When I latched on with James Fegan and the guys five years and two blogs ago, I was thankful. During that time, I’ve grown as a writer and baseball analyst and also developed friendships that will last long beyond our baseball-writing days. Never did I imagine my work would one day be featured on ESPN or Baseball Prospectus.

When James left two years ago for his well-deserved gig at The Athletic, I was nervous but I was also excited. James’s shoes were, of course, impossible to fill, but Nick Schaefer and I did our best to provide thoughtful, insightful, and occasionally sardonic commentary on a team that it was easy to get frustrated with. There were struggles — sometimes created solely by the self-made pressure of living up to all the other great writing you can find about the White Sox these days, other times by the difficulty with keeping the site up-to-date while dealing with real-world things like work and life in general — but I’d like to hope we provided you with some measure of entertainment as you followed along with us and the team.

Baseball Prospectus is changing — for the better — and one of those changes includes rolling the BP Locals into the main site. What that means is that you won’t be reading White Sox coverage here on BP South Side any longer, but instead I’ll be working as an editor at BaseballProspectus.com, while Nick, as well as talented writers like Mark Primiano and Frank Firke will be popping up there with articles on the White Sox and whatever else might strike our fancy.

Saying goodbye to BPSS feels like the end of an era. We started this site close to three years ago and this collective, in one form or another, have been writing together for years going back to The Catbird Seat and Southside Showdown.

If you’ve followed along, whether it was for five years or a few months, thank you. Writing about the White Sox to an audience has been a dream of mine for virtually my entire life, and if something I wrote informed, entertained, or even irked you in some way, I’m grateful for you and your engagement.

But the good news is that it’s not over. It’s so long and farewell to BPSS, sure, but I encourage you to follow us over at BP if you don’t subscribe already, where you’ll find the usual cast of characters along with a large collection of supremely talented baseball minds and writers.

It’s not goodbye, it’s see you around. Thanks for reading.

Santiago spent the duration of 2018 with the major league team after making the final cuts out of camp, pitching mostly in long relief with a few spot starts here and there. His final line: 49 appearances, seven starts, a 4.41 ERA, 5.12 FIP, a decent amount of strikeouts and a whole lotta walks.

He was the prototypical mop-up man for a White Sox team that needed mop-up duty on a whole bunch of occasions. Of his 42 relief appearances, exactly half of them came with the White Sox trailing by four or more runs and only six times did he appear in the eighth, ninth, or extra innings with the game tied or the White Sox leading by one or two runs. Nine times, he entered the game in the fifth inning or earlier and in only one of those games were the White Sox leading at the time.

That’s pretty much what one would have expected when the White Sox acquired Santiago. He was depth, served to protect the young arms and join James Shields as someone capable of eating innings without completely embarrassing himself. Was he good? It would be tough to argue that he was. But he certainly served a purpose for a team that lost 100 games.

Kevan Smith, as you know by now, is no longer with the White Sox after the Los Angeles Angels claimed him through waivers shortly after the World Series.

Smith was always kind of the odd man out when the White Sox signed Welington Castillo last offseason, but was pressed into more playing time in 2018 than initially expected after Castillo’s banned substance suspension.

Smith was hardly incompetent in extended playing time, and was the only of the White Sox three primary characters who the defensive stats liked even a little bit. His FRAA_ADJ was 0.7, compared to Castillo’s -6.4 and Narvaez’s league-worst -15.7.

That Smith won’t be around in 2018 is unfortunate, as more catching depth is never a bad thing. It’s entirely possible that the offensive potential of Castillo and Narvaez — after a breakout season at the plate — won’t outweigh the defensive negatives, but catching stats fluctuate strangely from year to year (Castillo was good in 2017), and with Zack Collins and Seby Zavala waiting in the pipeline to hopefully, potentially, take over catching duties, losing him is hardly a detriment to the rebuild.

He was fun and jovial and everything that’s easy to root for. His celebrations — on the rare occasion the White Sox had something worth celebrating — became instant viral sensations across baseball Twitter, and the stories from beat writers who interacted with him on a daily basis spoke of a player who was as friendly up close as he seemed from afar.

