The Sox are fully embracing a rebuild for the first time in my lifetime. And while the White Flag Trade will forever live in infamy (and undeservedly so), no trade in franchise history has ever quite signified the admittance of giving up as trading Chris Sale to Boston did last winter. It was the right move for a team that had been treading water so long that the lactic acid was about to finally sink them, but it still stung like hell. Even in the lean times, you at least knew you were going to get to watch Sale, the most talented Sox pitcher since the Deadball Era, throw every fifth day. That always made things a little easier.

And it’s not like the team hadn’t tried to build contenders around him. They did. They traded for veterans and post-hype prospects. They grabbed pitchers off the scrapheap and signed lumbering sluggers and expensive closers and tried almost everything except drafting the young talent necessary to building a contender if you don’t have the willingness to spend like a top five payroll team, or spending as though they were in a contention window. And that was the major problem. The Sox were able to land what should have been a dominant core and was. But there was no support staff. Stars and scrubs doesn’t work. So Rick Hahn had to make the hard decision and trade away the likely 2017 Cy Young Award winner.

Which is the complete opposite decision the Seattle Mariners have made with Hernandez. Hernandez debuted to absurd and accurate fanfare as a 19-year-old phenom in 2005. Since then he’s won a Cy Young Award, thrown a perfect game, and pitched exactly 0.0 postseason innings. He was one of the most overpowering pitchers in the American League for more than a decade and put up a borderline Hall of Fame career, yet has only seen his teams finish above .500 four times in 13 seasons. The Mariners have made the same basic moves as the White Sox; trading for players to bolster the roster, signing aging sluggers, and drafting disappointing collegiate middle infielders. But every summer and every winter, the Mariners refused to trade their wunderkid in a move that would have easily brought back three to five top 100 prospects. King Felix is now old (well, 31), expensive, and less effective. The trade window is cemented shut and it looks like Seattle will extend their MLB-longest playoff drought to a 16th consecutive season.

There’s no guarantee that the prospects Chicago got back for Sale will pan out. Or the ones they got for Adam Eaton or most recently Jose Quintana. The White Sox haven’t made the playoffs since 2008 and won’t for the next season or two at least. But by biting the bullet and making the unpopular move, they’ve given themselves the chance at a brighter future that won’t involve sadly watching a franchise legend toil in obscurity.

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The first parameter is that a robot is obviously going to be very good at baseball. Programmed to be entertainingly athletic, invulnerable to imperfections of the rotting meat sacks that house our souls, there would theoretically be no stopping the robot if it were operating at its highest setting. The caveat is that a robot in Major League Baseball would not want to be detected. I have not had the time to review the entirety of the new Collective Bargaining Agreement, but surely Tony Clark & Co. made sure to include some language about not being replaced by an army of A.I. players at some juncture. This means that the player would be incredibly athletic, likely precise in his actions and good at baseball, but likely with some glaring flaws included so as to not garner suspicion, or just because the robot player manufacturing contract was awarded to the lowest bidder.

Avisail Garcia could not possibly be a robot. A robot would come with programmed knowledge of the strike zone, and Garcia…well, you get where I am going with this. There’s no way that Melky Cabrera could be a robot because he shows far too much emotion. When was the last time you saw a robot fall down at the most random times for no reason at all? Yeah, that’s what I thought.

Adam Eaton and Chris Sale cannot be the White Sox robot because they aren’t on the White Sox. Seriously, I’m fine with that. Don’t worry about me at all. Todd Frazier isn’t the robot because robots don’t like jazz. It’s a scientific fact. None of the guys in the bullpen are robots because I said so. Especially Nate Jones. There’s no way a robot would tear its UCL.

A robot would not give up 500 home runs in the same season. It would be ludicrous, and even if it did, it would not involve so much grunting. Therefore, James Shields is not the robot. Carlos Rodon isn’t the robot because I refuse to believe that a robot could be that beautiful. Now that we’ve played a sufficient game of process of elimination, we are left with a few candidates to be the White Sox robot. Mainly, Jose Quintana and Tim Anderson.

