Hershkovich: With Jimenez, Flete and Rose facing the Winston-Salem Dash, the White Sox’s High A affiliate, they just needed to switch clubhouses the day of the trade. What was their initial reaction?

Kornberg: The players had a feeling it was going to happen. Jimenez had been held out of batting practice, Rose hadn’t played in a few days and Flete the same thing. Rose is from America, so he kind of understood that it’s a business, and he had a shot in the White Sox organization, as opposed to the Cubs’, who are loaded with prospects. Plus, since he grew up and played college baseball in the south, he knew some of the players in the organization.

Flete was saying how he didn’t know anybody, but he recognized the Cubs have a really good second baseman (David Bote) in Double-A, along with Baez in the majors. He also knew that he was raking in the minors and thought maybe the Sox aren’t as stacked in the middle infield. For Jimenez, he came to the Cubs over a few good offers when he was 16 years old. He took it the hardest of the three because he really wanted to be a part of the organization. He signed because his favorite players growing up were Moises Alou and Sammy Sosa, growing up watching the team in the Dominican. But after meeting some of his new coaches and teammates, it has sort of eased his anxiety a little bit.

Hershkovich: How has Jimenez developed in the outfield this season, and where does he need to still improve?

Kornberg: His plate discipline really improved; he doubled his walk rate this year (5.4 percent to 10.3 percent). At the beginning, pitchers in the Carolina League were afraid to throw to him because he utterly destroyed everyone. He rarely got a first pitch fastball. Instead, he’d get 3-1 or 2-0 breaking balls. The Pelicans wanted to see if he was going to start chasing pitches because of it, but he took his walks. They wanted to see a bit more of a consistent approach at the plate because of late, he started to swing at those breaking balls with the offense not scoring runs. But he literally knocked out two stadium lights in batting practice, and he even hit a home run left-handed. The Cubs had to really talk themselves into trading him.

Hershkovich: Jimenez has been described as a hitter first, outfielder second. Where is his game at defensively?

Kornberg: I don’t think he’s a terrible defender; he’s a huge guy (6-foot-4, 205 lbs.), moves really well and covers a lot of ground in the outfield. We saw him make a lot of good plays, especially moving to his left. The one weakness he would probably have is his arm. He’s not going to be Jason Heyward or Albert Almora, but he has some pretty good range for a guy who can hit, and I think he can be an average defender.

Hershkovich: Which former or present major leaguer would you compare him to?

Kornberg: I really think that he has a chance to be a superstar in the major leagues and can hit 40 homers consistently. His dad was a teacher, so he’s a smart kid and a leader. A lot of Pelicans’ coaches thought he could be a higher-ceiling Jorge Soler were Soler have been able to avoid his many injuries. He’s similar to Jermaine Dye too but could be even better.

Hershkovich: What should fans expect from Flete?

Kornberg: He’s an interesting story because he grew up a right-handed batter and played in the Little League World Series with Venezuela. He eventually took up switch hitting when he was growing up, but his first year in the Cubs’ organization, they made him a strict left-handed hitter. Over the last year-plus, he started to figure out how to face a lefty on the mound because you’re normally used to seeing that from the right side. Initially, he was a slappy kind of hitter, but after that adjustment, he also started to pull the ball with a little more authority and hit with power into the gaps. He’s a little second baseman (5-10, 146 pounds), but that swing change was the big thing that made him appealing to the White Sox. He’s not a plus-defender at second base, but maybe he’s a utility guy that can play a little at second, third, or short. He’ll need to continue to develop his range.

Hershkovich: How about the ceiling for Rose?

Kornberg: He was a guy who had an awful first half last year with an OPS of about .500. The Cubs really worked with him on balance (at the plate), and that led to a huge second half with South Bend, the team’s Low-A club, and it carried over this year. He hits for a lot of power and is tied for a league-best 14 home runs this season. He’s also a guy that they wanted to see walk more with his OBP at .281. But right-handed power is at a premium right now, and he has clearly shown he can make adjustments to his game. He’ll need to improve his eye at the plate since he has a tendency to strikeout.

Lead Photo Credit: Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

We reacted Thursday to the deal that sent Jose Quintana to the Chicago Cubs in exchange for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, and two lesser prospects. Ryan Schultz gave his instant reaction to the deal and the return (it seems pretty cool), while Nick Schaefer and I discussed the trade at length — as well as a good number of other subjects — on a special episode of The Catbird Speaks.

