Since, you know, there’s no pennant chase.
Jose Abreu: Normally, declining veterans are not a great reason to watch in the dog days of a lost season, but a full year of listless and powerless Abreu might actually place a real decision at the feet of White Sox management. On the other hand, any stretch of time–even against Quad-A September call-ups–where he proves newly capable of hitting anything that isn’t perfectly center cut for power, might provide some hope for the future.
Carlos Rodon: He needs to seriously develop his changeup as a reliable option, and become better than Matt Albers at retiring right-handed hitters for the Sox to trust him to become much more than an enigmatic No. 3/4 next season. His last start saw him noodling with the former, if not yet approaching the latter.
Carson Fulmer: The early ups and downs of his major league career have seen him bounce between being handed a one-run lead to hold in the seventh inning against an above-average offense, and ‘trusted less than Michael Ynoa.’ There’s too long of a path ahead with smoothing his mechanics and command to think about 2017 rotation work, but gaining some consistency in the pen now that the games don’t matter could be a bit of encouragement, or even provide some relief surplus for 2017.
Award Chasers: Chris Sale certainly hasn’t helped his case by not looking like himself for months, and slicing up his biggest advantage over the rest of the AL Cy Young field: his innings lead. Despite the high absurdity of Sale being the innings-eater with uninspiring peripherals in the race, and Corey Kluber being DRA’s chosen son at the front of a division-leading rotation, he’s still in the thick of the race in a depleted AL talent pool and capable of ripping off a Chris Sale! stretch for two months, even if finishing kicks are typically not his bag.
Then there’s the tale of Jose Quintana, quietly having a comparably good season, but cursed to obscurity. Just by framing numbers directly related to strikeouts and walks, Quintana is getting more runs added to his tab by the Sox framing disaster than anyone, a factoid that fits nicely along the larger narrative arc of his career.
Charlie Tilson: He’s headed to the roster immediately, and between his top-end speed, middling hit tool and no power to speak of, he could be a really fast J.B. Shuck. Who can’t find some entertainment in watching a really fast J.B. Shuck? Besides J.B. Shuck, of course.
Zack Burdi: There’s no competitive reason to fast track him anymore, but a September call-up isn’t out of the question for the 21-year-old first-round pick, since has struck out just under 40 percent of the hitters he’s faced in Double-A. His stuff is major league caliber, while nearly every other part of his game is an unrefined mess at this moment, but 100 mph with no idea where it’s going sounds like a worthy late-season sideshow.
Tim Anderson: There’s no great benchmark or new thing to find out about Anderson. He just slumped through his first taste of failure at the major league level, hitting .245/.252/.340 in July with 29 strikeouts in 108 plate appearances. He’s probably not going to go on a walk barrage now or anytime in the next four years, and may spend the rest of 2016 banging his head against the wall, developmentally. But it will be worth it just to see every time he gets on base and gets to dart around at lightning speed. The White Sox didn’t get much for fans to dream on at the deadline, but Anderson still provides plenty of visions of a premium athlete who just needs to be pointed in the right direction.
Dingers: Todd Frazier is “on pace*” for 45 home runs, which would be the highest single-season home run total for a White Sox player since Albert Belle in 1998. A more reasonable goal might be matching Jermaine Dye’s 44 in 2006, but now is the time to dream big, unremarkable dreams.
It remains a bit confusing where the disappointment is coming from for Frazier, a guy who clearly was going to barely scratch .300 OBP, be somewhat better than Conor Gillaspie on defense, and just hit lots of dingers, but nothing epitomizes the dreary inertia of the last days of an also-ran like a prominent player collecting a respectably high but historically unremarkable total in a counting stat. Swing for the fences, Todd, we’ve got all day to watch.
*hahahaha on pace is so stupid what am I doing
Lead Image Credit: Bruce Kluckhohn // USA Today Sports Images