Quintana could be the robot because of his inhuman ability to put his pitches exactly where he wants them. In a world of pitchers with great stuff and no control, Jose Quintana has pinpoint accuracy. It’s simply not natural and highly suspicious. Does he have command, or is he executing commands?

His flaws, occasionally hanging a breaking ball and giving up a run or two, are enough to divert attention away from him. Not to mention that perhaps he has convinced the entire team (through mind control perhaps??) to prevent him from getting wins. To a smart robot, pitcher wins are dumb and pointless. Thus, it would serve as a great diversion from the fact that he’s a magnificently talented robot pitcher. Getting busted as a teenager for PEDs; another great diversion. Although all of this serves as a great argument for Quintana being the White Sox robot, I don’t believe it is him.

The White Sox robot is Tim Anderson. Up until a few years ago he wasn’t even programmed to play baseball, but since being rewired he has risen to the big leagues in a short amount of time, evidence of a high processing speed. His dazzling athleticism has been on display and he even showed some shocking power in 2016. Despite being a professional baseball player with a beautiful family, Anderson appears incapable of cracking a smile. Seriously, he’s dead inside, or just whirring inside, softly, while a fan keeps his innards from overheating.

Anderson has the glaring weakness of striking out a bit too often and literally never taking a walk. A robot would certainly have a great knowledge of the strike zone and ability to identify pitches. However, it would be too suspicious if he was walking at Barry Bonds rates, as even Barry Bonds walking at Barry Bonds rates was suspicious. Besides, the goal of a robot would be entertainment and research. Would it be more entertaining to see if a robot could be programmed to swing at and hit every single pitch no matter what, or for it to get on base and be stranded at second over and over. Instead, our robot uses his immense knowledge to pinpoint exactly how to crush every pitch with the barrel of his bat.

This coming season for the White Sox will be full of misfortune and failures. It may at times be completely unwatchable. There will be hilarious blunders that bring levity. There will be frustration at monotonous losing. There will be tears as Sale wins 25 games for a Boston crowd more concerned if they gave up too much surplus value in the trade. White Sox fans can rest easy, however, in knowing that the middle infield will be manned by a robot and a Greek god for many years to come.

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But assessing where the Sox stand and how their system will look like moving forward feels empty with the third major piece of their teardown–and countless secondary ones–still lingering and dangling over our heads for nearly a month now. Both Yoan Moncada and Luis Basabe are going to strike out a ton in 2017 and inspire a bunch of misplaced anxiety, and why worry about it now when there are still sweet, sweet trades to be pulled?

Jon Heyman dropped a big notes column this week, but instead of updates about the Sox selling off the best player on their roster for more prospects, he mentioned them as potential buyers amid a strangely stacked first base market. Specifically, he described them as “eying things from a comfortable distance, with the possibility to jump in.” That would seem to line up with the idea as using up a 1B/DH slot on a veteran reclamation project or trade chip rather than just org filler. If the market is crowded and inexpensive enough, this could be a very nice use of financial resources they won’t be using elsewhere.

For any actual Jose Quintana chatter this week we are left to tweets from the USA Today’s Bob Nightengale, which mostly serves to retroactively reaffirm that there was discussion with the Yankees and Pirates. These kind of leaks can often be posturing, and the New York Post’s Joel Sherman, shot down the idea that the Yankees were trying to get a Quintana and David Robertson together.

As bizarre as it is to consider them on the same plane, the Yankees and Pirates, both are cost-conscious, possible contenders who would be more interested in adding a long-term asset like Quintana than a veteran on an expiring contract, and have the prospect depth to make the deal work (this is also true for the Astros). We’ve already discussed the Pirates triumvirate of Austin Meadows, Tyler Glasnow and Josh Bell, and the Yankees could headline a package with some selections of Gleyber Torres, Clint Frazier and Jorge Mateo, but we’re entering 2017 with no clear idea of their willingness to do so. Robertson going to a team that already has Aroldis Chapman and Dellin Betances always seemed kind of unusual, but can serve as a useful reminders that relief help is coveted pretty much anywhere. Perhaps the most important note in here is mentioning the Sox likely eating money in a Robertson deal. Taking on salary in order to increase the strength of the prospect return is absolutely an advantage to rebuilding they should be utilizing, and again, would have been well-served to do in 2013.

