50 ERA with a 24.7 percent strikeout rate in the first half. “It was there in the first half. We set out a good plan of attack and I’m going to see him again before the season starts. He’s going to come in, watch me throw a couple of bullpens and get some one-on-one work in before we get back to spring training.”

So, is the White Sox pitching staff done?

While Clevinger joins Michael Kopech and Lance Lynn in the crop of White Sox starters looking to put 2022 knee injuries behind them — and that’s probably a bit more injury risk than you’d like to have hanging over a rotation — Clevinger says he feels ready to prepare for a full season. This is the sort of outlay that the Sox make to fill out their five-man rotation, with Davis Martin and prospect arm Sean Burke filling out their internal starting depth. You don’t even have to include Garrett Crochet, who would have to return from Tommy John surgery in less than a calendar year to be ready for Opening Day, to have eight incumbent members of the 2022 bullpen.

“The roster, I think is fully set up for doing special things and having a long season,” said Clevinger.

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That could reasonably be true from the pitching side, at least in terms of major needs. Back in 2019, when a slew of White Sox outfield prospects were scuffling at Double-A Birmingham, a league scout reasoned “they only need one,” since Eloy Jiménez and Luis Robert were penciled in for two of the outfield slots for the next decade. Even with Oscar Colás finally arriving as that third internally produced outfield solution, with Jiménez set to fill the DH slot more often, they still need one more outfielder. José Abreu’s departure makes Andrew Vaughn’s transition to first base all but official, and improving the defense by no longer playing guys out of position means Gavin Sheets as an everyday outfielder isn’t the prescribed solution either.

And just as it’s been the case since the White Sox decided Nick Madrigal was not it mid-2021, the team lacks a settled long-term second baseman. In contrast to the outfield, they do have potential second base options in-house with Romy Gonzalez, Lenyn Sosa, and rising prospect José Rodríguez on the 40-man roster, but it remains one of their few areas to directly try to both upgrade the offense, but specifically add left-handed balance if they can find it.

“I’m pro-left–handed slug,” said Hahn at the GM meetings in Las Vegas. “Fundamentally doing more damage against right-handed pitching is a priority. Traditionally, that comes from left–handed hitting bats.”

Their catching situation is currently dependent on Yasmani Grandal, in the final year of his contract, rallying after an injury-plagued 2022 at age 34 with no starter-level prospects ready behind him. So it’s certainly an area for the Sox to be open-minded as well.

So, trades from here on out?

Hahn and the White Sox entered this offseason with the intention to make more noise via the trade market than free agency, and have now already soaked up a significant portion of what was not expected to be a lot of payroll room to round out the rotation. But while their farm system has undoubtedly made major strides since it was regarded as possibly the weakest in the league around this time last year, there are still teams that don’t believe the White Sox have a prospect centerpiece suited for swinging a major trade unless top prospect and 2021 first-round pick Colson Montgomery is on the table. And maybe the left-handed middle infield prospect defined by his left-handed slugging potential and early signs of above-average plate discipline is not someone they are eager to move, for reasons explained above.

Theoretically, Bryan Reynolds asking for a trade out of Pittsburgh is something that should be highly relevant for the Sox, even if it just creates more supply in a market where they have demand. He’s a left-handed, defensively capable outfielder with a bat worthy of emptying the farm system for, and his three years of remaining control — an existential crisis for a rebuilding Pirates team — perfectly dovetails with the Sox contention window with a current salary they could absorb. But the Sox would be hard-pressed to match the prospect packages of teams with more loaded systems like the Guardians, Braves and Yankees, and that defines the middle ground they are trying to find. Do they have the prospect pieces necessary to swing a trade for an impact player over other bidders? Or can their mid-tier prospects pull in a role player worthy of getting starter-level at-bats on a team that wants to win the division in 2023?

It’s obviously not their preference to pick away from a major league roster they are trying to prepare for an immediate return to postseason play. But the fact that the Sox bullpen returns Liam Hendriks, Kendall Graveman, Aaron Bummer, Joe Kelly, Reynaldo López, Jimmy Lambert, Jake Diekman and José Ruiz, along with Crochet, could surely draw interest given the paucity of free-agent relief options present.

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“There’s different ways of going about doing it,” said Hahn. “We’re going to explore them all.”

He actually said this line back in 2021. But I’m sure he’s going to say it again this week.

(Photo of Rick Hahn: David Banks / USA Today)

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