Danks’ story is a sad one. He had a great frame, simple mechanics, a solid fastball, and a plus cutter. Throw all of it together and you had the makings of a high-end No. 3 or a low-end No. 2 starter depending on some variation. Then, after a contract extension, his shoulder went pop and his fastball became pretty bad, his cutter lost all life, and he attempted to forge onward armed purely with guile and a changeup. The fact that he managed about 500 innings of replacement-level pitching was a testament to his work ethic and savvy, but by 2016 it became clear that was no longer enough.

After he was released, Danks wasn’t picked up by anyone, and unless he comes back with a knuckleball or something his career is almost certainly over before his 32nd birthday. At the very least, he has a singular triumph to remember forever, which was his dominant outing in Game 163 in 2008; arguably the most important non-2005 game for the organization in…well, decades.

Latos was arguably a success, especially when you take expectations into account. Like Danks, he once had the look of a mid-to-frontline starter and then had his career derailed by injuries. Unlike Danks, Latos bounced around the majors and there were always rumblings that he was a handful in the clubhouse. He was a long shot to succeed, and his cheap contract was a reflection of that.

Still, even if it was smoke and mirrors, for a while he did succeed. And while peripherals give you an idea of how someone is going to do moving forward, through March and April, Latos had an ERA of 1.84, which is pretty much a 90th percentile result for a temporary scrapheap stopgap. Having Cy Young caliber run prevention–flukey or not–for a month helped the White Sox get out to a 23-10 start. He imploded pretty quickly afterward, and he latched on with the Nationals on a minor league deal.

Jacob Turner’s acquisition was really, really weird.  Even at the beginning. In a vacuum, adding a down-on-his-luck former top prospect isn’t weird, but adding one who looked so done on a guaranteed major league deal is weird. Especially for an organization that acts like $1.5 million might make a difference in making some other necessary acquisition or not.

Turner pitched so badly that the White Sox turned to him when all else had failed and only let him make two starts before permanently banishing him to the bullpen. Evidently he showed so little that when Anthony Ranaudo got pummeled repeatedly to the point where there were legitimate questions as to whether he could keep his ERA under 10.00, he was still deemed to be a more attractive option than Turner. On Wednesday, the White Sox outrighted Turner to AAA, removing him from the 40-man roster. Whatever they saw must have vanished quickly, and to date, their fear that if they didn’t give him a major league deal he would be scooped up by some other team remains without evidence.

Speaking of Ranaudo, he was acquired in the same way as Hector Noesi and it worked out just about as well as that acquisition did too. You know, the “wow, he looked great while the White Sox’ miserable offense annihilated him for another team” scouting method.

I am not discussing the biggest success and biggest failure from this area of the roster, as those each deserve their own article. But Ranaudo and Turner represent two more evaluation failures to be left at the feet of the front office.

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Let’s operate under a different assumption, that this was actually one of the great battles of our modern times, that with both teams shoving out mostly helpless pitching, this game became a test of the limits of what each offense could force into reality with its will and skill. Surely a dinger-fest can have just as much drama as a pitcher’s duel, is all I’m saying.

1. When Tim Anderson ripped the decisive blow, a rippling two-run double deep into the left field corner in the top of the 12th inning, staking the Sox to a 13-11 lead, Hawk’s voice lacked its usual punch. Three innings earlier, when Avisail Garcia punched a bases-loaded two-run single back up the middle to put the Sox ahead 11-10, he called it out in his typical trumpeting call, but after David Robertson‘s seventh blown save, he was exhausted. Maybe everyone was.

2. As is always the case, taking an extra-inning lead on the road is a brief moment of jubilation before the grim calculus of determining how to protect it in the bottom of the inning begins to loom over the affair. Juan Minaya, pitching in the third major league game of his career, and entering his second inning of work, turned out to be not the correct roll of the dice. He threw one strike combined to the first two Twins hitters of the 12th, and his wildness pushed the precarious situation of Tommy Kahnle in a save situation to Tommy Kahnle in a save situation with the tying run already on base.

