ESPN's story on White Sox toxic culture is a stunning Dodgers trade deadline rebuke

The Dodgers' packed their 2023 deadline with a few notable moves — getting Ryan Yarbrough from the Royals, getting rid of Noah Syndergaard and adding Amed Rosario, getting Kiké Hernández back from Boston — but the headliner was a deal with the White Sox for Lance Lynn and Joe Kelly, which sent Trayce Thompson and two prospects to Chicago in a comparatively tiny return.

Lynn was very much a fixer upper when he came over to LA, having posted a 6.47 ERA in Chicago before the deadline, but at least he was an innings-eater who just had to be better than Syndergaard. Kelly had also struggled through the first half of the year, but he was already beloved in LA for his suspension-earning antics against Carlos Correa and the Astros in 2020.

Kelly managed to clean up his act in LA through 10 1/3 more innings, and Lynn was serviceable overall, with a 4.36 ERA over 11 starts, but his back-to-back starts on Aug. 31 and Sept. 6, when he pitched nine innings and gave up 14 hits, five walks, and 15 runs were scarring. The Dodgers re-signed Kelly in the offseason but let Lynn go. It made sense, after all. He ostensibly ended their season in Game 3 of the NLDS in the desert.

Both escaped the baseball prison that is the Chicago White Sox, but not entirely. The White Sox lost 101 games last year — terrible, yes, but they somehow sunk even deeper this season. Stories about a fractured clubhouse started to surface last year, but the horridness of Chicago's 120+ loss 2024 season has inspired a few deep dives.

On Wednesday, Buster Olney and Jesse Rogers, writing for ESPN, published a breakdown on the White Sox's season that ostensibly covered their road to 120 losses this year, but deep-dove into the clubhouse disaster of years past. Both Lynn and Kelly's names came up, and in perhaps the worst light possible.

Dodgers additions Lance Lynn, Joe Kelly name checked in ESPN piece about toxic White Sox clubhouse

Olney and Rogers brought up one anecdote about former White Sox closer Liam Hendriks, who was diagnosed with non-Hodgkin lymphoma in January 2023 and started the season on the IL as he underwent treatment. He returned to the team in late May, but a "rift" had formed between him, Lynn, Kelly, and Kendall Graveman. The White Sox planned a press conference to welcome Hendriks back and celebrate him being cancer-free, but some veterans "had to be talked into attending" as a show of support.

Beyond this being a stunning example of how fractured the White Sox clubhouse was, it's also just plainly horrible on a human level. Lynn and Kelly being heavily implied as being involved in refusing to celebrate a teammate's victory against cancer, just because they had personal differences? That goes past baseball.

And the Dodgers willingly brought them both to LA at the deadline, and they retained Kelly. The piece makes it clear that other teams were anxious about obtaining Chicago's distressed assets at last year's deadline. Not LA.

It's hard to be on a losing team, especially one that has lost as spectacularly as the White Sox, so maybe it was easy for Lynn and Kelly to clean up their acts when they got to a winning team. But it's still a damning indictment of both's clubhouse conduct and a very bad look for LA, to say the least.