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

Eloy Jimenez and Zack Collins have been promoted from High-A Winston-Salem to Double-A Birmingham. While there are only a few weeks left in the minor league season, players are human beings and when you excel in superlative fashion at your job a promotion is in order.  There’s also reason to believe that they have mastered the level and are ready to be promoted.  Jimenez has hit .345/.410/.682 in 122 PAs since arriving in Winston-Salem.  As Rafael Devers and Yoan Moncada have demonstrated, elite hitting prospects can move really quickly, and Jimenez will therefore start next year in Double-A, and if these trends continue this time next year he could be a candidate for a September call up.

It speaks to the expectations for Collins’ bat that as a 22-year-old catcher in his first full pro season his .808 OPS is viewed as a disappointment.  If you are of the opinion that he will not remain as a catcher, then it is a troubling offensive output for an advanced college bat in the low minors.  However, he has devoted a lot of his time and energy to developing on the defensive side of the ball and catchers tend to take a long time to figure things out, if they ever do at all.  It’s an arbitrary endpoint, but dating back to a doubleheader on July 30, Collins has hit .342/.490/.658 and walked more than he has struck out.  There’s no specific reason to believe he’d be overmatched at Birmingham or that he’s being moved too quickly, although per James Fegan over at The Athletic, there are still mechanical changes he wants to make to shorten his swing this offseason.

The promotion to Double-A also means that we will finally have some pitch framing data for Collins, although it isn’t quite as precise as at the major league level.  The general sense is that Collins has made a lot of defensive improvements since becoming a pro, but with something like catcher defense the more information we have, the better.

The White Sox also announced that Dylan Covey would be promoted from Charlotte having completed his rehab to take Tyler Clippard‘s spot on the 25-man roster.  It looks like the White Sox will be able to keep the Rule V pick on the roster all season, which means he’s theirs permanently if they want.  I am curious to see what he can do in relief, as I’m not sure there is starter’s durability there, regardless of stuff.

On Free Agency…

There is something of the magical when thinking about free agents. As opposed to draft picks, where you have to wait years and years for likely disappointment, or a trade where you have to give up something to get something. Free agents can just be shoved into the roster.  Instant gratification.

A byproduct of the White Sox rebuild, where you are theoretically building as much of a contender as you can from within, is that the roster should be cheap, composed of a higher percentage of players being paid the league minimum, or suppressed salaries through the arbitration process.  Therefore, such a team should have a surplus of money to allocate to free agency.  The Cubs, for example, were able to sign Jon Lester (nice!) and Jason Heyward (whoops!) to huge contracts to supplement their homegrown core, and have made deep playoff runs including a World Series win, as you may have heard.

And, given that Rick Hahn has floated 2019 as the first year he foresees the White Sox potentially contending again if everything breaks right, some have noticed that syncs up with the 2018-2019 free agent class.  For reference, that class projects to contain Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, Josh Donaldson, A.J. Pollock, Charlie Blackmon, Clayton Kershaw, Dallas Keuchel, Andrew Miller, and more.

A lot of teams with bigger budgets than the White Sox have been obviously targeting this free agent class for a long time.  The Red Sox and Yankees have made conspicuous efforts to remain below the luxury tax threshold of late, and the Dodgers have to be on the short list of favorites for basically any player they would want to sign, just to name a few.

In addition, the White Sox have never signed a free agent to a contract of more than $100 million.  Jose Abreu’s deal remains the biggest in franchise history, and not since Albert Belle has the organization really gone out and grabbed a splashy, top of the class free agent.  So, until they do, I will assume that that trend will continue.

But, for all that I would bet all kinds of money against Harper or Kershaw playing for the White Sox until maybe their early 40s, some of those names further down the list could fit really nicely to help push a young White Sox core over the hump and into the postseason.  And, speaking of Lester, the Cubs signed him slightly earlier than when people believed the Cubs would be ready to compete.  That type of move makes sense, given that it is difficult to assemble a whole roster all at once, and that free agency doesn’t always provide the player you want when you want him.  To that end, although this winter’s free agent class pales in comparison to the subsequent one, it may be worth monitoring to see what pieces–if any–the White Sox add this offseason to see if they too make “early” moves in advance of their contention window opening.

Lead Image Credit: Steve Mitchell-USA TODAY Sports

In the context of the White Sox rebuild, thinking about scouting and development has become increasingly more interesting as the team has traded for a raft of high-level prospects. One point, among many great ones, that Parks made regularly is about talent versus development. Because his metaphor is far better than any I could come up with, I’m just going to stick with what he said.

Imagine two different pieces of meat. One is of high quality, a porterhouse or filet mignon perhaps, the other is of poor quality, like a flank or cube steak. The natural tendency is to believe that the higher quality meat is going to produce a better meal. When it actuality, it’s quite easy to improperly cook–or just play burn–a good piece of meat, or dress up a cheap piece of meat as something good. The example that Parks uses here is a chicken fried steak–of which I am a fan, but is not common among northerners–as a way to make a lesser cut of meat into something quite tasty and desirable.

Having the flashiest names that appear at the top of prospect lists is great. It usually means that the player will have a large amount of success in his career. But the prospect alone as he sits raw in the minor leagues isn’t enough to cut it. He needs development to become the player that prospect rankings expect him to be. In the same way, the value of lower level prospects can be maximized by great development. The floor of a top-25 guy and the ceiling of an unheralded sleeper frequently overlap.

There are naturally some limitations; freak talents like Bryce Harper can arrive in pro ball with practically every asset needed to succeed and require little to no developmental guidance. On the other side, a pitcher with a fastball that hardly reaches 90 mph and little command will likely never reach the big leagues regardless of the wonderful developmental direction he receives. But in general, development is by far the most important part of a rebuild.

Although the constant comparisons of the process the Sox are undertaking to the Cubs are tiring and usually off-base, the Cubs actually provide a great example of Parks’ point. One of the main things that allowed the Cubs to rebuild both quickly and effectively was the rate at which their prospects succeeded, especially after Theo Epstein was hired and made the organization his own. Some like to think that it was luck that the Cubs got MVP-caliber players in Anthony Rizzo and Kris Bryant, an offensive monster in Kyle Schwarber, and a brilliant young shortstop in Addison Russell, among others. In reality their ability to hit on prospects was due to their incredible developmental staff.

The White Sox made great strides in rebuilding the organization when they made back-to-back Chris Sale and Adam Eaton trades. The additions of Lucas Giolito and Yoan Moncada to the organization brought hope and excitement. What we cannot lose sight of, however, is that improvements in their development team will have to be made for this to mean as much they want it to mean. These players cannot get within reach of their ceilings without proper development.

That may be the biggest roadblock for the White Sox on their journey to becoming a competitive team. If they can improve in this area, there’s no reason to believe that a rebuild can’t work on the South Side. If they continue the same patterns they’ve shown with young players, it will be the same old story for the White Sox, and more players will be added to the list of recent disappointing prospects that includes Gordon Beckham, Jared Mitchell, Courtney Hawkins, and many others. One thing is for certain: development will be key to the White Sox future success.

Lead Image Credit: Mark J. Rebilas // USA Today Sports Images