After getting a lineout right back to him from Trevor Plouffe, Kahnle won an eight-pitch war and struck out Max Kepler, but was not truly content to get three quick outs. He bounced a wild pitch to put both runners in scoring position, before making it irrelevant and walking Eduardo Escobar to load the bases. To end the drama, Kahnle went back to his old standard, getting hitters to rip balls back at his person. Eddie Rosario swung on the first pitch and lined a ball that caromed off Kahnle’s body, and tumbled weakly in the infield grass on the left side. Todd Frazier raced to the rescue, barehanding the ball and firing to first for the final out, where Jose Abreu wearily raised his arms above his head in triumph afterward.

3. It would be easy to forgive Abreu for being a little tired, as he had carried the Sox on his back for most of the game. He drove in seven of their first eight runs on the day, most of them coming on two massive three-run shots to the second deck in left at Target Field. He blasted a hanging curve from Twins starter Andrew Albers in the first, pinged another Albers curve on a 3-2 count for a single to right to score a run in the fifth and obliterated a Taylor Rogers hanger for a tape-measure blast in the seventh. Abreu is up 22 home runs on the season, and is within a stone’s throw of last year’s rate stats with his current .293/.346/.476 line. Making his recovery by crushing Twins pitching and September call-ups might be like returning time and again to a broken ATM, but the money spends the same.

4. The Sox started Anthony Ranaudo in this game, and despite his improbable no-hit bid against the Cubs in his debut, is about as ineffective as you will ever see a major league pitcher be while receiving repeated opportunities to start. After a 1-2-3 first, Ranaudo was tantalizingly close to escaping a bases loaded, no outs jam in the second, when it was revealed that all his efforts were just dramatic set up for the climax of Byron Buxton‘s coming out party, as he hammered a mammoth grand slam to near dead-center to tie the game at 4-4. Buxton homered three times in the four-game set, but Brian Dozier went deep in every game, including leading off the fourth against Ranaudo.

At least those guys were hot, backup catcher John Ryan Murphy just stepped off the bench and hammered a fastball out to left in the fifth, but it was only after Buxton followed that by banging a double that Ranaudo got pulled with two outs in the fifth.

A Dozier RBI double to score Buxton off the ever-helpful Matt Albers ended Ranaudo’s day with nine earned runs and 11 hits in 4.2 innings of work. His ERA is 10.13.

5. The Sox entered the seventh facing a 9-5 deficit, which they began trimming when Abreu launched his second blast, but was pushed back to 10-8 when Miguel Sano launched a moonshot to lead off the seventh against Albers; still in the game after 1.1 innings.

Garcia capped off the comeback in regulation, leading off the eighth with a double and scoring on an Adam Eaton groundout, and registered the final blow when the Twins’ Brandon Kintzler couldn’t close down the ninth. Kinztler walked Melky Cabrera and Justin Morneau, with a single to Frazier stacked in the middle. Garcia’s single up the middle put the Sox up 11-10 briefly, before Robertson gave up a leadoff walk to Sano and had Kurt Suzuki blast a high fastball to the wall in left-center to tie things back up and force extra innings.

Team Record: 65-71

Next game is Monday vs. Detroit at 3:10pm CT on CSN

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The White Sox started a pitcher Tuesday night who came into the game with a 9.61 ERA, with more walks than strikeouts, and who had more than a third of the hits he had allowed leave the ballpark entirely.

There was good reason to expect the Sox would allow a garish run total to a fearsome Detroit offense with Anthony Ranaudo on the hill, and eventually they brought that expectation into reality.

1. Things certainly looked bright to start. Todd Frazier turned on a Daniel Norris fastball and ripped a two-run shot to left field in the second, and the bottom of the order kept the line moving as Omar Narvaez drew a walk–as he is wont to do–moved to third as Tyler Saladino stayed hot and doubled to center. An Adam Eaton groundout staked Ranaudo to an early 3-0 lead even as the rally fizzled.

