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.

Pressed into starting duty after Welington Castillo’s PED suspension, Narváez broke out on offense. Omar had always been reliable for an above-average OBP with exceptionally little power but managed to raise his SLG almost .090 points from his 2017 numbers, ending the season with nine home runs and a .275/.366/.429 slash line. Unfortunately, he combines that approach at the plate with being one of the worst receivers in baseball both in terms of framing and blocking.

The Mariners traded for Colomé last May, obtaining the former All-Star from Tampa in yet another of the Rays arcane trade attempts to put together the most efficient team to miss the playoffs by 7 or more games. Colomé saved 84 games for Tampa from 2016-17 and pitched well for Seattle as a set-up man after the trade last season, striking out 3.77 hitters for every one he walked over 46.1 IP. He relies almost exclusively on a  low-90s cutter and a mid-90s four-seamer though he does also have a changeup he’ll throw maybe 5 times a season as well.

What does this mean for the roster and the immediate future of the White Sox? Colomé won’t hit free agency until after the 2020 season and likely slots in as the closer for next year’s team as he currently might just be the best reliever on the team. The Sox need improvement from the bullpen this season and unless he gets injured or completely loses his mechanics (which could happen because pitchers are pitchers), this helps shore up that weakness a good deal. Everyone other reliever becomes a bit more palatable when they’re moved down the ladder one rung.

As for catcher, I wouldn’t expect anything big happening. Yasmani Grandal is a free agent and would be a great addition to a team that’s contention window could begin early if management wanted to make some splashes this winter, but I don’t really see it happening. Seby Zavala was just added to the 40-man and I’d be pretty surprised to see Rick Hahn & Co. relegate Castillo to the bench with how much he’s being paid. That being said, trading your reliable backup catcher with four years left of team control for a good reliever with only two years does hint towards moving into the bolstering the major league roster portion of the rebuilding phase.

At the time, I wrote leaving Clarkin exposed was a logical move.  At this point, it’s hard to imagine he has the durability to start, let alone effectively, limiting him to relief, and it’s not clear he will be very good in the next year or two, if ever.  Now, just a few days later losing him on waivers, the White Sox claimed Clarkin back off waivers and the 40-man roster now stands at 39.

Regardless of what you think about Clarkin in a vacuum, this makes leaving Spencer Adams unprotected look even stranger.  Everything from public evaluations to pedigree to statistics to health to age to proximity to the majors…well, Adams seems to be better than Clarkin in just about every way.  I suppose Clarkin is left-handed?  And yet here we are.

Perhaps, for whatever reason, the White Sox have decided the most important thing in the universe is now having left-handed relievers.  Hahn cited it as an area of need while he was in the process of acquiring a number of southpaw relievers in the second half of the season.

But as I originally pointed out—Clarkin is now behind at least Jace Fry, Aaron Bummer (pictured above) and Caleb Frare, arguably Kodi Medeiros, and there may be more to like about Hunter Schryver than Clarkin now.  You can never have too many relievers and there are problems with all of those other guys, but I still cannot figure out why Clarkin gets a spot and Adams doesn’t.  There must be something here we don’t know about, because with the information we have this doesn’t really make sense.

Lead Image Credit: Ray Carlin-USA TODAY Sports

So far so good.

Two things caught White Sox fans’ eye on the heels of the announcement:

1) The press release said it left the White Sox’ 40-man roster at 38 rather than the 39 fans counted.  The mystery was subsequently solved, as it was announced Ian Clarkin was claimed by the Cubs on waivers.  Clarkin was one of the supplementary pieces acquired in the Blake Rutherford deal with the Yankees.  He’ll turn 24 before the 2019 season starts, and between injuries and ineffectiveness he has yet to conquer Double-A after six years in pro ball, most recently posting a K:BB ratio just a shade over 1.00 in Birmingham.  A well regarded prospect once upon a time, it was understandable the White Sox would want to see if they could get him healthy and back on track.  The Cubs will have to see if they can pull it off.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a solid lefty reliever one day, but even if you knew he could be that in a year or two, just among lefty relievers on the organizational depth chart Clarkin would come in behind Jace Fry, Aaron Bummer, Caleb Frare, and Medeiros at a minimum.