There is and will continue to be plenty to dissect about this trade in the weeks, months, and hell even years to come. But setting all the analysis aside for a second, I wanted to take a second to look back on Quintana’s White Sox career.

Last September after he made his last start of the 2016 season, I wrote about how easy it is to appreciate Quintana, where he came from, and what he’s become. You know by now that the White Sox snagged him as a minor league free agent, thrown to the curb by the Yankees and the Mets before that for both baseball and non-baseball reasons.

Even as he began his ascent to the top of the White Sox rotation, it was worth wondering how this was happening. He seemed to be out-pitching his peripherals in both his abbreviated debut in 2012 and his first full season in 2013. Surely, he was going to fall back to earth. Another pitcher with some fleeting success we’d all forget in a year or two.

The following offseason the White Sox were in search of offensive help and had two young lefties coming off of surprisingly successful seasons in Quintana and Hector Santiago. Rick Hahn, though, was reportedly adamant about not including Quintana in trade discussions, and the White Sox wound up hanging onto him while dealing Santiago to the Los Angeles Angels in a deal that netted them Adam Eaton.

The rest, as they say, is history.

What the White Sox saw in Quintana became apparent soon thereafter, if it wasn’t already before. His performance improved in each of the next three seasons and he settled in comfortably as the No. 2 starter behind ace Chris Sale on teams that had their eyes on contention. The contention part never happened, of course, and that’s what got us to where we are today.

But during Quintana’s ~6 seasons in Chicago, he became a steadying presence during otherwise catastrophic seasons. Whether it was because of the presence of Sale, his conservative demeanor, or his terrible luck in the W-L department, he also flew under the radar to a sometimes laughable degree.

But that’s also what made him so easy to root for. It was like he was White Sox fans’ well kept secret. Any time a national outlet would post one of those articles — Jose Quintana is the most underrated pitcher in baseball — we’d snicker to ourselves. WE knew how good he was. WE always knew. We were like Quintana hipsters. We’d been listening to him since he was on vinyl. You should really go back and check out some of his early stuff before he signed with a major label.

Another factor, I think, was that his stuff was as subtle as his personality. Sale climbed up on the mound and scowled while blowing high-90s heat and wipeout sliders past helpless hitters. Quintana didn’t quite rock them to sleep, but it was at least something more subdued and difficult to pinpoint. Josh Donaldson’s comments after a vintage Quintana outing against the Blue Jays in April 2016 — 6 IP, 4 H, 0 ER, 3 BB, 10 K — was like music to our ears.

“I think some people need to evaluate their approach,” Blue Jays third baseman Josh Donaldson said. “Chris Sale is Chris Sale, but we have a lot of big-time right-handed bats in this lineup that should be able to handle Quintana. He’s had a good start to the season so far, but it looked to me like he was throwing a lot of heaters, and I don’t believe there’s anybody who should be able to come through here and throw a lot of fastballs and have the kind of success he had against us.”

Just another rendition of the classics with Jose Quintana.

Quintana’s departure was inevitable, whether it was this summer, later on during the offseason, or maybe even next year. And as we’ve repeated time and time again, it’s unfortunate the White Sox have gotten to the point where trading a pitcher of his caliber is seen as a benefit to the organization.

But for six years we got to watch his emergence from obscurity to stardom. And we’ll always have that show to look back on — you know, the one at the dimly lit bar that smelled like cigarettes and cheap beer — and say WE remember watching Quintana before he was cool.

Lead Photo Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski / USA Today Sports Images

Among the topics:

-The trade market for Quintana, why they didn’t trade him earlier, and why they said yes this time around.

-What the additions of Eloy Jimenez and Dylan Cease bring to the White Sox.

-The state of the White Sox farm system post-trade.

-Randomly, the 2008 Futures Game, famous prospect busts, and how far the White Sox farm system has come in such a short time.

-What Jose Quintana has meant to the White Sox from a fan’s perspective.

-What this means in terms of other White Sox trades that could be coming down the road.

Be sure to read Ryan Schultz’s quick take on the Quintana trade at BPSouthside.com. You can also read Nick Schaefer’s Wednesday chat at BaseballProspectus.com, and several members of our staff participated in BP’s Top 50 Prospect Busts list. Also be sure to head over to BPWrigleyville.com for perspective on the trade from the Cubs’ point of view. And finally, check out the official Transaction Analysis at BP, as well.

Follow Collin on Twitter @cowhitchurch and Nick @Nick_BPSS. Follow @BPSouthSide for constant updates.