Nobody is safe. pic.twitter.com/jxjaTJsXyF

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) September 26, 2018

Yolmer lays down a bunt… ends up at third! Only Yolmer Sanchez. https://t.co/cQmy2DWquG pic.twitter.com/uIpvnm9jua — White Sox Talk (@NBCSWhiteSox) September 26, 2018

Yolmer Sanchez adding himself into the umpires’ review on the last call, using his battle helmet as the headset. He certainly enjoys what he’s doing.

— Scott Merkin (@scottmerkin) August 15, 2018

Yolmer Sánchez started to trot to first while holding out his shin guard to the bat boy…then suddenly accelerated at the last second. Bat boy finally caught up to him about 10 feet from the bag

— James Fegan (@JRFegan) August 26, 2018

Omar Narvaez said he and Yolmer Sanchez played on same team in Venezuela when they were 7.

What was Yolmer like then?

“Same.”

— Daryl Van Schouwen (@CST_soxvan) September 10, 2018

 

Not to get overly hyperbolic, but Sanchez just flat out seems like one of those players who never takes for granted the fact that he gets to make a living playing baseball. And maybe his journey here is the reason why. Sanchez has been in the White Sox organization for 10 years, signing as an amateur free agent in 2009, and while he shot up to a major-league caliber prospect relatively quickly, it took him more than a while to really get his footing. He made his debut with the big club in 2014 and kind of toiled as a Quad-A nobody, traveling up and down from Charlotte, for three years and ~700 plate appearances.

Since then, Sanchez has turned into something of an asset for the White Sox. While his 2017 breakout portended a player who may have played his way into a role on the next would-be contender, his 2018 season was more or less the same — adequate defense at third and average or maybe slightly worse offense.

The question now, though, becomes whether Sanchez is overburdened as a full-time starter or if the White Sox would be better equipped with him in more of a utility role moving forward. He can hold his own and not be a burden on a lineup offensively and defensively, as he’s proved the last two years, but at the same time he hasn’t exactly produced at a level where the White Sox shouldn’t look for an upgrade at the position, nor would they. Put simply: If Sanchez is a starting infield on a team with little to no holes elsewhere in the lineup, that’s fine. But if, say, a big-time free agent third baseman becomes available at a price they like, or if Nick Madrigal comes up as a second baseman and pushes Yoan Moncada to third, Sanchez’s presence as a guy who can fill in at 3/4 of the infield and maybe even a corner outfield spot in a pinch means he still holds value.

Whether that happens in 2019 or not is yet to be determined. It’s entirely possible that if the above situations don’t play out, Sanchez enters the season as the starting third baseman once again. And if so, that’s more than acceptable. But whether it’s there or as someone who can fill in well all over the field, it seems like he has a role with the White Sox for the foreseeable future.

Lead Photo Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski-USA TODAY Sports

Those are just some of the guys who have taken advantage of the circumstances that surround the White Sox roster the last few years. If the White Sox were in a different situation — say, trying to contend — many of those players may not have had the opportunity to try to prove their worth at the major league level. There’s hardly any benefits to a rebuild from the perspective of a fan, but one of the minor ones is seeing borderline major leaguers prove they can hang. Most of those players won’t over the long haul, but the Astros obscene tank job in the early 2010s allowed them to give meaningful playing time to guys like Jose Altuve, Dallas Keuchel, or even Marwin Gonzalez, all of whom wound up being valuable members of their World Series team in 2017.

Those are extreme examples, of course, but the point is that while 99 percent of the “quad-A” types who litter the rosters of rebuilding teams will flame out, there’s always a chance one of them might break out in a meaningful way and thrust themselves onto the next team built to contend.

It’s yet to be seen if any of the players that fit that profile will do so for these White Sox, but another player who may have played himself into further opportunities in 2018 was Jose Rondon. The 24-year-old only had 107 plate appearances at the major league level, but showed enough during both that time and during his season at Triple-A to make you wonder what, exactly, the White Sox have in the player they acquired from the San Diego Padres last January.

As a prospect, first for the Angels and later the Padres, Rondon profiled as an above-average glove at shortstop who could hit for a decent average with little power or patience, and that reputation pretty much stuck throughout his career. His career high in home runs was seven in 2017, and his walk rate for the most part hovered in the 3-8 percent range. Something change in 2018, though, and he led the Charlotte Knights in home runs with 16, and hit 24 total across Triple-A and during his cup of coffee in the majors. The strikeout rate increased with it, as one might expect, but an ISO more than 50 points higher than his career average is enough to make you turn your head.