2. Other than pitching over a one-out J.D. Martinez double and a walk to keep the Tigers scoreless, Ranaudo went unchallenged through four innings. After walking Jarrod Saltalamacchia for the second time on the night, Ranaudo was one out from escaping the fifth until Ian Kinsler tracked and cracked a sinking curveball to left-center to bring the Tigers within a run. Back-to-back singles from Tyler Collins and Miguel Cabrera brought Victor Martinez a chance to break the game open, but instead he gave the Tigers their third popup of the inning.

3. Not content to count their blessings, the Sox brought out Ranaudo for a sixth inning of work, which was immediately ended by Martinez serving a leadoff double to left.

It’s not as if the Sox bullpen is full of studs anymore these days, and the veteran Matt Albers, who has scuffled to a 7.50 ERA since the beginning of May while allowing an OPS over 1.000, certainly is not part of their upper echelon.

Nevertheless Albers was brought into the crisis, and swiftly yielded a game-tying single squared up the middle by Justin Upton, gave Saltalamacchia his third walk of the game, and watched as Jacoby Jones–making his major league debut–tracked his sinker and flipped it to right to put the Tigers ahead for good. A discerning reader can probably pick out the multiple incidences of Sox pitchers being unable to get misses on their breaking stuff at this point. It was an issue.

Kinsler pushed the Tigers out to a 6-3 lead with a two-run single to left, as Jacob Turner grimly trudged through the last eight outs of the game, allowing a Martinez solo shot and another run-scoring single to Jones in the seventh to really cap off the rookie’s night.

4. Eaton was the offensive star of the night, reaching base four times, and driving in a run on his only out of the game, but the Sox went 1-for-10 with runners in scoring position, which excused a shaky five-inning night for Norris.

5. Melky Cabrera left the game in the seventh with reported dehydration. There is no word on his condition going forward yet.

Team Record: 63-68

Next game is Wednesday at Detroit on CSN at 12:10pm CT

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In his third start for the Sox, Anthony Ranaudo continued the trend of allowing more runs with each successive outing by yielding six on the night.  The scoring started early, letting up a pair in the first, cruising for a bit — retiring nine straight Mariners — before Robinson Cano ended the bid for recovery by launching his 29th homerun of the season.  When Ranaudo’s third trip through the lineup combined with a Tim Anderson error, the direction of his evening was clear. What was a tie game at the time became a Seattle lead, and Ranaudo would leave the game with the bases loaded for Dan Jennings to clean up and limit the damage.  Technically the damage was limited, but Jennings did promptly surrender a base hit, allowing two of his inherited runners to score and pushing the Mariners’ advantage to three runs.

For their part in the scoring, the White Sox got started quickly as well. Three singles and a run preceded the first out recorded, with two more singles and another run coming in the frame.  A brief moment of panic was had when Adam Eaton was seen holding his hamstring walking back to the dugout after scoring the game’s first run, but Eaton would remain in the game and show no signs of damage thereafter.

James Paxton threw 90 pitches in his five innings, nearly a third of which came in that two-run Sox first.  A six man bullpen was not enough for Scott Servais to worry about dipping into relief help early, but an unfortunate three-run third of an inning for Arquimedes Caminero put the Sox right back into a game they seemed perfectly content to lose control of.

Despite Jennings’ quick hiccup upon entering the game, he was able to get through an inning and third with no earned runs (charged to him, anyway), setting the pace for the rest of the night’s relief squad to go unscored upon as well.  Even Matt Albers got in on the effective fun, allowing no runs in his second straight outing, doing what he can to lower that 7.04 post All-Star break ERA.