Then Spring Training rolled around, and the ridicule began. He hadn’t traded Jose Quintana yet. Some said he was too stubborn, holding on to his valuable asset for too long rather than completing the fire sale in just three short months. The talk got worse when Quintana struggled out of the gate. Surely they would never get the same value after such a horrendous drop-off in results. How silly those people were to doubt Rick Hahn.

In a shocking move, the White Sox have sent Quintana to the Cubs for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, Matt Rose, and Bryant Flete. While Quintana will be dearly missed, it’s a huge win for the White Sox. In no way does that mean the Cubs lost, but the White Sox got exactly what they needed. Jimenez was just ranked the eighth best prospect in baseball by our BP Prospect Team. He’s up there because, despite playing in a corner outfield position, his bat is ridiculous. He’s got pop, but he’s managed to keep his strikeout rate at a reasonable level. This year he’s striking out just 20.1 percent of the time in High-A while walking 10.3 percent.

Cease is the other major name in the deal. Cease is best known for being the Cubs best pitching prospect. Well, was best known. In an eyewitness report from this May, each of his four pitches were given an average grade or better. His fastball can reach 96, and it sits in the mid-90’s. He’s got a ways to go, but he’s been striking out batters in Low-A at a 34.7 percent clip. The walk rate of 12.2 percent is a bit of a concern, but it’s no different from a good majority of pitching prospects, especially ones in the White Sox system. Add a little command, and they’ll be well on their way. Cease is considered to have a good chance to start, but that would depend on him adding command and gaining feel for the secondary stuff.

The other two names in the trade are lesser ones. Rose is a first baseman who has hit for some power this season, and Flete is a second baseman who has been OK. Those guys matter less than the two big names, but Rose seems like someone that could gain some steam if things break right. Otherwise, they’ll be the soon forgotten names from a blockbuster trade.

The White Sox now have seven of the top 50 prospects in baseball, including two in the top 10. They hold the number 1, 8, 25, 31, and 42nd best prospects globally. Those players alone would make a tremendous farm system. However, that doesn’t even include names like Zack Collins, Reynaldo Lopez, Luis Robert, Jake Burger, and newly acquired Cease who could all see themselves among the top 101 in baseball before next season. What the front office, and Hahn in particular, has done to rejuvenate this farm system in such a short period of time is nothing short of incredible.

Quintana and Sale are players who are and will be missed dearly. They were the power duo at the top of a rotation that always seemed to put the White Sox just a few steps from contention. Even better, they were mostly homegrown talents that pushed aside the horrible memories of prospects past. What Hahn has been able to turn them into, however, has provided the team with depth better than I’ve ever seen. Over the past five to ten years, looking at even a White Sox top ten prospects list was more frightening than the Babadook. Now they have a system with at least 15 interesting prospects, if not 20 or more. Some of these players will fail, surely, but the White Sox have put themselves in a good position to succeed. Hahn deserves a ton of praise for the trades he’s manufactured; it has put the team in position to compete for many years to come. Goodbye Quintana, you will be missed. Hello Jimenez et. al.

Lead Photo Credit: Kim Klement-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

In this context, there are fits of concern about a report that the White Sox are unwilling to trade Chris Sale to the Cubs. It’s not that people want to see Sale traded specifically to the Cubs, but after seeing the Sox fail to achieve the goal of winning now because they were unwilling to spend more on the major league roster, unwilling to fully gut their farm system, and unwilling to find more avenues to spend to build a farm system that could sustain a gutting, any conditions being placed on a potential fire sale reeks of a franchise too ready to fail on their own terms rather than succeed while making hard sacrifices.

I understand and sympathize with the spirit of these objections, for they are of the same spirit that makes a rebuild seem like a compelling direction, but keeping Sale off the North side is a condition that can be surrendered, for three reasons.

1. Avoiding the optics of Sale thriving in the same town while undergoing a hard rebuild is underway is a worthy consideration.

As much as straddling the fence has grown frustrating, as much as a rebuild seems exciting considering the potential end product that the Cubs and Astros are enjoying, their paths are good reminders that the process is absolute hell. Even with fans understanding and relatively buying into the rebuilding process, they still carved paths that included empty stadiums, time served as national punchlines, deep consideration whether they were disgracing the sport, star players publicly questioning franchise leadership, ratings so bad it threatened the local television contract, and other countlesa unpleasantries.

We don’t like to give stage time to Sox fans so preoccupied with malice toward Cubs that they would be alienated by the sting of handing them a homegrown, generational talent, but they’re a significant population. Avoiding their worst nightmare, and avoiding the extra scrutiny of pulling off an intra-city Sale deal could be the difference between navigating this dark period with the typical amount of awfulness, and descending into something even more dire and irretrievable.