Even if it’s just a repeat of last offseason at this point, crossing over into the new year with markets for major trades and free agents still developing is still surreal. But Quintana and Robertson’s exoduses seem way more imminent than some of the more time-limited Sox assets. When the Dodgers re-signed Justin Turner, it erased the obvious interested party for Todd Frazier‘s likely expensive 2017 services (estimated $13.5 million). Without an obvious third base hole on a contender, Frazier is stuck amid a glut of bats, and coming off a down year. Eating some salary on him seems very necessary to facilitating a pre-season move, but the Dodgers’ reported disinterest in losing prospects even on the level of right-hander Walker Buehler in trades probably was prohibitive for a Sox pursuit of massive prospect returns.

Buzz for Melky Cabrera and Brett Lawrie has been non-existent, not that they are the type who would be breathlessly reported on at this stage. Cabrera was an above-average switch-hitting bat in 2016, although decidedly below-average defensively, and while Lawrie is hardly a Gold Glove candidate at second base, being able to cover there at all with a near-league average bat means neither of these are toxic assets. A third of the league being obvious rebuilders cuts the legs out of the trade market, and half the league being aghast at the idea of absorbing salary is a further hindrance. Bad money is a bigger anathema than bad product these days.

Jose Abreu has not been mentioned anywhere since some initial conversations with the Rockies that took place before their bizarre signing of Ian Desmond, possibly as a first baseman. The Rockies’ actions being completely inscrutable always means the window is open for a deal, but “the crazy people might do anything” is little comfort.

The lack of action on Nate Jones is probably the most confounding element of this bizarre offseason to me. He outperformed Robertson last year significantly, is vastly less expensive and secured long-term on incredibly team-friendly terms, and if the Sox are fencing Chris Sale and Adam Eaton, and considering dealing Quintana, a reliever over 30 with a Tommy John surgery in his history is the last person they should be clinging to during both a rebuild and a boom in the value of relievers.

This increasingly slow market is due to pick up again once the new year gets started and could make all of these concerns foolish, but most of the hope for a swift teardown, where every Sox asset of value would be easily swapped for a prospect bounty have been left behind in Maryland. It’s too soon to bemoan the Sox notoriously aggressive approach to trade negotiations for prospects, but easier to envision a world where it becomes an issue.

Lead Image Credit: Matt Marton // USA Today Sports Images

Two things burned both these previous efforts to build a winner : total flops out the gate from Adam LaRoche, Samardzija and Cabrera, along with mediocrity from Robertson, and more predictable failings for more budget-conscious options like relying on Avisail Garcia, Micah Johnson and Carlos Sanchez, Austin Jackson, Jimmy Rollins, the catcher platoon, etc.

Hahn needed immediate returns after his owner pushed him to build a competitor and was burned both short-term and long-term when it failed, but now is taming an entirely different animal, and if it seems like it’s a significantly easier process, it’s probably just because the Sox are making it look that way so far.

First, during a buy period, the Sox are pressured to move quickly due to a lack of available resources and competing bids. While selling, Hahn referred explicitly to a practice of setting a minimum price for his trade assets and sticking to it, which has served them explicitly well in a barren market for centerfielders and position players in general, in which the Nationals were willing to dump all their top pitching prospects rather than pay whatever exorbitant deal Dexter Fowler just received.

Second, while pairing the mechanically unstable Samardzija with Don Cooper turned into a season-altering disaster, a mass rebuild has allowed him to continue to collect high-ceiling arms with messy deliveries, accepting large quantities of risk in Michael Kopech, Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez for the chance of someone hitting their ceiling and replacing the top-end of the rotation.