David Robertson had his patience tested while trying to get his job done in the 9th inning of a tie game.  Having retired one, and with Ketel Marte on first with one out, two fans ran on to the field causing a delay.  Upon readying himself to resume play, another fan ran out; clear annoyance on the face and in the body language of Robertson announced another delay.  After a warm-up pitch or two, Marte took advantage of the confusion in routine by running on Robertson’s next offering to the batter Aoki, getting an excellent jump and putting himself in scoring position.  Thankfully, Robertson was able to strike Aoki out, and then get Guillermo Heredia to ground out and end the inning.

The top of th lineup would come up for the White Sox in their half of the 9th.  Adam Eaton lead things off with a base hit, his second of the night.  Tim Anderson was then tasked with sacrificing him over to second, and did so successfully.  The move had the effect of earning Jose Abreu an intentional walk, but Todd Frazier, responsible for knocking in two of the previous runs in the game, laced a game winning single into left field to plate Adam Eaton and earn himself a celebratory shower of…whatever it is they keep in that Gatorade bucket. Frazier came into the night with a .586 OPS in the month, and though both of his hits were singles, I’m sure mentally he could really use a multi-hit, multi-RBI night like this.

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With Anthony Ranaudo filling in for a spot start against verified stud Carlos Carrasco, facing an Indians team that had defeated the Sox seven times in a row and in Cleveland to boot, this was a night to brace for the South siders getting vaporized. Even a surprising offensive effort left them facing a two-run ninth inning deficit, with Cody Allen facing the bottom of the order, and yet that’s when the real madness began.

1. There’s an argument to be made that hanging a curveball to Adam Eaton with the bases loaded and the Indians clinging to a 7-6 lead with one out, was the only mistake Allen made in his night as the goat. The pint-sized Sox outfielder opened up and pulled the decisive blast so easily into the right field bleachers that he blew a bubble with his gum as his bat whistled through the zone.

Allen was immediately pulled after giving the game away, but the Sox had preceded the fatal wound with measly papercuts. Todd Frazier reached with one out on an infield single deep into the hole at shortstop, and was granted second when Francisco Lindor‘s very late throw to first sailed into the dugout. The throw took the Indians out of double play depth, so when J.B. Shuck bounced another hard grounder up the middle, Jason Kipnis only had an off-balance throw to first as a play. If Allen hadn’t already figured the fates were against him, Tim Anderson taking a close pitch on 3-2 to walk the bases loaded, and Dioner Navarro‘s weak pop to shallow left glancing off Jose Ramirez‘s glove and landing to plate Frazier and set up Eaton, surely clued him in.

2. Dealing with plenty of his own doubts these days, David Robertson pitched a scoreless ninth to pick up his 30th save, but only after coming from 0-2 to walk leadoff man Mike Napoli, and allowing a one-out single to Lonnie Chisenhall. Both Rajai Davis and Brandon Guyer strode to the plate representing the tying run, but Robertson blew a high fastball by Davis, and an eight-pitch war with Guyer ended with him chopping out to Frazier to end it.

3. Guyer had put the Indians up, seemingly for good in the fifth, when he punched an inside fastball from Michael Ynoa to right-center with two on and two out. Coming in for Ranaudo after four innings to protect a 5-5 tie, Ynoa showed early promise by blowing away Napoli on three fastballs, but failed to finish the inning after a four-pitch walk to Ramirez and a single to Tyler Naquin both came around to score. Ynoa was the first of five relievers of the night, as Tommy Kahnle, Dan Jennings, Jacob Turner and Robertson combined to hold the Indians scoreless over the final 4.1 innings.

4. Sox hitting was surprisingly effective against Carrasco while also being completely vaporized for 11 strikeouts over 6.2 innings. Anderson put Chicago on the board by lifting a fastball impossibly high and off the near top of the left field foul pole to knot the game a 2-2 in the third. When the Indians added two more, the heart of the order jumped into action in the fourth to respond. Jose Abreu jumped on a hanger and lined a single to left, and was followed by Justin Morneau spraying a double to the same side. Frazier turned around a high fastball off the top of the wall in left-center, and the Sox had suddenly tied the game at 4-4 on three-straight hits.

Frazier almost got thrown out trying to round home on a Shuck grounder that went through Kipnis’ legs–but not very far–before the Indians got too tied up running down Shuck to stop Frazier from scooting home to give the Sox a brief 5-4 lead, which they lost in the bottom of half of the inning.

5. Anthony Ranaudo twirled a perfect first, but it was pretty much open season on him after that. Chisenhall snuck a two-run blast off him down the line in the second, Carlos Santana launched his 26th home run of the season to lead off the third inning, and Ranaudo was pulled after eight hits and five earned runs, and struck out two of the 21 batters he faced in four innings.

Team Record: 57-62

Next game is Thursday at Cleveland on CSN at 6:10pm CT

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The first images of Anthony Ranaudo Wednesday night were infuriating. Here’s a guy who has spent the last few seasons bouncing around between increasingly slim opportunities to stick, and finally found some traction in Triple-A Charlotte by filling up the zone with his middling stuff, and here he is in a nationally televised showdown against the Cubs, and he’s nibbling.

Ranaudo has a low-90s fastball, and unremarkable life on his 80 mph curve as well as his slider, and he started off Wednesday trying to stay outside with his heater to Kris Bryant and hoping he’ll be generous enough to chase on one for him. An image of Ranaudo as a highly ineffective pitcher who would be hard-pressed to endure four innings like his predecessor Jacob Turner was not hard to make out.

Confidence is something that gets touted as an important element in professional sports by those in it, but seems laughable on the outside, on the other side of a vast talent gap that seems so much more relevant. But in the world of guys finding a foothold on the margins of the league like Ranaudo, overcoming the anxiety of mediocre stuff, and pitching without the fear that a brutal Cubs lineup was going to crush everything he threw–even though they eventually began to–allowed the game to flow for him.

As important as escaping two walks and total disaster in the first inning was to allowing him to survive, the quick frame he gave himself when he started three-straight Cubs hitters 0-1, and got routine in-play outs from Addison Russell, Jason Heyward and Javier Baez, set him on his way to a deep trip through the game where he reducd his workload by starting his fastball in the zone and seeing where it got him. After that was established, the little bite on his curve started to play up, and he even set down Anthony Rizzo by climbing the ladder with heat (90 mph of it, at least) after he proved he could hit the lower quadrant of the zone.

We’re not talking about a great start, or even a good start–Ranaudo had four walks to three strikeouts, and one of those strikeouts was Jason Hammel–but we’re talking about a spot starter with marginal stuff putting himself in the position to have one those outings where he stumbles into success because the opposition just isn’t squaring things up; the types of outing that happen just enough for fans of every team to be convinced it happens to them constantly.

A more locked-in Cubs team can still probably jump all over him, and make every inning look like the seventh when Ranaudo was hanging curveballs and seemingly losing pounds of sweat by the minute. And there’s some sourness to the fact that his six innings of relative success was suddenly conflated with him being someone to task with high-leverage plate appearances when he’s fatigued.

But this was the type of spot start that earns others, and for a guy who has bounced around as much as Ranaudo, it was fun to see him string along some magic, and dream a bit about an absurd accomplishment that we all almost wound up witnessing. And while it was never going to happen, even if his opposite-field home run off Hammel stirred up notion that it was just his night, he got as far as he could by putting himself out there, eventually.

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• What looked like a blowout waiting to happen began as a much closer affair before devolving into the anticipated result. The Sox struck first blood with a Ranaudo home run in the fifth. Yes, Anthony Ranaudo, the pitcher. Unfortunately the lead would be short lived as Kris Bryant deposited a hanging breaker into the left field bleachers in the sixth. Ranaudo was chased in the seventh when Javier Baez took a mighty hack at another rolling breaker and put it a thousand rows deep to give the Cubs a 3-1 lead, and a hit parade in eighth put the game well out of reach.

• Ranaudo had a plethora of factors dooming him. First and foremost are the lack of both “stuff” and control that have ended his run as a legitimate prospect. Add in a Cubs lineup that ranks fifth in runs scored. Then, just for good measure, tack on the pressure of his first Sox start. Suffice to say the deck was stacked against him, and the White Sox were not meant to win this game.

Nevertheless, the tall right-hander went out and pitched an admirable game. He spent the first inning flirting with the strike zone about as successfully as a twelve-year-old at the school dance, but was able to pitch around two walks before settling down to retire fifteen of the next sixteen he faced. He somehow carried a no-hitter into the sixth before Bryant’s home run. Renaudo’s mix of low-90s fastball, slider, and curveball kept the Cubs off balance all night, and he left after 6.2 innings surrendering only two hits. Unfortunately both came on rolling thigh-high breakers that were HAMMERED.

• While the Sox bats didn’t do much to help the cause today, they certainly weren’t aided by the Lake-Michigan-sized strike zone given to Cubs pitchers. Pitch Trax had Hammel consistently out of the zone and the called strikes baffled Sox hitters. Much has been made of pitch framing this season, but today’s zone went well beyond the acceptable border calls. Hammel didn’t pitch poorly, but the Sox never had a chance.

•Once again the Sox bullpen looked a mess. Zach Duke was the first in and walked the only batter he faced. Carson Fulmer finished the seventh but his eighth went, hit batsmen-single-double-walk before getting the hook. Jacob Turner was brought in with the bases loaded and no outs. He quickly defused the pressure by serving up an Addison Russell grand slam on his second pitch. When you only have two to three competent relievers, it makes sense to save them for protecting leads, but – yikes! – it can make for some ugly finishes.

• This week in inconsequential trivia, Sox sideline reporter, Siera Santos informed us that Tyler Saladino has pictures of Mr. Miyagi and Bruce Lee on the bottom of his bat handles. So, yea…

Team Record: 50-51

Next game is Thursday at Wrigley at 8:05pm on CSN 

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Jason Coats was also optioned, while Avisail Garcia remains. More on that later.

Morneau, 35, has put up the numbers I would expect from a 35-year-old Alex Avila during his very short rehab/late Spring Training stint: .174/.321/.261 in a mere eight games of action. He speculated earlier that he might need as few as 30 plate appearances to get ready, he got 28.

Perhaps during some junctures of my time writing on the Sox, I have earned a reputation for being critical, or at least skeptical of every single thing they do. Perhaps. But, I am strangely unconcerned with any of this.

Unsurprisingly, much of Morneau’s first game action in several months found him without his feet fully underneath facing guys in mid-season form. He might similarly struggle in his first week or so with the big club, but he’s a professional bat who has hit .276/.334/.433 since 2011, when his post-concussion issues emerged, and that’s including his awful first season back. He’s not a franchise-saver, or even an offense-revitalizer, but he’s an upgrade over the completely untenable Avisail situation, and if he’s physically ready to play, then it’s time for him to play.

In entirely different circumstances, top prospect — if Tim Anderson is no longer a prospect (he is) — Carson Fulmer is coming up to help a bullpen that has been using Michael Ynoa, Chris Beck, and the worst stretch of Matt Albers‘ career with regularity. Fulmer’s promotion despite a very rocky season in Double-A overall is being supported with a lot of pointing at his 54 strikeouts over 17 walks (and just one home run allowed) over his last 41 innings; a stretch that encompassed seven starts.

His Futures Game appearance showed Fulmer showing off some of the rougher mechanics of his college days and without the usual ‘stand tall’ focus typical of Sox pitchers, and it’s an open question to how much of that was intentionally allowed, or was done in anticipation of major league bullpen work, or was simply Fulmer not being comfortable with the adjustments. He made mention to reporters of feeling that his delivery had been slowed down too much, but there’s also a question of whether Fulmer’s current delivery allows for a long, healthy career.