2. The market for Sale is far more vast than just the Cubs, and the Cubs are a particularly unlikely trade partner to boot. The Sox are not hard up for offers where dismissing the Cubs significantly shrinks the scope of their pursuit. The objection is more one of principle about eliminating anyone than the Cubs in particular, and the least desperate team in baseball can certainly be pushed aside as a trade destination if they are truly the one exception. The team boasting the 2015 NL Cy Young winner, and two more top-five finishers from 2016 is unlikely to nuke their farm for one more ace.

3. The terms stated for not dealing with the Cubs are not absolute, and the White Sox are looking for a team that breaks from their current stance to make an over-the-top offer.

CBS Chicago dug up Cubs GM Jed Hoyer’s explanation from this Summer of the hurdles in place for a crosstown trade of any kind, and he likened the extra degree to which a swap has to be worth it to deal with the scrutiny and attention, to a “tax” that has to be paid.

‘”Given our situation, you had two active sellers in our division, one active seller in our city, and so it’s really hard to do deals with those teams,’ Hoyer said, referencing the Brewers, Reds and White Sox. ‘There’s probably a tax you have to pay or not be able to get a deal done.'”

While the Cubs are indeed an unlikely suitor, Hoyer’s description kind of matches what the White Sox want to draw out of their trade partner: someone driven to pay a little extra just because they must have Sale.

When I was 13, my parents bought me Zack, the greatest dog this world has ever seen. When he was still an impressionable but fiercely independent-thinking puppy, I took Zack to weekly obedience classes at the Hyde Park Neighborhood Club. Near the end of his three-month class, Zack and all the other dogs were being put through various tests while they prepared for the final exam. One Saturday, the class instructor had all the dogs line up at the end of the room, and had us, their owners command them to sit down and stay in place while we all walked to the other end. As they were holding position, the instructor tempted the dogs by throwing and bouncing a tennis ball in the middle of the room. By this point in the class, all the dogs understood that they had been ordered to sit still, they understood the consequences for disobeying a command, and that bailing on an order in class usually just meant that they would be made to do it again. What was being tested was their commitment to this order, and whether the tempting sight of tennis ball bouncing freely in front in their view would drive any of them to push aside their understanding of consequences, of the fleeting nature of immediate gratification, and decide “To hell with all of this, that damn ball is mine.”

One dog eventually made this decision, and it was Zack. He was made to repeat the entire class, but he got that ball.

The White Sox are waiting for their Zack; a team that will spend more than it should, or is even currently planning to offer for Sale, whether it’s due to desperation, enthusiasm after a hot 2017 start, injury, megalomania or just temporary insanity. It could take a while to find such an offer, it could take a development that hasn’t happened yet to force a team’s hand, and it could take a team deciding they are willing to pay a “tax” they previously hoped to avoid just so they can have Sale.

It would take a shocking Godfather offer for the Cubs to pry Sale, but how much different does that make them from anyone else?

Lead Image Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki // USA Today Sports Images

The White Sox implication here is obvious: the Sox are not winning right now with their overall mediocre team, so the pragmatic course is to trade their brightest stars for packages of young players in the hopes that 2019 (or some date even farther in the future) will bring better days to the South Side. I’ve said this before and will stress it again: the 2016 White Sox and the 2011 Cubs (the year prior to Theo Epstein’s arrival) are not the same team and are not in the same situations as organizations, and we should dispel the idea that the Cubs’ path of the past few years is something the White Sox should emulate. Completely rebuilding a team from the ground up is a risky gambit in any scenario, something Nick Schaefer wrote about here, but it’s a risky move with less incentive for a White Sox team that already has a really good group of core players anchoring the roster.

Patrick Nolan of South Side Sox wrote an excellent piece on the current composition of the White Sox’ “core”.  The White Sox four best players in terms of surplus value by WARP, Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Adam Eaton, and Carlos Rodon, essentially gave the White Sox 18.92 WARP above and beyond what those guys cost the team in monetary value.  This was good enough for fifth best in MLB last season, which is undoubtedly excellent.

