Is Luis Robert Jr. an intriguing trade target once again?

Luis Robert Jr. is a player whose name keeps coming up on the trade market, and you, a fan of a team who badly needs some outfield help, are worried. Sure, Robert looked like a breakout star in 2023, when he hit 38 homers with plus defense in center, but 2024 was bad (86 OPS+, where 100 is league average) and 2025 hasn’t really been much better. If an outfielder hitting .204 doesn’t excite you, well, we’d agree.

But we should all know by now that teams don’t value players based primarily on batting average – this is why Kyle Schwarber (.254) is a much, much more valuable hitter than Luis Arraez (.291) – so don’t worry too much about that. Nor would anyone bother trading prospects and taking on salary with the assumption that Robert would provide you with the same completely unimpressive .204/.293/.339 line he’s supplied the White Sox this year, anyway.

You’d consider it because Robert only turns 28 next week, and because you think you can still find the version of the player who collected downballot MVP votes just two seasons ago. You do it because some of the underlying skills are still there, now that he’s seemingly healthy after a run of injuries, and because he’s in the final guaranteed year of his contract yet still has a pair of $20 million team options for the next two seasons, giving clubs a lot of flexibility about whether he’s a rental or a part of next year’s roster, too.

You consider it because it’s not that hard to think that going from one of history’s weakest teams to a playoff race might do something good for a player. (Which is exactly what former White Sox and current Phillies reliever Tanner Banks told the Inquirer this week, saying “across the board in baseball, sometimes that’s what it takes. Just a breath of fresh air.”)

After all, it's not like we haven't just seen another high-profile White Sox player who had fallen on hard times go somewhere else and thrive. (We’re talking about 2019 No. 3 overall pick Andrew Vaughn, who was hitting .189 with Chicago before being demoted and traded to Milwaukee. There, he's cut his strikeout rate in half and posted a .341/.417/.659 line for one of the NL’s best teams.) So why can't something similar apply to someone who, unlike Vaughn, actually had some recent high-level success on the back of his baseball card?

Robert, in his first 11 games since returning from his latest trip to the injured list entering Monday, hit a stellar .316/.422/.500. You can’t simply believe he’s that now any more than you can that he’ll hit .204 endlessly. Let’s see what we can see – and where he might help tilt a playoff race.

If Robert’s 2023 was magical – and it was indeed one of the best White Sox seasons of the 21st century to date – then it took all of seven games for his 2024 to fall apart. Robert injured his hip while lacing a double against the Royals on April 6 and missed two months, by which point the White Sox were well into the depths of a 121-loss season. The less said about that summer all around, the better.

That might have been easy to handwave away, an injury-plagued down year in the midst of an all-time team down year, except that Robert didn’t do a whole lot over the first half of 2025 before a June hamstring injury cost him two weeks. Yet since coming back, he’s been hot, punctuated by the July 18 game in which he homered, stole a base and made a fantastic catch – as well as missed a few days with a groin issue.

Given all that -- plus hip, knee and wrist injuries in previous years -- what you really want to know is this: If you’re speculating on upside, is that 2023 skillset still there?

Let’s start with the good news, which is this: Robert swings the bat really, really fast, and he runs really, really fast, and he can play the outfield like very few others can. That’s all similarly true in 2025 as it was in 2023. He is, in fact, one of only five players who rank in the 85th percentile or above in bat speed, sprint speed, and Outs Above Average, and you’re going to like these names:

• Byron Buxton, MIN
• Corbin Carroll, AZ
• Luis Robert Jr., CWS
• Julio Rodríguez, SEA
• Bobby Witt Jr., KC

Good start, then, if you’re wondering about the baseline physical skills. Robert’s 26 steals are eighth most in the Majors, and Statcast credits him with a +3 in Fielding Run Value, which is to say that he’s still comfortably capable of handling center field, defensively. All of that gives him a high floor, assuming he hits even a little.

… which he hasn’t, until this month. Why not?

It’s not a loss of bat speed. If anything, after a continued decline in 2024, it looks as good or better now than it did in 2023.

It’s not strikeouts, at least not this year; Robert’s 29% strikeout rate is all but identical to what he had in his great 2023 season. It’s not his hit direction; his 45% pull rate is identical to ‘23. It’s a little that his hard-hit rates and barrel rates are down and his ground ball rate is up -- but by slim enough margins that it shouldn't contribute to a season considerably worse than his best year. There’s a little bit of potential poor fortune here, yet also not enough to explain it.

It’s not even chase, which is Robert’s usual issue. He is, for the first time, drawing an above-average amount of walks.

Instead, what’s happened here seems to be very much about fastballs. Against breaking balls and offspeed pitches, Robert’s underlying quality-of-contact metrics are about the same in 2023 and in ‘25, even if the results have been somewhat lesser this year.

But fastballs? Two years ago, he was worth +22 runs, in part because of a .590 SLG, both marks among the best in baseball. This year, however, it’s minus-5 and a .290 SLG, because the quality of contact is meaningfully worse. When that happens without a loss of bat speed and with an improvement in fastball chase rate, then usually it’s about an approach or mechanical issue, putting yourself in poor position to be on time – which is seemingly exactly what was happening last year.

That seems fixable, more than physical limitations would be -- and after being the worst fastball hitting team in baseball in the first half, the White Sox are the top fastball hitting team in baseball since the All-Star break, which certainly speaks to approach. And for Robert, after striking out around 30% of the time each of the first three months of the season, he’s down to just 15% this month, his lowest since 2022.

Lowest K% months, career

• 12.7% // Aug 2022
• 13.2% // Apr 2022
• 14.9% // July 2025
• 16.4% // Sept 2021
• 18.2% // Aug 2021

All of which is to say: Robert Jr. isn’t performing at his 2023 level, and it’d be naive to claim that he is. But if the goal of this exercise is to try to find out if there’s still hope for that version of him to return, then it seems clear that the upside is still there. (And regardless, the speed and defense remain strong.)

It’s not hard, anyway, to find teams who might be interested.

Take the Phillies, who currently have the weakest hitting center fielders (.607 OPS) in the long history of the franchise, and could easily move Brandon Marsh to left to take time away from Max Kepler and/or Nick Castellanos. (Coincidentally, the Phillies started a series against the White Sox, in Chicago, on Monday night.)

Or the Mets, who are similarly struggling at the position and have merely the 23rd-best projected center field spot for the rest of the way; they clearly hope to upgrade on Tyrone Taylor. While they’re hardly the only teams with a need, the rest-of-season difference from an up-the-middle position where neither contender has received value could help decide a tight NL East race.

Robert, even in this generally unimpressive year, is still smashing lefties (.966 OPS), as he's been his entire career (.893).

If not Robert, then who? Cedric Mullins is playing below-average defense and hasn’t hit in months, posting a .193/.239/.349 line over the last four months. Miami’s Dane Myers might be appealing, though he’s nearly two years older and without the track record. Mickey Moniak, having something of a breakout season with the Rockies? Perhaps, though it’s hard to see a reunion with Philadelphia, and again: Poor track record.

Robert might not stay healthy. He might not ever get back to the heights of 2023. But if you're trying to go big, to take the risk that there's still a star in there on both sides of the ball? At the very least, there's floor here, that you'll get a lefty-masher who can steal a base and cover center. If you're lucky, you might just get a lot more than that.