If the improvements Rondon made in 2018 are real he goes from potential minor-league depth to potential major-league contributor. He’ll have just turned 25 by the time the 2019 season starts, so there’s a decent chance he’s just now starting to turn into the player he’ll become. A player who can more than hold his own at shortstop while providing legitimate power is valuable on any team. The problem, of course, is that the White Sox already have a facsimile of that entrenched at the position, and one with a lot more upside and athleticism. Similarly, while he may be better suited in a utility infield role given he’s a projected plus defender at third and second as well, the White Sox have guys like that in Yolmer Sanchez and Leury Garcia.

Still, having a surplus of players of that ilk isn’t necessarily a bad thing. The White Sox aren’t yet in a position where a young and intriguing player is going to get squeezed out of playing time, so like the plethora of fringe major league players looking to prove their worth, Rondon will surely get more opportunities in 2019.

Lead Photo Credit: Charles LeClaire-USA TODAY Sports

Four years into his professional career, though, it might be fair to now revise that down to “Will he ever break out?”

For the last two years, it has seemed like the only thing holding Rodon back has been his health. A myriad of ailments have limited him to fewer than 200 innings the last two seasons combined, and in the 69 1/3 innings he threw in 2017, we got enough of a glimpse of good Rodon to remain optimistic he would develop into the top end starting pitcher the White Sox always hoped he’d become.

He was shut down late, of course, and wound up having arthroscopic surgery on his left shoulder that kept him sidelined until June of this season. The good news for Rodon is that once he returned, he showed no signs of that injury or any other. The bad news was, well … the results. The walk rate jumped back up to more than 4 per nine innings pitched, and the strikeout rate which was always acceptably around 9 K/9, dropped considerably, and the swinging strike rate expectedly jumped along with it.

There was really no way to easily explain the struggles, which is honestly kind of a good thing. Where a dip in velocity or out-of-whack mechanics would be easy to identify, they would also be a bigger reason for concern that his shoulder surgery was proving a hindrance. That wasn’t the case at all, and the month and a half where Rodon produced good results — from July 5 through August 27 he had a 1.84 ERA in 63 2/3 innings despite just 49 strikeouts against 27 walks — showed that he can at times get by without his best stuff.

It’s that success that makes the vulnerability he’s shown that much more frustrating. We’ve seen Rodon at his best, such as the 11 strikeout, 0 walk performance against Boston last August, and although he wasn’t missing bats at a sustainable rate this season, he still showed the ability to blow mid-to-high 90s heat and his nasty, wipeout slider past hitters at times. But between those blips of success were command issues where he couldn’t find the strike zone and got pounded when he did.

For what it’s worth, both Rodon and the White Sox believe a full and healthy offseason will be part of the cure to those woes. And maybe they’re right. As of this writing, it’s expected that Rodon will enter camp next spring at 100 percent, which is something we haven’t seen in a few years. And that plus being another year removed from surgery may be exactly what helps elevate him to the level both he and the team know he can reach.

Rodon becoming a top-of-the-rotation starter is a bit factor in the White Sox rebuild living up to expectations. He still has a chance to do that, but until he puts it all together — both from a health and results standpoint —the skepticism will remain.

Lead Photo Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

It’s easy to be disappointed with the second baseman after his first full season in the majors. The former No. 1 prospect in baseball and prize of the trade that sent new World Series champion Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox has had his share of struggles through what is now 901 career plate appearances. An essentially league-average offensive season isn’t what the White Sox envisioned, and he simply hasn’t been the type of game-changing force we saw this season out of the likes of Juan Soto, Gleyber Torres, or Ronald Acuna Jr.

Simply put, it’s not what we signed up for.

Forget, though, for a second what your or the White Sox’s expectations for Moncada were two years ago. Forget that he was a No. 1 prospect, or that evaluators saw him as an elite All-Star talent capable of anchoring a lineup and competing for MVP awards, and your view might change a bit.

Moncada was a league-average hitter in 2018. Maybe a little better in the context of his position. As a 23-year-old whose shown the type of tools he possesses, that’s plenty to be excited about, because it’s clear he can still be a lot better.