Expanding upon his analysis, I looked into the Cubs roster from 2011 because I was curious about the surplus value of the Cubs’ four best players after that season. I amended his assumption and decided the value of a win in 2011 was closer to $6 million instead of $7 million (which is probably an overly conservative estimate as this 2014 Fangraphs article labeled the cost of a win at roughly $6 million and moving back further in time would only lower this). The Cubs top four players in terms of surplus value were Starlin Castro (4.31 Surplus WARP), Geovany Soto (2.76 Surplus WARP), Matt Garza (2.46 Surplus WARP), and Sean Marshall (1.84 Surplus WARP) who combined for a total of 11.37 Surplus WARP, well below the White Sox 2016 total.

In addition, the only player in this group that the Cubs had cost controlled for more than two more seasons was Castro, which is in stark contrast to the current White Sox, who have Sale controlled for three more seasons, Quintana for four, and Eaton and Rodon for five, not to mention all of these players will be 28 or younger in the 2017 season. On top of this, the Cubs’ rebuild didn’t even feature a trade of their best asset, Castro, until his surplus value and team control were greatly reduced. They saw their best asset as something to build around, not something to trade for more future uncertainty.

The 2011 Cubs also had a lot of dead weight on the back end of their roster and very few players beyond the top four who made significant, positive contributions to the team’s surplus value, so it’s not as if that Cubs team had a ton of depth to help offset their complete lack of star power. That team did only win 71 games, after all. Because of the lack of star power, surplus value, and depth, all told, it was an easy call for Theo and the new Cubs brass to tear the whole thing down because there really wasn’t much of anything to tear down.

The Cubs weren’t mired in mediocrity, they were about to be Entrenched in Awfulness™ with everything trending downward. This is an important difference between the two teams. If you wanted to tear apart the 2011 Cubs core, you’d essentially be tearing apart a 1982 Ford POS truck with a wheel missing, while in the case of the White Sox core, you’d be ripping up a pretty well-run Cadillac that even included a spare tire.

The whole point of the Cubs big rebuild was to assemble a core like the White Sox for their organization. This is the hardest part of a rebuild because it involves finding very good players that are also inexpensive. The Cubs were really awful for a couple of years and did really well on several draft picks and they ended up with some of the best, most valuable players in the majors this past season. Luckily for the 2017 White Sox, they have already accomplished the most difficult part of a rebuild, their core is going to be awesome (and cheap) again next year. They don’t need to find several, rare, incredibly good players as those guys already exist on the roster. All the White Sox have to do to compete in 2017 (and this same thing was even more true 12 months ago) is fill out the roster with players that are better than Dioner Navarro.

The White Sox inability/unwillingness to supplement their team’s core is another important difference between the Chicago Cubs and the Chicago White Sox if you’re strongly considering the rebuilding path. When the Cubs had finally amassed the elusive “excellent team core,” they went out and signed Jon Lester, Jason Hammel, Jason Heyward, Ben Zobrist, and John Lackey to lucrative contracts to help reinforce the team’s chances for ultimate success. And then, on top of that, the team went out and signed Dexter Fowler, when they didn’t even have a desperate need for him just because they understood that talented roster depth is an incredibly important thing! This pushed the Cubs total payroll over $170 million on opening day in 2016, which was sixth in the majors. The Cubs even pushed that payroll higher during the season, acquiring a few pieces for their bullpen and rotation.

Meanwhile, the White Sox flopped around like a fish out of water and ended up with their most lucrative free agent contract being the one year, $5 million deal they handed out to Austin Jackson. The White Sox, with a prime opportunity to go all in, went about as all in as I do when I stick my foot in the water of a cold hotel pool. In the most predictable fashion, things went belly-up mid-season and the White Sox slid under the low bar of 80 wins in the 2016 season for the fourth year in a row.

Armed with the knowledge that the White Sox are unwilling to increase their payroll above the league median, rebuilding now does nothing for the team in the future except push their window of mediocre baseball back a few years, unless, of course, the White Sox get incredibly lucky with the players they are getting in return. If you’ve been paying any attention to the White Sox in the last decade, you should know by now that luck-based plans are not a smart way to run an organization. There’s a reason why “exceptions to the rule” don’t come around very often: they simply aren’t likely. If the White Sox trade away their best players in 2017, the team will likely end up hardly watchable in the very near future and the future beyond that wouldn’t realistically look much better.

To quote Mr. Nolan: “With knowledge that the White Sox’ four best major league assets from 2016 were among the best in the game, it’s probably not reasonable to expect a rebuild to produce a better quartet than Sale, Quintana, Eaton, and Rodon.”  That’s the unfortunate reality the White Sox find themselves in. Teams won’t be offering the type of deals that would allow them to get a more valuable “core” of players, which is why trading Sale is so difficult for the White Sox as they’d likely be selling their best assets for less than they are actually worth. The Red Sox aren’t going to be surrendering both Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi for Sale, so deals that are overly favorable to the White Sox just won’t happen, and those are the only type of trades that should motivate a team to trade a controllable seven-win pitcher

Rebuilding would likely get the White Sox a larger base of inexpensive major league average baseball players, which would indeed help the White Sox address the massive black holes they continue to play on a regular basis. However, it would also cut down on the star power on the roster, and in the end, the Sox arrive at the same status quo. One seven-win pitcher and one sub-replacement position player is theoretically equal to one three-win pitcher and one three-win position player, but having the seven-win pitcher is actually better, because there should be plenty of reasonable replacements available that are much better than a sub-replacement player.

The fact of the matter is that there are plenty of options available for the White Sox, they just cost the team money. Even with all of the tearing down the Cubs did, even with five consecutive years of top-10 draft picks, they still had to reach into their pocketbooks in order to put the finishing touches on their World Series championship. The Cubs probably don’t win without Lester or Lackey or Fowler. At some point, in all likelihood, the White Sox will have to make their payroll uncomfortably (for them, not for any other team in a major market) high if they want a reasonable shot at a championship, this is true for most teams, as that’s just how a competitive cycle works. There are certainly examples contrarian to this, but again I caution against attempting to be the exception to the rule, rather than following the rule.

Nothing fundamentally changes for the White Sox, unless they adjust how they attack their upswings in the competitive cycle. If they didn’t support their best chance at a winner in 2016, why would they go out of their way in 2020 to do the same? Furthermore, if they are willing to change their strategy, why are they waiting for 2020 to do so when they probably won’t have one of the five best pitchers in the game of baseball then? They had a window of opportunity to bring in talented free agents last season and they chose not to. It was a very bad decision. They’ll have that opportunity again this winter and I hope they don’t miss it.

Lead Image Credit: Dennis Wierzbicki // USA Today Sports Images

Congratulations to the [Cleveland Indians/Chicago Cubs]!!! The drought is over!!!

While it would be sweeter if the Sox were in it themselves, it’s encouraging to see validation that [AL Central baseball is not total garbage like it sometimes seems/the city is not cursed and forever doomed to be unhappy]. Now, we have that. What a relief!

While there is no one way to win a title, the [Indians/Cubs] provided a strong argument for the merits of [securing a small crop of dependable veterans to supplement a inexpensive, effective core/burning everything down and painstakingly rebuilding the organization from the ground up]. The Sox could really stand to take a page out of their book!

Personally, I think it would be foolish to cling to petty grievances and let memories like [Kenny Lofton & Co. dominating the Sox for most of the ’90s and relegating Frank Thomas’ to relative obscurity/that time a Cubs fan puked on the Red Line and it smelled real bad] dominate our minds and detract from the enjoyment of an incredible Game 7 and an incredible World Series. But if you must be petty, try to cling to thoughts of [The 2005 Sox needlessly blitzing the Indians out of a playoff spot during the final weekend of the season/The Jon Garland trade].

I will miss baseball, but the offseason is around the corner, and it won’t be long before we get to discuss [Paying Kenley Jansen $100 million/Trading Chris Sale for several 17-year-olds]. In the mean time, stay safe, and do not [ignite the Cuyahoga River/destroy my car] in celebration.

Lead Image Credit: Ken Blaze // USA Today Sports Images

None of this is necessarily inaccurate. And yet, this sample size of one team, the Cubs, seems to have persuaded many that a hard rebuild is not only the best course of action, it is the only reasonable course of action. Part of the beauty of baseball is that there is no one right way to do things. The Rangers and Giants have consistently reloaded over the years, watching their cores on offense and defense morph significantly without any prolonged dips in success. The 2005 White Sox were somehow remembered as a small ball team even though they hit 200 home runs. The Royals went to back-to-back World Series, winning one, despite having pretty terrible starting pitching. The Baltimore Orioles have been ignoring what everyone says they should do and have made the playoffs three of the last five years.  One Red Sox team won a World Series with a personality of being loose goofballs and another got a bunch of guys fired because they were perceived as loose goofballs. There is no one right way. Someone should write a book about this…

Here’s one problem with using the Cubs as an argument in favor of a hard rebuild: money. Yes, the Cubs traded off everything they could and stockpiled through the draft and Latin America and did so in impressive fashion. And then when they realized they were close to competing they spent a ton of money. For even as skillfully as they loaded up on bats, they were struggling to generate arms from within. So they signed Jon Lester for  six years and $155 million–more than twice the size of the biggest White Sox contract in history–and when they realized they didn’t have anybody on hand to fill out the back of their rotation in a competitive year, they spent another $52 million on John Lackey and Jason Hammel. They also signed Ben Zobrist, Dexter Fowler, and Jason Heyward this offseason as well.*

*It is also worth noting that they signed substantial free agents for second base, corner outfield, and center field despite having multiple well-regarded prospects pretty much ready at all three positions. Worth remembering for when someone tells you the White Sox should try to save $5 million by DFA-ing Brett Lawrie because Tyler Saladino had a good year.**

**Another argument made for the case to DFA Lawrie crowd is that he is brittle, yet Saladino ended the year unavailable because of a herniated disc in his back that affected his right side. 

The lesson here is not that you need to do a hard rebuild every time you hit a playoff drought. The reason to do a hard reset is to generate a cost-controlled, cheap, good core.  You clear salaries that won’t be helpful to you by the time you’re good again, and while being bad accumulate high draft picks. Once that core is in place you spend money to bolster the weaknesses remaining on your roster. That is literally what the Cubs did. The White Sox already have Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Jose Abreu, Adam Eaton, Tim Anderson, and Carlos Rodon under contract for 2017 for a combined total of $36 million.  That group combined for 25.6 WARP and there is reason to believe they will collectively improve on that mark next year. There are not many teams in the playoffs with that sort of cost-effectiveness at the heart of their roster.

This piece is entitled “The Perils of a Rebuild.” The Cubs are perilous only in the sense that even though they are an example of a successful rebuild, their rebuild still required a lot of spending. An inability or unwillingness to spend has been one of the major impediments to the White Sox succeeding with this group, and there is no reason to believe that they will be more willing to spend in the future relative to the league than they are now.  Before you disagree, realize that the White Sox gave 1,487 PAs to Dioner Navarro, J.B. Shuck, Avisail Garcia, Jimmy Rollins, Carlos Sanchez, Jerry Sands, Leury Garcia, and Jason Coats this year. Avisail had an OPS+ of 91 while primarily playing DH. The rest all had an OPS+ between 52 and 77.  The 77 is Coats. The 52 is Shuck, who was the primary center fielder on the team. That’s more PAs than Eaton and Abreu got combined. For the umpteenth time in the Kenny Williams-Rick Hahn Era, the White Sox have been absolutely throttled by the Gibraltar-sized anchor that is the back half of their roster, while other teams thrive by successfully acquiring stopgaps, spending enough to cover their holes in a meaningful way, and generating talent from within their organization.

But, regardless of how you feel about the current state of the White Sox, I also ask you to consider the Houston Astros. Like the White Sox, for years they refused to accept that a rebuild was probably a good idea, winning between 73 and 86 games from 2006-2010.  Then, in a pretty dramatic volte face, they tanked harder than anybody could remember, losing 100+ games three years in a row. They emerged out of that in 2014 with some really interesting pieces, winning 70, with Jose Altuve and George Springer looking like particularly promising players to build around–indeed, so much so that Sports Illustrated declared them the 2017 World Series champions in advance.  In 2015, they arrived, making SI’s bold proclamation look prescient, winning 86 games and making the Wild Card game, which they won. Carlos Correa seemed to be emblematic of the value of a rebuild, as the No. 1 overall pick burst onto the scene to win a Rookie of the Year Award, and Lance McCullers–another prize of having the surplus draft pool money that comes with having the No. 1 pick–chipped in 125 quality innings in the rotation.

Granted, in hindsight, many of the other key players on that ’15 Astros team had hardly anything to do with a rebuild.  Their  No. 1 and No. 2 starters were Dallas Keuchel, a 7th round pick in 2009, and Collin McHugh who was added off waivers.

Still–hey, here they were–in the winter of 2015-16, coming off of a successful season built on young, cheap stars acquired in their rebuild, went the narrative. And after all, after all those years collecting revenue sharing while they ran out payrolls as low as $29 million in 2013, surely they had socked away lots of money to spend to supplement this Team On The Rise.

But they didn’t. Despite the plethora of free agents this winter, they came away with Doug Fister and that’s about it. Then they won 84 games and missed the playoffs.

The Astros could very well still spend money this winter, although there is less quality to spend it on, and even if they don’t, they could still come back next year and make Sports Illustrated’s prediction come true (or at least make the playoffs again). They did also score Alex Bregman as part of their tanking, which looks promising.

But shouldn’t this team have more than they do after that scorched earth, agonizing three years where the only noteworthy things they did were lose hundreds of games and do stuff like this? What if this is the ceiling of this Astros team if the front office doesn’t spend more money? Should the response be that this Correa-Altuve-Springer core is not good enough, like the pro-rebuild fans say of the White Sox’ current group?

I disagree. I think the most important things you can do are evaluate players well and spend money effectively when it is appropriate.  The Astros let J.D. Martinez, Robbie Grossman, and Jonathan Villar go for free, and drafted Mark Appel over Kris Bryant. They didn’t sign any meaningful free agents to shore up the weaknesses on the roster. So even though they’ve done some things right, it’s now looking very possible that their evaluation is not good enough to make up for their thriftiness.

So yes–if you are selective about the lessons you learn from the Cubs, you can pound your fist on the table and demand that the White Sox sell off everything because you’re sick of the status quo. But I would caution those who believe the path of the hard rebuild is the path to guaranteed success.  Sometimes the path of the hard rebuild is just being really bad and then winding up not much better off on the other end. Sometimes ownership just pockets all those savings instead of re-investing them in the team when it’s good again. Sometimes the problem is that your front office makes too many mistakes and ownership won’t provide the money to make up for it.

You rebuild to acquire cheap superstars.  You don’t do it when you already have them.

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1. The Sox scored early in the first inning on a Melky Cabrera double that plated a speedy Tim Anderson. If it were up to Joe McEwing, the run never scores, but Anderson motored right past the third-base coach’s stop sign and was validated 90 feet later with the team’s only tally.

The Cubs came right back as a leadoff walk to Dexter Fowler evened the ledger when he came around to score on a Kris Bryant double. In the third, Sale skipped the formalities when putting Fowler on, hitting him with a pitch instead of walking him, and ended up walking Bryant to avoid a replica of the previous RBI opportunity. It was just a stall, Fowler still came around to score on a Ben Zobrist single to give the Cubs all the lead they would need.

2. Chris Sale waited until the fourth inning to record his first strikeout, and managed four overall, all looking. This isn’t to say that he was economic with his pitches. Despite the limited damage of two runs, Sale used 111 to get through his six innings. Two runs and four strikeouts over six innings is a very acceptable outing, though not especially impressive for Chris Sale. Nate Jones did the heavy bullpen lifting, throwing 1.2 innings and getting lifted after allowing Ben Zobrist to score, who led off the eighth with a double. Tommy Kahnle battled Javier Baez for 10 pitches before walking him and making way for Dan Jennings, who retired Tommy LaStella to spare us the spectacle of Aroldis Chapman batting.

3. After two of the first three Sox hitters got hits off John Lackey, he proceeded to retire the next 14 he faced. Who broke up the stretch? Chris Sale of course. White Sox pitchers get hits. It’s what they do. Sale would end up stranded along with Cabrera who singled in the sixth inning as well; the threat ended as he induced Jose Abreu to pop up on the infield following a decent battle. The taxing top half of the inning, combined with a Cubs scoring opportunity in the bottom half, hastened Lackey’s departure. With Addison Russell on second and two outs, Sale intentionally walked Matt Szczur to bring the pitcher’s spot up. The National League chess match worked in Ventura’s favor – at least in terms of getting Lackey lifted – Maddon sent David Ross up to pinch hit for Lackey, and Sale promptly struck him out.

4. The Cubs newly bolstered bullpen goes a long way towards helping Joe Maddon make such decisions regarding his starting pitcher. It’s not quite Dellin Betances, Andrew Miller, Chapman, but the North side squad was fully prepared to roll out the back end of their Pedro Strop, Hector Rondon, and Chapman bullpen and see how it fared. Strop completed a scoreless seventh, but a Tyler Saladino leadoff double off of Strop in the eighth gave the Sox some brief hope. After moving to third on an Anderson groundout, Chapman was called upon to earn the four out save. Striking out half of the Sox batters he faced, he converted without any real threat.

5. Abreu had been collecting hits in the week leading up to this game, 10 for 24 in the last seven contests. All but one of those hits were singles, and the man hasn’t connected with a ball that cleared an outfield fence since June 23rd, over 100 at-bats ago. The overwhelming feeling while watching Abreu go 0-for-4 tonight was that he is struggling. That feeling speaks volumes about how different it feels to watch the once-fearsome slugger play without power, even when there is some basic production remaining.

Team Record: 50-52

Next game is Friday vs. Minnesota on CSN at 7:10pm CT

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