Third, whereas the tactic of waiting to upgrade questionable spots on the roster at the deadline, after meaningful games had already been lost, was a source of frustration, the Sox sell-off is under no deadline. Jose Quintana‘s four remaining years of control make his value almost impossibly massive, Jose Abreu‘s value if anything would be better served by a hot start after the current glut of first base/designated hitter options clears up, and even Cabrera and Lawrie, despite being on expiring deals, might be easier to deal mid-season as league-average fallback options to replace an injured or underperforming first option.

Only Frazier probably needs to be moved before the season to avoid a significant value drop, and fittingly his deal might be waiting on the Justin Turner market to settle, as the Sox are again positioned against a limited free agent class. Even David Robertson is drawing trade interest from playoff contenders who might be left out of the bidding for Kenley Jansen, even though it seems like his value is at a nadir at the moment.

Everyone knows that the White Sox are selling, and willing and eager to move anything to start their next stage now, and it will be interesting how their impressive returns are affected by dealing something less than a cost-controlled All-Star that they had no pressure to trade. The Sox would not be in this position if they did not have depressed assets.

But Hahn is removed from all the difficult parameters that hampered the last two years, and coincidentally is being lauded for his skills again. Only a handful of these trades, and not even the most important ones, have their leverage altered by a timeline, and they only need to start the rebuild, rather than account for all the holes in the Sox infrastructure on their own. Maybe Hahn always looks best after a big deal, when the public value of the players involved looked lopsided and there’s no whiff yet of the team fitting together on the field and delivering the expected wins. That’ll fit just fine, because for the next couple of years, finding value is the job, and the wins will just have to wait.

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The Eaton trade is what makes this week a winner for the White Sox. Rumors had been circling around Sale for weeks, and his departure seemed inevitable once it was clear the Sox would not be pushing for a winner in 2017. Moreover, Sale did not preclude the White Sox from a limited teardown; an attempt to fence their most valuable trade chip for major league-ready prospects to win alongside the rest of their core, possibly as soon as 2018. While maybe that approach would hold some appeal over being aggressively terrible on the major league level for at least two seasons, it would require the same ultra-precision in all their moves, something that has eluded the Sox in their median-budget bids to compete the last two years.

Under that guise, taking Yoan Moncada, and his high strikeout rate, and Michael Kopech, and his likely relief trajectory, would be worrisome and risky selections, even if their high ceilings made them good prospect value for Sale. That the Sox reportedly turned aside a package from Washington centered around the more contact-oriented Victor Robles only heightened anxiety about some of the odds these new prospects face.

But all those concerns were wiped away by second rich crop from the Eaton deal. First, it indicated a larger, more aggressive rebuild, one that would take advantage of the Sox’ position as uniquely loaded sellers. Second, the White Sox were immediately credited with pulling off a heist against the Nationals, as a package of right-handers Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez and Dane Dunning was only a small step down from the offer they got from for Sale. It’s not as though the value they received for Sale was bad, it’s just that it’s hard to calibrate what would be an overpay for one of the most valuable players ever dealt in recent memory, and any suitor was hard-pressed to meet the Sox asking price. Eaton’s deal provided the first hard confirmation that the Sox will actually benefit from the seller’s market that was anticipated

Finally, the Eaton deal makes the Sale return look better. Taking chances on high-ceiling, risky prospects is welcome during a high-volume rebuild where there will be plenty of other options if one or two, or even five guys don’t reach their potential. Kopech is a fun arm to watch if you don’t need to worry about the team falling apart if he doesn’t throw 200 innings in a couple years, Moncada staying strikeout-prone is only a tragedy if he’s the only offensive upgrade coming. A full-tilt rebuild allows the Sox to stack value without worrying about immediate fits, and it’s frankly a little liberating.

This was always going to be the easiest time for accepting the reality of a rebuild; when deals are being made and new shiny prospects are being added. The grueling reality will set in, probably some time in Spring Training, that the major league product will lag at the back of the pack for a long time. But the Sox have jumped in and provided a compelling vision for the future, a bevy of young talent to be excited about even while the major league roster is used as a clearinghouse for fringe-level guys who wouldn’t get chances to play for teams that are trying to win now; which might actually wind up being fun in its own way, if you don’t look at the scoreboard.

I didn’t agree with the decision for the White Sox to sell. I still believe it will be difficult for them to surpass the talent level of their previous core, and that being willing to expand into the top-third in the league in payroll will likely be necessary during their next contention window. But this is the plan now, and there’s a lot of confidence to be taken out of how well it’s being executed.

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All of the good players you’ve grown attached to over the past few seasons are soon to be in confusing new uniforms, in horrible foreign cities like Boston, Denver and Washington D.C. It’s likely to be the longest and least interesting season of White Sox baseball you’ve ever experienced, somehow featuring more Avisail Garcia than the FDA should legally allow.

But not all hope is lost. As a good number of you are well aware, my second favorite sports team is the Illinois Fighting Illini football team because I am a man incapable of true happiness. But a lifetime of watching Illinois football listlessly change course every five years in an increasingly quixotic attempt to become something better, while losing rivalry games to Purdue and Northwestern has prepared me wonderfully for watching the White Sox tank towards ultimate glory. I’m here now to help you through these dark times with helpful hints and suggestions.

1. Ironically adopt a new favorite player

Sure, Garcia has done nothing but break hearts and sow seeds of disappointment over the past 1,600 or so odd plate appearances, but this is the year he finally puts it all together. Batting clean-up. While you cry.

2. Drink heavily

Do you know how many good beers there are in the world now? Like, a billion! Many are even on sale a Guaranteed Rate Field! You could try a new one every night and still not run out of options until well after the All-Star Break. Or maybe you like wine (you weirdo). There are at least three different types of wine and you could drink them all. What a world!

3. Develop other hobbies to distract yourself

You’re going to find that you’ll still turn the games on, but only pay a marginal amount of attention to what is actually happening on your screen. Maybe you only pay attention when Tim Anderson hits, or runs, or is just on screen in some form, and that’s fine. You can use the rest of your attention on developing new skills. Maybe you’ll exercise more during baseball games. Maybe you’ll write free-form poetry. Maybe you’ll create 8-bit versions of your favorite fictional characters out of Perler beads. The possibilities are endless now that your evenings are semi-freed up!

4. Embrace the dark void in your soul where good baseball use to be

Try not to do this one too often. Good luck.

5. Learn fun things about the White Sox’s farm system

There are a bunch of teams with non-silly names that you will now care far more about than you ever thought possible. The Sox traditionally haven’t had much happening in the minors and you could be forgiven for only looking at one or two players per team. That’s about to change in a very good and interesting way.

6. Spend more time with family and loved ones

They miss you. Call them more, you selfish oaf.

7. Realize how much time you’ve spent watching a once rudderless team finally decide to do the right thing and get quite mad about it

Once more, don’t do this one too often. You’ll need sucrulfate and that stuff tastes terrible.

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The White Sox sent Adam Eaton to the Washington Nationals on Wednesday for a trio of prospects, according to multiple media reports.

The prospects, Lucas Giolito, Reynaldo Lopez, and Dane Dunning, are all right-handed pitchers ranked in Washington’s Top 10 by Jeffrey Paternostro and the BP Prospect Staff.  Rumor has it this was the package offered for Sale minus Victor Robles.

Giolito is the centerpiece here. The No. 3 overall prospect and top pitching prospect in the league entering 2016 has front-end starter upside with a nasty curveball and fastball that has touched triple digits. He threw 21.1 innings in the majors in 2016 and could be in the rotation as soon as the start of the 2017 season.  It should be noted that he took a step back this year, as the Nationals fiddled with his mechanics, and he struggled with his command even after reverting to his Global No. 1 pitching prospect delivery.

Still, that seems like quite a haul for Eaton, even with his friendly contract and five years of control, but Lopez is also a Global Top 50 prospect, jumping as high as No. 39 in BP’s midseason rankings. He also saw time in the majors in 2016 after tearing through both Double- and Triple-A at the start of the season, and even if he doesn’t work out as a starter could be a dominant bullpen piece.

Dunning, the third prospect in the deal, isn’t exactly a throw in, either. The Nationals made him the 29th overall pick the draft in June after pitching mostly in relief for the University of Florida. One would assume the White Sox will see if he can start in the low minors.

In Sale and now Eaton, the White Sox have now acquired arguable the top positional prospect and top pitching prospect in the game, as well as two other Top 100 prospects. In two days they’ve transformed their system from Bottom 5 to, probably, Top 5. That has come at the cost of their best pitcher and best position player, of course, but it’s clear the White Sox are going all-in on a teardown. This, of course, will make the 2017 (and probably longer) product unbearable, but the White Sox have obviously chosen a direction and are “going for it” in a way we’ve never really seen before.

While the idea of a rebuild is a tough pill to swallow, now that it has reached full swing the best one can hope for is that they get the best value possible for all the pieces they are set to unload. So far, it would seem, so good.

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The long-pondered White Sox rebuild rumors have more meat to them because the franchise-altering move to trade Chris Sale is being put at the forefront of reports, and the long-pondered Sale trade has more meat to it because it’s staked into these rebuild talks rather than some ill-conceived shifting of resources for a would-be contender. They can’t trade Sale and not rebuild, to a degree, and they can’t rebuild effectively while keeping Sale, so pushing both at the same time adds a level of seriousness.

The Dodgers, Nationals and Braves have all drawn direct mention as competitors for Sale in the past few days, with almost certainly more interested, but perhaps not as stocked for a competitive bid, though the Red Sox are certainly capable of delivering the top bid if they wanted to.

Normally, a typical Sox trade discussion revolves around a need for offense, a need for major league-ready talent to avoid the weeds of their position player development system, and then some rumor of Rick Hahn holding out for a Godfather offer. It sounds like we’re only getting that final bit, for normalcy’s sake.

Ken Rosenthal:

“As for Sale, the biggest question is whether the White Sox will actually move him.

‘They’re willing but only if they totally win the deal, which won’t happen,’ a rival executive said.

Call it the Curse of Shelby Miller: Every team with a high-end starter wants to match or exceed the Braves’ return for Miller and reliever Gabe Speier — infielder Dansby Swanson, outfielder Ender Inciarte and right-hander Aaron Blair.”

More like ‘a salty rival executive,” perhaps.

As much as the Sox are perpetually in need of offensive help, a Sale departure decimates a rotation that is both already probably giving playing time to James Shields next season, and doesn’t know where their next stud is coming from, confidence in Carson Fulmer, Alec Hansen, or even Jordan Stephens and Spencer Adams, aside. If this is truly a full-scale teardown, where everyone older or further along in their service time than Carlos Rodon could be on the outs, the Sox will need more of everything, and can focus on getting the most value rather than specific help at certain positions.

The Braves are the odd team to see here, because rather than a contender looking for a super weapon, they seem to be trying to slap together a competitive team for their new ballpark, even at the possibility of shipping out pieces that were thought to be their new core going forward. Dansby Swanson is both seemingly the new face of the franchise for the Braves, and their best chip for building a package to match Sale’s value, rather than a group that has not made their major league debut.

As much as fencing a crop of guys under control for three years or more just to get a new crop of players under control for six years seems slightly pointless, the Sox both need to take some big league guys because building a package of guys at Double-A or below would take too much volume to counteract the level of uncertainty, and if the Sox can’t take their payroll above $120 million to compete, they are going to need to be in the game of aggressive pre-arbitration extensions to their youngsters anyway.

The Nationals are considered strongly in the mix, but if they insist on withholding Trea Turner, as Rosenthal is reporting, their top prospect is Victor Robles, who is very good, but also 19 until May and has not reached Double-A yet. How much risk are the Sox willing to assume in the return for the biggest trade chip in the league? Typically not very much, but this rebuild is supposed to a new paradigm for White Sox thinking.

While Sale and Jose Quintana seem to be the most sought after trade pieces, they are probably the only pieces in the core group of Adam Eaton, Jose Abreu, or even Nate Jones, that would be worth holding onto through the rebuild. Even though they are pitchers, if the Sox are going to be in the tank for two-to-four years, Sale and Quintana are better bets to be excellent on the other side of that gulf than soon-to-be 28-year-old Eaton, whose game is heavy on speed and depends on corner outfield defense for value, or Abreu, who will turn 30 in January and has seen his production decline every season. Jones is the oldest of the group, has the longest injury history and is an extreme hard-thrower with unusual mechanics.