2) A notable omission from 40-man protection was Spencer Adams.  Some outlets believed the White Sox had a steal when they took Adams in the second round of the 2014 draft, and the highly athletic prep arm has climbed all the way to Triple-A, pounding the zone relentlessly along the way.  Even if the control (i.e. not walking people as opposed to command) has been very good, and that has yielded some solid ERAs along the way, he has yet to show he can miss bats consistently, and scouts said he looked stiffer in 2018.  Still, this author, at the very least, thought he would be added to the 40-man roster, given that some were very excited about him not too long ago, and his proximity to the majors.

That said, the Rule 5 draft is an easy source of fear.  It plays on all of our concerns about losing talent for the low price of a 40-man spot, particularly if a player lost in such a way were to go off and become something significant.  But, the White Sox have been good about this of late.  Some began making concerned noises when Jordan Guerrero and Jake Peter were exposed to Rule 5 last year only for neither of them to get taken.  There’s a good chance Adams makes it past Rule 5 and just returns to Charlotte next season, and hopefully he takes a step forward and reaches his potential as a back end starter with the White Sox, or polishes himself up into a nice trade chip. Or, if he does get taken, there’s reason to believe the White Sox have a basis to decide it’s a loss they are willing to stomach.

And, this leaves room for them to make other additions, or even claim someone they like even better in the Rule 5 draft themselves.

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.

Instead, Shields unsurprisingly got worse. It’s almost like moving a pitcher who is struggling in San Diego while getting to face pitchers isn’t going to thrive on the South Side in a league that happens to feature the designated hitter. Who would have thunk it? We all remember how things went after that. Shields fell apart, giving up 31 home runs in only 114.1 innings and the team cratered with him. Sale and Adam Eaton were shipped out for prospect bonanzas mere months later and the White Sox were finally entering the first honest rebuild of our lifetimes. Johnson got hurt and likely won’t matter. Tatis wound up developing into A Guy and a global level prospect that would be right up there with Eloy Jimenez as a crown jewel in the system. Whoops!

Shields became a punching bag for Sox fans and his 2017 follow-up, while an improvement, was still terrible. The anger and resentment continued to grow despite the Padres kicking in enough money that his contract wasn’t actually that burdensome (and the fact that the Sox weren’t going to be spending money on any major contracts any time soon making the anger very misplaced). 2018 was going to be the season of the young gun pitchers with Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez each throwing their first full major league seasons and Rodon coming back from injury. The bullpen would have to cover more innings for the youngsters meaning someone had to soak up innings on the roster and who better to provide veteran sponge-manship than Shields?

To his credit, Shields wore it well. From all credible reports, he embraced the absolute hell out of his new role as positive veteran mentor and did his part. Yes, he was still below league average but only slightly so this year (93 ERA+). Is basically league-average what the Sox thought they were getting when they traded for him? No. Of course not. But on a 100 loss team, 204.2 innings of such skill are pretty valuable. Yes, Shields led the AL in losses but he threw 16 more innings than anyone else on the team during a season in which his main goal could charitably be described as “please throw at least five innings a night”. And he did it!

I wouldn’t be shocked to see the Sox work out a deal with Shields to come back next season even after not picking up his option this winter. There are still innings needing to be eaten and he’s clearly comfortable with the role and the team. The initial trade was a failure, that can’t be denied. But barring some big moves this winter, next season won’t be about contention and the team could certainly do worse.

None of this is fatal to The Rebuild, of course.  Part of the plan, after all, was to stockpile a massive arsenal of prospects such that you don’t need everything to go perfectly to have a path to contention.  So, when 2018 stalled out, the natural conclusion was to shift the first year where the White Sox might want to try to contend from 2019 to 2020.  And maybe the next year the White Sox can make the playoffs actually is 2020, but that doesn’t mean the White Sox shouldn’t make major moves in free agency right now. To consider:

1.  The obvious contenders in the American League next year are the reigning World Series champion Red Sox, the Yankees, and the Houston Astros.  The A’s and Rays had a good number of positive performances which may be tough to repeat, but it’s fair to say they have a puncher’s chance as well.  The rest of the AL is either in full rebuild (Kansas City, Detroit, Texas, Baltimore,  Toronto) or in some sort of limbo after suffering a setback year (Angels, Twins).  You’ll notice I’m omitting the Cleveland Indians and Seattle Mariners from this discussion.  Over the past few days, these Win Now teams have been making a lot of noise about trimming payroll or even going into full rebuilds.

As with every rumor, particularly dramatic ones like these, it is safe to assume they are nothing more than just rumors until you see actions to match the talk.  Still, the Mariners were already an old team that has yet to actually crack the playoffs, and it’s hard to see a path to getting significantly better from here.  They wildly outperformed their run differential to post 89 wins (with a 77-win pythag) on the back of extreme good fortune in 1-run games, largely thanks to a truly herculean effort from Edwin Diaz fronting what looks like career years from a whole lot of no name relievers.  Nelson Cruz is a free agent. Robinson Cano has been gently declining as he is now closer to 40 than 30. And, while Jean Segura, James Paxton, and Mitch Haniger are very nice players still in their 20s, the latter two are brittle, and collectively aren’t enough to drag a lackluster surrounding cast to the promised land.  They have a creative front office, but this team as currently composed may very well be out of gas, and accordingly they have announced almost everyone on the roster is for sale.

Cleveland also features a stars-and-scrubs construction at the tail end of a contention window.  Unlike Seattle, their stars are a whole lot more impactful — Jose Ramirez, Francisco Lindor, Corey Kluber, and even Trevor Bauer rate at or near the absolute tops of their positions in all of baseball — and also unlike Seattle they have been rattling off division titles, albeit in a much weaker division.  But Cleveland is now mewling lamely about payroll, even apparently complaining about having to pay the absolute bargain Kluber his Cy Young Award bonuses.  There’s even some fire to go with this smoke.  They refused to make a qualifying offer to Michael Brantley, their only good outfielder in 2018.  And, even if they don’t sell guys like Kluber or Carlos Carrasco as reported they are willing to do, the team is going to take on some water next year.  Edwin Encarnacion is finally looking like age is getting the best of him, and mainstays Cody Allen and Andrew Miller are likely going elsewhere in free agency.

All that said, Cleveland underperformed their run differential last year and they’re clearly still the best team in the division by a long shot.  But, if they actually follow through and trade pieces like Kluber and Carrasco, they crash back that much closer to the AL Central pack.

Yes, you still have to bid against NL teams for free agents, but the American League, particularly in the AL Central specifically, at this moment, may be wide open.

2. This free agent class is different.  Some of the shine is off it as Clayton Kershaw and Charlie Blackmon wound up extending and other free agents — like Miller, for instance — aren’t quite as shiny as they looked even six months ago. But, Manny Machado and Bryce Harper are both still there.  It is my position the White Sox should sign both by outbidding everyone else, or, failing that, push all of their chips in on Harper specifically.

With the caveat that any super rich team can come out of nowhere and sign someone — the Diamondbacks aren’t even one of the powerhouses and they swooped in with the high bid on Zack Greinke, for instance — not only are these two free agents huge outliers in both talent and age, the market for Harper in particular is less sanguine than it might have been under normal circumstances.  Part of that is him having one of his “down” years (.249/.393/.496) in his walk year, but part of that is weird circumstances that have cropped up.  Yeah, you can always make room for Harper, but the Yankees’ corner outfielders are Aaron Judge and they unexpectedly were able to add Giancarlo Stanton thanks to Project Wolverine.  Similarly, I had long thought the Nationals were being underrated as a candidate for Harper’s services, but then Juan Soto basically turned into Bryce Harper II in front of our eyes, and if a Nationals organization who has lost most free agent wars they’ve been in as they desperately try to get everyone to take deferred salary wants to play it safe, they can lose Harper and still potentially roll out with three All-Star outfielders anyway.  The Cubs were long considered a candidate for Harper’s services but now they are murmuring about trimming payroll too!

Machado will likely have more suitors, as the ability to cover shortstop and third makes him suitable for more teams than the corner-limited Harper, but some of the same payroll factors — Boston is probably tapped out although watch them sign both these guys anyway — or weird cheapness might drag his salary back into the realm of reality.

And all of this brings us back to the White Sox.

I will never bet on this team to spend until I see it. Historically, that’s just not what they do. To be fair, full teardown rebuilds, outbidding the field for guys like Luis Robert, or drafting highly touted Scott Boras clients like Carlos Rodon weren’t moves in the organization’s history either. But for all that you can talk about how stockpiling a million prospects helps you replenish your major league roster internally with depth — true! — the whole point of homegrown players is they’re cheap.  You’re paying Yoan Moncada $550,000 a year to be a league average second baseman* instead of $10 million or whatever for Asdrubal Cabrera. If you repeat that all over the roster, as the White Sox intend to do, it would seem, then that should free up a ton of money to supplement the roster elsewhere.

*Yes obviously he should be a better player than this, but for now bear with me.

To that end, the White Sox currently have an estimated $54.5 million in payroll commitments for 2019 right now and $5.75 million in commitments for 2020.  They could sign both Machado and Harper to $35 million a year deals and their opening day payroll would still have ranked 18th in the majors last year.  They could give them each $40 million a year and still be right about where their payroll was in 2011. You can non-tender Avisail Garcia and save another ~$8.5 million if you need to to get it done.  And, because of their age and skill sets, you don’t need to get good right away to get good value on their contracts.  They’re likely to still be very good in 2020, or 2022, or 2024. And yeah, their contracts will ultimately be riddled with opt outs, and injuries and underperformance can happen, and EVERYONE wants to sign these guys, but the stars are aligning and fate is reaching out its hand.

The White Sox have the ability to back up the Brinks truck to both of their homes as much as anybody, and given just how much payroll room they have, should be able to outbid anyone. Whether they have the will to do so is another question, but they have the ability to do so.

If the overwhelming majority of teams in the majors are in some version of a rebuild that means the market inefficiency is to go for it.  You’ve already acquired virtually all of prospects you’re going to acquire by selling pieces from the major league roster.  These are the guys you’re going to try to win with. The next free agent class does not offer anything near this type of opportunity.  You can sign these contracts and still have room to do more to shore up the fringes of the roster, which, by the way, should be supplemented by the future of the team you have already committed to. Ironically, for this franchise, the White Sox are currently choked to the gills with 1-2 WARP players and don’t seem to have a star anywhere on the roster (yet) and have a pipeline of potential stars but also potential spare parts. You can plop two 26-year-olds onto the roster who have posted multiple 5-7 WARP seasons and, in Harper, a guy who posted an 11.2 WARP season in 2015.

Even moderate internal improvement from potential stars like Anderson and Moncada (and throw in Jimenez etc. while we’re at it) and modest other moves on the periphery and that would immediately put the team’s win expectation in the low-to-mid 80s with room for more.  The division is already there for the taking and may be getting even more up-for-grabs, and the White Sox are uniquely positioned to exploit this unique opportunity.  If they don’t get one of these two guys, you are that much more reliant on what’s in house turning into gold or having to trade good pieces away to get something back. Why bother when you can use the freely available resources you have in surplus to just add two MVP candidates just entering their primes to your core?

I don’t claim to be some sort of savant for suggesting “pay the most money to the best free agents” but you could not draw up a better situation for the White Sox given their current situation.

Hell. Trade for James Paxton while you’re at it.

Lead Image Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports

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