All of which is besides the point of him getting called up. The Sox need someone who can miss bats in their bullpen, and there’s not really any worry about Fulmer’s development being stunted or bad habits being allowed to fester under Don Cooper, not that working out of the bullpen to transition to the majors is a particularly worrisome path in general.

There’s danger in looking at these moves as major. Fulmer has a not-insignificant chance of being very wild early on and needing a while before he settles in comfortably to bullpen work, but could just as easily remove the immediate need for Zach Putnam‘s return. These are not additions on the level of Carlos Gonzalez, Jay Bruce or even Charlie Blackmon, and don’t do a ton to mitigate concern that the Sox don’t have the horses to undo significant gaps between them and seemingly superior clubs like the Indians, Blue Jays, Red Sox, or even the Astros. But these are moves that do make the team immediately better on their own, so they don’t necessarily need to be weighed down by larger existential concerns.

Coats being sent down makes sense, as he didn’t show anything in very scant playing time, and if the Sox aren’t going to place any confidence in giving him a real shot, he can go ahead and resume mashing in Charlotte.

On the other hand, Garcia, virtually unplayable on defense and in the depths of his worst offensive stretch of an already underwhelming career, is not a very useful bench option. He’s been so bad this year that his one pliable skill — solid numbers against lefties — has been dragged below-average for his career because he’s hit .175/.275/.267 against them this year. Single-year platoon splits are mostly noise, but Garcia struggling at the plate is usually a constant. He’s not someone who can come in and do anything specifically well. He’s basically the fourth outfielder behind J.B. Shuck with Austin Jackson‘s return becoming indefinite, but his only appeal is to play him consistently and hope he can realize his larger potential, and if the Sox have given up on that, they should give up on him in general. But then again, any hope for 2016 has to be rooted in the idea that the Sox are not done.

There’s also no word yet on how the Sox are handling Sunday’s spot starter situation if Fulmer is exclusively in the bullpen. Anthony Ranaudo has been “successful,” but also struck out only 46 in 71.2 innings in Charlotte, and just pitched Thursday. The rest of the current Charlotte Knights pitching staff is even more disheartening than 2016 Anthony Ranaudo.

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On Thursday, the White Sox acquired the strike-deficient reliever in exchange for minor leaguer Matt Ball.

The 26-year-old right-hander has pitched in parts of three seasons with the Rangers and Red Sox, walking more hitters than he’s struck out in 58.1 innings. A former top prospect who Boston selected in the first round of the 2010 MLB Draft, Ranaudo was ranked No. 100 in the Baseball Prospectus Top 101 prior to the 2011 season and was the No. 2 prospect in Boston’s system, per Kevin Goldstein. A year later, he dropped off the Top 101 and all the way down to No. 9 in the system with Goldstein writing:

The Good: On a good day, Ranaudo looks like a future middle-of-the-rotation starter. He gets good movement on his low-90s fastball, and his height makes the pitch hard to pick up. His curve has the potential to be an above-average offering, and he has some feel for a changeup.
The Bad: Ranaudo’s stuff and command vary wildly from start to start. He tips his pitches in his glove to the point that Carolina League scouts were calling them before delivery late in the season. His command has never been special, and with his size, he struggles to maintain his release point at times. His injury history is a concern, and he still needs to prove he can handle a full workload.
Perfect World Projection: Number-four starter, though some scouts see him as just a bullpen arm at this point.

It’s safe to say the prospect shine wore off on Ranaudo rather quickly, but he’s another arm and you can never have too many of those. He also follows Hector Noesi as the second pitcher the White Sox acquired from Texas shortly after pounding him into oblivion. Back in 2014 the Sox traded for Noesi five days after tagging him for seven runs.

Ranaudo will begin his White Sox career in Triple-A Charlotte.

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