All the fire sale trades get a lot easier to conceive of and make fair value for if they are simply moving everything, because it will shed all restrictions both for position and for future timeline. But this whole article was just stalling to avoid admitting I have no idea what is coming from the Sox.

Lead Image Credit: Joe Nicholson // USA Today Sports Images

White Sox currently focused on a rebuild, but it’s unclear whether they’ll find offers acceptable to them for Chris Sale, Jose Abreu, etc.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 14, 2016

This decision is questionable at the very least, but it’s the direction in which the front office seems confident. One of, if the not the most important part of a White Sox rebuild is trading Chris Sale.

Rather than fielding a competitive roster around Sale for the past five seasons, the White Sox have found themselves “mired in mediocrity” thanks to a refusal to spend at the right times and an inability to identify the right players to spend on. Now that the Sox are look ready to rebuild, and the best and most decisive way to start that process is to dangle their ace in front of the market and sell him to the highest bidder.

The 27-year-old lefty has three more years left of team control and has finished in the top six of AL Cy Young voting in every year he worked as starter, and is likely to do so again in 2016. Simply put, a pitcher of Sale’s caliber at a team-friendly price (he can earn up to $38 million over the next three seasons) is hard to come by.

When searching for precedent of a trade of a pitcher with Sale’s resume, low cost contract, and years of team control, I came up mostly empty. The closest trade of recent vintage is when the Kansas City Royals traded Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers for Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi before the 2011 season. Greinke had two years remaining on his contract, an AL Cy Young award on his resume, and was headed into his age-27 season.

The Greinke trade was instrumental in the Royals rebuild, which ultimately led to two-straight World Series appearances and one championship, but it did not start the process by itself. At the time of the Greinke trade, the Royals were already deep into the process of building their new core, and had Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer in the organization and nearly major league ready. Even after the infusion of major league ready talent, the Royals’ World Series Championship was not until five years after the trade; not a long wait, but slower and more typical than the Cubs’ accelerated ascent to the top of the league

If the White Sox were to follow a similar timeline, Jose Quintana, Jose Abreu, and Adam Eaton would all be gone from the team (assuming they don’t extend or re-sign) by the time their new acquisitions are at their peaks. Most additions made from a Sale trade would arrive and begin making an impact just as the rest of the current core was on its way out or in decline. As valuable as Sale is, trading him alone wouldn’t provide the Sox with a whole new core. It would place the White Sox in a similar position to where they are now: a several really good players, surrounded by insufficient depth, and what they gain in long-term assets and ceiling they would forfeit in immediate star power and production from a single roster spot.

That brings us to the next issue with a Chris Sale trade: finding a team willing to pay the right price. For the sake of comparison, in the Greinke trade the Royals received two of the Brewers’ best position prospects, their best pitching prospect, and a throw-in. Sale should theoretically be worth more than that because of another whole year of team control at a lower salary.

Teams that can trade that much talent without directly eliminating their chances to reach the postseason in the next season–and the strongest reason to acquire Sale would be the firm up a postseason contender–aren’t very common. Currently the teams that best fit the bill are the Dodgers and Red Sox, with the Rangers also a possibility. All three would love to add a top-end starter to take them to a whole new level, and all three of those teams also have prospects ready to make a major league impact in the next few years. But while this appears to make the White Sox and each team clear trade partners, problems are bound to arise when meaningful discussions actually begin.

The Red Sox, Dodgers, and Texas all have their own set of “untouchable” prospects they intend to shield from any trade discussion. Unsurprisingly, those prospects are the best ones in their respective systems. All signs and reports hint of a wide gap between the White Sox demand and what teams are willing to give. In other words, if the White Sox really want to trade Sale this offseason and begin their rebuild, they will need to prepare for a lengthy negotiation process to shake loose tightly-held assets, or for the sake of expediting the deal, they’re going to have to trade him for less than he’s truly worth. Lopsided trades happen all the time, of course, but starting a multi-year rebuild by getting owned in a trade for your best asset doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the merits of the process.

Keeping Sale does not seem like a better option in a full rebuild. He’s the greatest asset on the team and if they sell away everyone but him, he spends another three seasons on a squad with an inability to win games. If they continue refuse to buy to add to the roster, he remains a star on a team with no purpose. It’s understandable to want the Sox to pick a direction, since sitting in the middle provides no hope for the future and only offers failure in the present. But selling away Sale at this moment is a careful process that could lead to a mistake if rushed. With his price as high as it is, it’s still tempting to consider giving Sale one more shot to win in a White Sox uniform by spending a small amount of money to improve the roster, but the Sox are simply unwilling to take that step.

In science, the second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is always moving towards increased disorder and chaos. Some call that Murphy’s Law, which often gets simplified into ‘anything bad that can happen, eventually will.’ With the misfortune they have found in their moves in recent years, the White Sox seem to be ruled by their own version of this universal law, which only heightens concern on how they approach this, the franchise’s most important trade of the next decade.

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Or wants to.

With reports of Chris Archer and Justin Verlander rumored to be available on the market, there are opportunities to get very comparable immediate production in 2017 without mountainous, prospect system-carving costs. Some combination of a team eager to win now, in need of top line pitching, somewhat megalomaniacal about their need for top line pitching, but also flush with prospect depth and not reliant on that prospect depth patching any emerging holes on their roster, needs to come along to make a deal work and be fair.

Given that, it might be easier to understand why the Boston Red Sox keep getting circulated as a potential match ad nauseum. A three-team deal might ease some of the demands on a single trade partner, but that’s even harder to project and takes even longer to match up, which gets to the crux of the matter. With a pot of coffee and a copy of MLB The Show, I could probably have half of this roster shipped out of town by Saturday morning, but that is not quite how the Sox can or would want to go about it.

If there’s a personality that Rick Hahn has cultivated as he enters his fifth season at the helm, it’s that of a patient observer of the market, and he set the stage at this week’s GM meetings that it could take a while for some of these deals to come together…while still doing his normal thing of qualifying everything as a hypothetical and leaving open the possibility of running a $400 million payroll and gunning for the World Series.

From Dan Hayes:

“’The pace and magnitude of any of our moves, regardless of the direction, are going to be dictated by the market,’ Hahn said. ‘You can’t say you’re going to trade player X before we do anything else because it might not be the right time to get proper value on a given player. We’re in a position right now where we have a few players who are under control only for another year, so there’s a bit of a clock on them. But on guys who are controllable longer than that, there’s not necessarily any urgency to make a move until you feel like you’ve peaked out on value.'”

Mentioning players only under control for another year seems like a direct reference to Todd Frazier, Melky Cabrera and perhaps Brett Lawrie as well. No one in the group is going to bring back a future team MVP, but they are trades worth maximizing while the costs for Sale and Jose Quintana still remain on or beyond the cliff of affordability for any potential suitor.

That is all well and logical as far as trade leverage, but makes for a possibly bizarre and uninspiring 2017. It’s one thing to ask fans to come watch a bunch of youngsters trip over their own two feet and try to fall in love; that’s a marketing angle that has been tried before and found some measure of success. It’s another to enter the season mid-teardown, with Sale and other core pieces hanging around and going through the motions while the roster is stripped down around them. That has a lot more potential for discontent combined with baked in fan disinterest.

Colleen Kane’s article on Hahn’s comments focused on potential solutions for certain positions on the 2017 roster, such as getting Jose Abreu more time at designated hitter, adding another option in center field so as to keep Adam Eaton in right, a veteran catcher to go along with Omar Narvaez and tracking the recovery of Brett Lawrie. None of that screams “we’re putting Dexter Fowler next to Eaton and signing Matt Wieters,” but establishes some expectation that the radical change a rebuild brings will be gradual, and not all the way ready by Opening Day.

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