Not all prospects are built the same. You can point to the aforementioned guys and a few others who came up and immediately dominated, but it doesn’t always work like that. Moncada needs to get better, but given all that we’ve seen in a year and a half, there’s plenty of reason to believe he will. He hit .235/.315/.400 with a 97 wRC+ in 2018. Across the season, he went through stretches where he mashed the ball to all fields and took walks at an elite rate. Between those stretches, he struck out too often and sometimes let his advanced eye and passive approach get the best of him.

But those stretches of greatness, his age, and the skill set he very clearly possesses outweigh the frustrations. We’ve been burned on a number of occasions by prospects who failed to live up to expectations, held back by glaring holes in their game. This is different. Even if he just cuts down a little bit on what was a league-leading strikeout total — something that his elite eye makes very much possible — he’d go from league average to legitimate asset, maybe even borderline All-Star given the position, and his gap-to-gap power has already showed up plenty in games.

This all may sound like blind optimism. I understand where the frustration lie with Moncada. You watch him play and ache for him to dominate like so many young stars have. But it’s not. Moncada was a good player in 2018, just not the type of game changer we envisioned. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of time for that.

Lead Photo Credit: Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports

Greg Infante’s Baseball Reference page is one of my favorites to look at. He threw 4 2/3 innings for the 2010 White Sox and then there’s just a huge gap before he turns up again with the 2017 White Sox. And it wasn’t because of a major injury or anything like that, Infante bid his time in the minors and worked his way back up over six years before garnering another call to the majors. It’s heart warming, really. And he wasn’t all that bad last season! Borderline good, even. 2018 was a different story. He broke camp with the team, walked eight and gave up eight runs in eight innings, and was jettisoned back to Charlotte for the duration of the season. Here’s hoping he pops up again on a major league roster sometime in 2024.

Jeanmar Gomez was your NRI pitcher du jour this season, as the journeyman who was only two years removed from saving 34 games for the Phillies (it’s true, I looked it up and everything), joined the White Sox in spring training and spent the first few months facing overmatched competition out of the bullpen for the Triple-A Charlotte Knights. He finally got the call in mid-July and was serviceable but unremarkable for the final 2 1/2 months. Did you know that Gomez got a plate appearance in the playoffs for the 2013 Pirates? I didn’t either. Huh.

Rob Scahill was kind of like Gomez but less notable in that nobody has ever really heard of him. I still haven’t heard of him. Have you? After tossing five September innings for the 2018 White Sox, he’s apparently now pitched 149 2/3 big league innings for four different teams in seven seasons. Scahill will battle with Dustin Garneau for the award of most likely player you’ll miss in the Sporcle quiz on the 2018 White Sox roster.

Jose Ruiz probably doesn’t deserve to be lumped in with this motley crew, as he’s the only of this quintet who is young and at least semi-interesting. But look, I wasn’t going to write a whole post about a reliever the White Sox picked up off waivers and threw 4 1/3 innings at the big league level, OK? Ruiz was actually really good at Double-A Birmingham this season and needed to be on the 40-man roster in order to avoid being eligible for the Rule 5 draft in December, so that’s the main reason he got big league time in September. At 24, he’s an interesting enough relief candidate next season and in the future for the White Sox to keep around.

Lead Photo Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

The first one is nice. Lopez made it through his first full season as a starting pitcher and did mostly fine. He threw 188 innings and posted a 3.91 ERA. It’s the type of season where you can look back at his Baseball Reference page in a few years, see his 2018 line, and go “that was a fine year year by Lopez.” It was the epitome of “OK.”

This is particularly true when you consider where Lopez was coming into the season. Of all the at or near-major league ready pitchers the White Sox have, Lopez’s ceiling was the lowest, or at least the expectations for him were. Lucas Giolito was a former top prospect. Michael Kopech is one now. Carlos Rodon is only a few years removed from being the No. 3 pick in the draft. Lopez had some pedigree, but always measured behind those three on the excitement index. He was the guy who got the “probably a reliever” tag more than anyone.

By the end of the year Lopez was the only guy left standing, at least metaphorically. Giolito struggled mightily, Kopech got hurt, and Rodon was hurt and then struggled mightily. Lopez had a few rough patches, but he got through the season without embarrassing himself or getting hurt. Given the season the White Sox as a whole had, that’s a win!

Outside of the context of the White Sox season, however, Lopez’s future is much less clear. The reality is that there was very little that happened this season that makes you any more confident he can become the type of starting pitcher the White Sox envisioned when they acquired him in the Adam Eaton deal two years ago. The ERA was nice, yes, but behind it was a 4.63 FIP and 5.65 DRA that portends a whole lot of luck in that 3.91 figure. His cFIP of 122 does not predict a lot of future success, and the rate stats — particularly the 7.2 K/9 — don’t leave a lot of room for optimism.

Lopez’s future could still very well be in the rotation. It’s likely, however, that our expectations should maybe shift to that of a back-end starter, which still has value even if it would be something of a disappointment. At the very least, Lopez’s 2018 bought him another year in the rotation to prove it — one way or the other.

Lead Photo Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

The bad news is that he pitched only 30 innings.

Jones has been in the White Sox organization since 2007. That makes him far and away the longest tenured player on the team. He burst onto the scene in 2012 and was really good. In 2013 he was quite good, and in 2016 he was great. The problem for Jones, as you very well know, is that those are the only three seasons where Jones was able to stay healthy. 2018 was his seventh year with the White Sox. In 2012, 2013, and 2016, he combined to toss 220 innings and strike out 234. In 2014, 2015, 2017, and now 2018, he’s combined to throw 60 2/3 innings.

The 2018 Jones injury was a pronate muscle strain that kept him out from early June through early September. It was the kind of thing that had a very “here we go again” feel to it. The White Sox the last two years have entered the seasons with a few good bullpen pieces that were ripe for the picking by contending teams come the trade deadline, and center among them was Jones, particularly after a 2016 season in which Jones came back from Tommy John surgery and a 16-month absence and looked virtually the same as he did beforehand. But after now two straight seasons in which he’s missed considerable time, it’s safe to dub him nothing more than a question mark until proven otherwise.

In his 30 innings of work in 2018, the results were nothing special, but he didn’t exactly show any signs of the wear and tear one might expect from the injuries he’s suffered. The velocity and movement on his occasionally devastating sinker/slider combo fell right in line with his career averages, so while his walk rate was up considerably from his last fully healthy season, there’s nothing about the performance that screams “this guy is toast.”

Which is to say, we’ll likely see more of Jones going forward. His three-year, $8 million deal that ran through 2018 includes a number of team options, including $4.65 million in 2019. That’s not nearly enough for the White Sox to walk away from a potential bullpen asset, even with the injury risks, especially when you consider how few financial commitments they have in 2019 at the moment.

When healthy, Jones is about as steady as they come in terms of non-closer, but still reliable bullpen options (although I suppose he could still close and did a few times in 2018). He also represents yet another trade asset should the White Sox woes continue … say it with me: If he’s healthy.

Lead Photo Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

Things didn’t go quite as planned, of course. Castillo got an 80-game suspension for taking a banned substance, and Narvaez emerged as a surprising offensive plus with Smith serving as a competent if flawed backup. That trio did wind up catching the vast majority of the innings for the 2018 White Sox, but two other guys took turns behind the plate.

Alfredo Gonzalez and Dustin Garneau combined to take 12 major league trips to the plate in 2018 and caught 31 innings behind the plate. Gonzalez came up for one game following Castillo’s suspension only because Smith was still on the Triple-A disabled list and not yet ready to join the team. Garneau came up for three games later in the season when Smith went on paternity leave.

The White Sox acquired Gonzalez from the Astros in 2016 based on the strength of his defense. The problem is, he hasn’t hit enough to warrant promotion. In his first full season with the organization, he hit .208/.306/.301 in Double-A Birmingham. This season, he hit a more respectable .298/.342/.413 in Birmingham but only .193/.288/.211 at Triple-A Charlotte. Catchers are weird, so even though he’s 26, there’s still at least a non-zero chance Gonzalez figures it out with the bat to the point where his defense can become an asset at the major league level, but right now he remains just outside the fringe.

Garneau was selected off waivers from the Oakland Athletics just a few weeks before he made his debut with the team. At now 31 and with previous cups of coffee in the majors with both the A’s and Rockies, he’s pretty much the epitome of the fringe major league teams keep around for positional depth. His three-game appearance on the major league roster was exactly the point of having players like him around. He was outrighted off the 40-man roster after the season.

Lead Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports