So why isn’t he finishing out the season with a well-earned trip to Chicago just as the summer heat starts to finally and mercifully break?

Hahn said Jiménez needs to improve his defense: “We’re not trying to develop a 21 year old DH”

— James Fegan (@JRFegan) September 3, 2018

Oh.

While it’s nice to finally learn officially what box remained unchecked, it’s pretty disheartening to see defense being the cited reason. Hitting can be quantified. You can say “he needs to strike out less” and then people can look at the numbers and go “done”. Defense is subjective. Defense is nebulous. Defense is the same in Double-A and the majors. A corner outfield is a corner outfield and the best way to get better at defense, at least in my admittedly non-professional baseball man eyes, would seem to be getting more reps and playing more games. Which is pretty hard to do when your parent club ends your season a month earlier than it should.

Photo credit: Butch Dill- USA Today

All that said, I’d be remiss to not give a nod, on the rare occasion that it’s warranted, to the major league team when things go right. Sunday’s 8-7 win over the Rays gave the White Sox their first four-game winning streak of the season and first road series sweep since early 2016 in Toronto. The four wins coming against the Royals and Rays isn’t exactly the stiffest of competition to be beating one’s chest over, but positive production for any period of time more than a day or two is noteworthy during a time when that hasn’t happened all that often.

1. In his first start since I wondered allowed if he had “figured it out,” Carlos Rodon lowered his ERA to 2.94 with six shutout innings in Saturday’s 2-1 win over Tampa. He also walked six. Rodon admitted after the game that he didn’t have as good of a feel for his fastball as he would have liked, but was able to wiggle his way out of trouble enough to stay in the game thanks to sharp secondaries. That he allowed just three hits and induced 16 swinging strikes is a testament to how well his stuff can play even when he’s not fully on, but against a better hitting team he may not have been so lucky, and the start just further illustrates how integral fastball command is for Rodon.

2. For players with the age and skill set Jose Abreu possesses, any prolonged slump brings with it worries that the end of his time as a productive player is near. Abreu entered the All-Star break in the midst of the worst slump of his otherwise remarkably consistent career, but has since looked once again like the Abreu of old. Prior to Sunday’s game, Abreu was hitting .357/.438/.768 in 15 post-break games and went 2-for-4 in Sunday’s 8-7 win. He’s raised his OPS by 69 points during that span.

3. OK, so I lied. We’re still going to talk about prospects quite a bit. Kopech rattled off another impressive start Sunday, striking out nine and walking zero in seven innings of work. In the link at the top, of this post, James Fegan goes into detail about both the mechanical and mental adjustments he has made to break out of a midseason slump, and the results have shown in the form of 41 strikeouts against just 4 walks in 31 IP across his last five starts.

4. While the clamoring for a Kopech promotion will only grow louder as he continues to dominate, Dylan Cease has not ceased to impress even after his late-June promotion to Double-A. After Saturday’s 6 IP, 1 H, 0 ER, 0 BB,  9 K performance, he’s now tossed 40 2/3 innings since his promotion with a 1.99 ERA, 58 strikeouts and only 13 walks. The buzz around Kopech and Jimenez is real and warranted, but Cease has been the most pleasant surprise of the White Sox minor league season. Jumping levels is one thing, but he’s also already soared past his career-high in innings pitched at 112 and counting.

5. Speaking of Jimenez, there was a bit of buzz on White Sox Twitter Sunday evening when he was scratched from the lineup in Charlotte right around the same time the White Sox announced that Leury Garcia left Sunday’s game with left hamstring soreness. It turned out to be a false alarm, as Jimenez was reportedly kept out because of flu-like symptoms. The hand-wringing continues.

Lead Photo Credit: Raj Mehta-USA TODAY Sports

-Disappointment over the fact that the White Sox have yet to promote phenom Eloy Jimenez as he continues to lay waste to Triple-A pitching.

-Michael Kopech’s bumpier minor league season and when we should expect to see him in Chicago.

-Possible August trade candidates, such as James Shields, Leury Garcia, and a host of bullpen options.

Well, let me rephrase that. It’s obvious to everyone watching who is not more concerned with the financial aspects of baseball than actually, you know, enjoying baseball. Somewhere along the way, people stopped picturing themselves as the player and started slotting themselves into the role of the GM. And while it’s fun to rosterbate and come up with plans (I’m just as guilty as anyone of doing this), it’s kind of hard to forget just how much losing absolutely sucks. Tanking is not a guarantee of future success. Grasping at cost-controlled years as if they’re the ultimate treasure only really matters if you use those savings to supplement the other holes in your roster. Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, and Adam Eaton’s insanely team-friendly contracts didn’t amount to a hill of beans when it came to the White Sox building a contending window because the team couldn’t appropriately build around them.

Stockpiling as many prospects as you can at once to guard against failure is a good plan, but eventually you need to start actually promoting them or you’re just creating organizational logjams that result in further hindered development and then stacked salary issues later down the road themselves. There is not a single baseball team that can’t actually afford to pay for free agents. Yes, we all know it’s not the most efficient way to build a team. But you don’t win a trophy for being efficient.

At this point, it is difficult to articulate a reason Eloy Jimenez is still in the minors for baseball reasons.  Perhaps the front office has legitimate developmental concerns for him, but they are not apparent from the outside, and the team declined its most recent opportunity to state them. For a team with less than $10MM worth of guaranteed contracts next season, it is difficult to stomach the appearance that Eloy hitting .400 with power against overmatched competition is worth it to save some money, particularly when the major league product is in real danger of falling behind historically bad Orioles and Royals teams AFTER they sold off their better players.  Unfortunately, the team hasn’t given us any other explanation.  To their credit, they have denied he’s down for service time reasons, although if they said it was for service time reasons they’d be basically admitting to acting in bad faith. Kenny Williams also has mentioned Jimenez’ defense as an area he could improve.  That’s certainly his weakest area, although it’s hard to imagine his defense would cost them on the field in a season like 2018 in the majors, nor is it clear what he’d learn in Triple-A with the glove rather than with the major league coaching staff.  After all this is a team that’s run Daniel Palka in the outfield quite a bit.

I decided to look up how the last three prominent bat-first players the White Sox developed hit in the minors before ultimately being called up to see if they managed to check off those mysterious boxes we’ve all been hearing so much about. Frank Thomas hit .323/.487/.581 over 109 games for Birmingham in 1990 before the Sox did the right thing and let him finish the rest of the year in the majors. He put up an OPS+ of 177 over the next two months before going on to be the best hitter in the AL for the next half decade. Magglio Ordoñez only needed to hit .329/.364/.476 for Charlotte as a 23 year old to prove he was ready in 1997. After a year of league average hitting in 1998, he adjusted and became a legitimate perennial MVP candidate. Carlos Lee wasn’t given a cup of coffee before establishing himself in the majors. After proving himself for an entire season in Birmingham (.302/.350/.485) in 1998, he started 1999 in Charlotte. After a mere 25 games of making International League pitching look weak (.351/.396/.532), the Sox bit the bullet and called him up. Lee developed into a professional hitter in the majors and that was that.

One explanation is that the White Sox are trying to handle this the way the Cubs did Kris Bryant. Bryant absolutely dominated AA and AAA in 2014 (.355/.458/.702 and .295/.418/.619 respectively) but for monetary reasons, received no call-up despite clearly having nothing left to prove in the minors. They even held him back a little longer in 2015 just to game service time a little bit more in one of the most blatant examples of this frustrating practice with the excuse that he needed to work on his defense. And for what? One more year of team control before he hits free agency at the low, low cost of what will probably be around $20-25MM in arbitration and potential hard feelings from the player towards the franchise for a player. Well at least we won’t have to worry about anything like that with Eloy.

Jiménez: “I’m working to be [in Chicago] this year but if the front office or somebody else doesn’t think that I should be there, that is their decision. I’m going to be ready for when the opportunity arrives.”

— James Fegan (@JRFegan) August 2, 2018

Oh.

Lead Photo Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

• It’s hard to imagine Eloy Jimenez will be facing Triple-A pitching for too much longer. After a 2-HR performance on Friday, the 21-year-old is hitting .351/.400/.622 in 20 games since being promoted to the level, and has shown no signs of being slowed by the left adductor strain that sidelined him at the beginning of the month. Jimenez’s presence is one of if not the most obvious reasons the second half of 2018 is compelling despite the White Sox standing, as a solid two or so months of a lineup featuring him, Yoan Moncada, and Tim Anderson will offer a further glimpse into the future.
• Speaking of exciting players who might soon be in Chicago, Michael Kopech has put together two really good starts in a row, which is something we haven’t been able to say much this season. The 20 strikeouts in 12 innings across two starts is cool, but nothing new. What is new is that he only walked one batter a piece in those two outings, which is certainly a good sign for a pitcher whose struggled with command throughout the season. Kopech’s struggles certainly gives credence to those who think he’s more late-inning reliever than ace-level starting pitcher long term, but we’re a long way from that becoming a reality. It would be surprising if he doesn’t get his first crack at facing a major league lineup at some point before this summer ends.
• While BP’s Midseason Top 50 doesn’t include this year’s draft class, first-round pick Nick Madrigal was ranked No. 33 on Baseball America’s Midseason Top 100, and he was the White Sox third highest ranked behind Jimenez and Kopech. Since joining the organization, Madrigal has been to the plate 36 times between the AZL and Low-A Kannapolis and he’s reached base 17 times. He’s walked twice, been hit by a pitch four times, and has struck out zero times. That Madrigal has found immediate success as a polished college bat at the lowest levels of the minor leagues isn’t exactly surprising, but him doing exactly as expected is certainly better than the alternative.
• James Fegan of The Athletic profiled minor league reliever Ian Hamilton, whose success this season has him knocking at the door of a major league opportunity. Hamilton dominated Double-A during the first two months of the season and has put up zeros across all but one of his 11 appearances since being promoted to Triple-A Charlotte last month. Hamilton was an 11th round pick after spending his senior season at Washington State as a closer, so his trajectory as a reliever has never been in question. But him ascending to the majors for the White Sox would be a solid developmental win.
• Dylan Cease has been the biggest bright spot among White Sox prospects this season. The 22-year-old has pitched to somewhat mixed results in his four starts since promotion to Double-A, but has at the very least showed the type of swing-and-miss stuff that’s worth dreaming on. Perhaps more importantly, Cease has stayed healthy throughout the season, and after his last start sits at 93 1/3 innings on the season, which is tied for a career high with another month and a half or so left in the minor league season.
• Not that this would necessarily be considered a “success,” but the White Sox finally made the move to put Carson Fulmer in the bullpen after the 24-year-old’s struggles continued even after his demotion to Triple-A. It’s a disappointing but not unexpected outcome for the 2015 first rounder, and while it’s far from a guarantee, the hope is that he can reinvent himself as a reliever to still be a reliable part of the next White Sox contender. He’s made five appearances since the transition, giving up a pair of runs in one of them but zeros otherwise. He’s walked three and struck out five in 6 1/3 innings of work. That’s very much a “scouting the stat line” report, but it will be interesting to see what’s said about Fulmer once scouts get a look at how his stuff plays out of the bullpen.

Lead Photo Credit: Matt Marton-USA TODAY Sports

BP’s prospect team released its Midseason Top 50 Prospects list on Friday (read the whole thing here), and the White Sox were about as well represented as you might expect, with Eloy Jimenez, Michael Kopech, Dylan Cease, and Luis Robert making the cut. That the two pitchers on the list are two of the White Sox prospects not befallen by injury this year is not surprising, nor is the inclusion of Jimenez or Robert, despite their injury woes.

There’s not much that can be written about Jimenez at this point that hasn’t already been said. After destroying Double-A for the better part of two months, he kept pace in Triple-A for a few weeks before being disabled for the second time this season with a strained left adductor muscle that isn’t expected to keep him out for a prolonged period of time. One can reasonable surmise that if it weren’t for that and the missed time during the first month of the season, he’d be ineligible for this list as he’d be in the majors already. Barring further setbacks, he’ll likely be in Chicago at some point this summer.

Kopech is another name that you might not have expected to be eligible for the Midseason Top 50 at the beginning of the season, but his command struggles have at least given some pause for a pitcher who still has No. 1 starter upside. Kopech has walked at least four batters in nine of his last 12 starts and failed to get through five innings in five of those. It’s both easy and foolish to scout the stat line, but those who watch him have expressed some concern about the fact that he hasn’t yet harnessed his command, as that will be the different between Kopech being the starting pitcher everyone hopes he can become and a pitcher whose stuff plays better in relief.

Today is the one-year anniversary of the White Sox trading Jose Quintana to the Cubs, and while Jimenez remains the prize of that trade, the continued progress of Cease has been perhaps the biggest bright spot for the White Sox farm system this year. After pitching a combined 162 innings in his first four years as a pro and never topping 93 1/3 in any single season as the Cubs handled him extremely carefully following Tommy John surgery in 2014, not only is Cease already at 88 1/3 innings in early July, he dominated High-A and hasn’t missed a beat in three starts since a late June promotion to Double-A. Pure stuff has never been the question for Cease, it’s been a question of both mechanics and command. He’s passed every early test the White Sox have given him so far and is starting to serve notice.

Robert is the biggest enigma of the group, just as he was before the season. After spending all of 2017 after his signing in the Dominican Summer League, he’s been limited to fewer than 100 plate appearances between Low-A and High-A this season, but has shown enough of why the White Sox gave him a $26 million signing bonus despite the limited action for him to remain one of the top prospects in the game.

BP’s lead prospect writer, Jeffrey Paternostro (who is doing a Q&A on the list at 2 p.m. CT today, follow along and ask questions here), has said on a number of occasions that the midseason list is constructed from scratch and not based on the Preseason Top 101 at all. Still, it’s tough not to compare the two. In the White Sox case, the most notable difference is with Alec Hansen, who checked in at No. 40 in the Preseason 101 and was omitted from this iteration. This makes sense if for no other reason than because Hansen hasn’t pitched much since that preseason list was constructed. He made just one appearance in the Cactus League before being shut down with a forearm muscular issue that wound up sidelining him for three months. He’s made five starts since his return and hasn’t quite returned to the form that shot him up the rankings a year ago.

Beyond Hansen, there aren’t a lot of players you could’ve expected to see. Luis Alexander Basabe is definitely trending up despite a rough start at Double-A, and Dane Dunning was likely close despite an injury that will sideline him likely through the end of the season. Blake Rutherford and Zack Collins are both having fine seasons and if this were a Midseason Top 101, might have made the cut.

Lead Photo Credit: Mark J. Rebilas-USA TODAY Sports

1. An uptick in velocity and command of his breaking pitches were the main fuel behind a month where Dylan Covey seemingly transformed from Rule 5 afterthought to a legitimate candidate for future rotation consideration. A Friday night in Texas where he struggled to command anything and left quite a few changeups high in the zone showed just how small his margin for error is, as Covey was tagged for eight earned runs in just 2 1/3 innings in a start that more resembled his forgettable 2017 than the pitcher we saw for the majority of June.

Covey didn’t show any ill effects of the groin injury that forced him out of his previous start early, but was routinely beat around during a second inning in which he allowed three of the four home runs the Rangers hit off him on the day. The fact that he walked three and struck out zero — he induced just four swinging strikes on the evening — only further illustrated how badly he was locating throughout his 74-pitch outing.

Covey showed enough during his hot stretch to earn more opportunities on a team going nowhere in 2018. But he’s now on a three-start stretch where he’s walked 12 against just three strikeouts, so while optimism regarding the 26-year-old is obviously higher than it was even just a month or so ago, it will be interesting to see how he adjusts and if he’s more like the pitcher we saw for the majority of June or not.

2. Carlos Rodon certainly has more margin for error than Covey in any given start, but the Rangers jumped all over his first sign of command issues and what started out as a dominant start ended earlier than expected. Rodon retired the first seven Rangers he faced, including three strikeouts, but hung a fastball to Joey Gallo in the third inning for a solo home run and lost control in the fourth when a single and a pair of walks came home on a Robinson Chirinos bases-loaded double.

It was the first truly bad start of Rodon’s five since returning from injury on June 9, but what’s prevented him from truly living up to his potential during his three-plus years in the majors has been an inability to consistently command from start to start or, like Saturday, inning to inning. The good news for Rodon is that he seems completely healthy after being plagued by injury for the better part of the last year and a half, but we’re still waiting for Rodon to put together a complete and consistent performance like we know he’s capable of.

3. The White Sox weekend woes were not limited to the poor starts by Covey and Rodon. The bullpen was overburdened and allowed eight earned runs in 8 1/3 innings between Friday and Saturday, although a large chunk of that can be attributed to Bruce Rondon, whose ERA has ballooned up to 8.31 after allowing five earned runs while retiring just one batter on Saturday. Similarly, the White Sox committed a pair of errors in each of their two losses and five for the entire weekend, which is only part of the story of a weekend where a team that already wasn’t exactly known for its smooth fundamentals appeared to lose control of it entirely

Things like this are going to happen when a team rosters a handful of borderline major leaguers or young players still getting their feet wet, but while we’ve somewhat gotten used to the White Sox losing more often than they win, one thing you’d prefer they shore up is on that side of the ball. It’s easy to excuse a rebuilding team playing, say, Adam Engel when his bat isn’t up to snuff,, but when players who are already limited extrapolate things by failing to communicate, missing the cutoff, or some other mental miscue, it becomes much more difficult to excuse. Those are aspects of the game within their control, and while mental errors costing the White Sox wins is hardly detrimental to the immediate future, it’d at the very least make watching the losing more aesthetically appealing, and one would hope they get under control if and when they have eyes on contention.

4. The White Sox did win a game this weekend, as Reynaldo Lopez threw 6 1/3 mostly successful innings in a 10-5 win on Sunday, allowing just two earned runs with three walks and six strikeouts. Most notable in the win, and over the weekend as a whole, was Jose Abreu busting out of his slump and Avisail Garcia putting together a nice post-injury streak. Abreu, who hit was in the midst of a .188/.233/.325 slump from June 5 through 26, is 6-for-20 with a home run, a triple, and three walks since Wednesday, hardly world-mashing numbers, but a vast improvement coming out of one of the worst slumps of his career. Garcia went 4-for-5 on Sunday and is hitting .333 with six extra-base hits in 42 plate appearances since returning from the disabled list on June 22. He’s still hacking away at an absurd rate — zero walks in 118 plate appearances overall this season — but if he can start making solid contact again like he did in 2017, it would be a great sign.

5. A mostly unsuccessful weekend was also felt at the minor league level, where Luis Robert was placed on the seven-day disabled list and Eloy Jimenez left Sunday’s game with an apparent leg injury (the severity is not yet known). The arms fared better, as Michael Kopech tossed six innings on Saturday, giving up just three hits and striking out eight, although he also walked four. Dylan Cease continues to be the biggest bright spot in their stable of prospect arms, rebounding from a rocky debut at Double-A to toss seven innings on Sunday, allowing just one earned run with seven strikeouts and two walks. Alec Hansen has yet to get completely acclimated to the same level since returning from injury, however, as he turned in his third straight rough start on Thursday, giving up three earned runs with five walks and four strikeouts in just 3 2/3 innings.

Lead Photo Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports

1. James Shields threw seven shutout innings on Wednesday night.  I’m not advocating for Cy Young votes or anything, but he’s sitting at a 4.29 ERA with a 4.27 DRA and 4.43 FIP to match while throwing the 6th most innings in the majors.  It would have been cool if he had managed this in 2016 instead, but I continue to be pleasantly surprised with how he has adjusted to his diminished arsenal, and these results are beyond what I would have predicted for 2018.

2. We’ve pointed out how thin the White Sox had become at outfielder, due to an unambitious Opening Day pool of talent to begin with, which was then severely eroded by injury.  Leury Garcia and Avisail Garcia returned from the disabled list at the same time and the boost to the lineup has been fairly clear.  Leury is hitting .471/.471/.529 in his return to Chicago, meaning his batting average is about 100 points higher than Trayce Thompson’s OPS. Avisail hasn’t walked yet in 2018, but he’s homered in back-to-back games while he tries to get back to 2017 form.  Either way, the offense has clearly benefited from turning 22% of the lineup into competent major league regulars again.

3. The bullpen continues to evolve from a weakness at the start of the season to a strength. Joakim Soria has held opponents to a .114/.262/.114 line in June and is now having as good of a season as he’s had despite his rocky start to the year.  Jace Fry continues to use his starting pitcher’s arsenal in a relief role to great effect.  Xavier Cedeno is doing his Jace Fry impression results-wise, having thrown 8.33 shut out innings since his call up from Charlotte while striking out more than a batter per inning using a crafty lefty arsenal.  These performances have helped the White Sox hold leads a lot better as they fight toward a .500 June, even in the absence of Nate Jones.

4. Eloy Jimenez hit his second home run in Charlotte on Wednesday, improving his line since promotion to .276/.344/.483.  Jimenez remaining in Charlotte after eight games is not an outrage the way, say, Vladimir Guerrero Junior hitting .800 or whatever for three months in Double-A was.  But he has shown no real signs of an adjustment period so to speak now that he’s facing the major league veterans in the International League as a 21-year-old, and there’s every reason to suspect he will start beating the door down to the majors in the coming weeks.

5. With Lucas Giolito turning in his most exciting start of the year over the weekend, looking like he had combined the improvements he made to his secondary pitches from last fall with the resurgent velocity he showed this spring, and Dylan Covey’s string of good starts, Carson Fulmer has been off the radar screen.  That’s just as well, as he continues to struggle at Triple-A. Despite a mediocre 4.46 ERA, Fulmer has walked 28 batters in 38.33 innings since his demotion.  Teams always burn through starters at a terrifying rate in this sport, but with the potential improvements from Covey and Giolito, Michael Kopech, Jordan Stephens, and now Spencer Adams catching him in Triple-A, I’m not sure how much longer you bother with Fulmer in the rotation.

Lead Photo Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports

The most obvious example of this was the trade that brought Adam Eaton to Chicago. The White Sox, long known for their successes developing starting pitching, traded one of those developmental successes, former 30th round draft pick Hector Santiago, to bring in an outfielder who had already been fully developed in Arizona.

As the White Sox transitioned into rebuild mode, acquisitions like Yoan Moncada and Eloy Jimenez weren’t exactly “ready-made” players, but hitters who were premium enough that it was (or is, in Jimenez’s case) more about getting more reps before being major league ready than anything specific in their development.

The White Sox have taken measures, as detailed in the above link, to streamline their hitter development, and the dividends thus far have been in the form of Tim Anderson fulfilling, at least thus far, more or less what they hoped he’d become. There are other lesser development triumphs, such as Yolmer Sanchez or Leury Garcia. Nicky Delmonico’s 2016 emergence, as fleeting as it might prove to be, is something you’d more likely expect from an organization like the Cardinals or Dodgers than the White Sox. Likewise, players like Marcus Semien and Tyler Flowers, who spent the better part of the developmental stages of their careers, have blossomed into useful players, although it’s unclear how much the White Sox had to do with either cases.

The rebuild becoming successful is going to be based primarily on the White Sox top prospects living up to their potential. Moncada, Jimenez, and the glut of young pitchers both at the major and minor league levels panning out will be the biggest factor in the White Sox snapping their long playoff drought sometime in the near future. Of course, ownership proving it’s willing to open its wallet for premiere free agents to supplement said roster should it come to fruition will be important in filling roster holes as they emerge, too.

But while the White Sox path toward future contention has primarily centered around a group of top-level arms and two top-tier hitters, proving the advancements they’ve made in hitter development will go a long way toward not only contention in 2020 or so, but sustaining that success long term. While not top-tier prospects like Moncada or Jimenez, there’s a group of talented but volatile hitters whose development is integral in them doing just that.

That group includes the likes of Luis Robert, Zack Collins and Blake Rutherford, but also Micker Adolfo, Luis Alexander Basabe, Seby Zavala, Gavin Sheets, and a few others you could convince me to mention. Jake Burger, of course as well, but his last few months has zapped a lot of that hope for the time being.

Some of these prospects have a better chance that others, but the point is that while Moncada, Jimenez, and the arms are the biggest keys in building the team the White Sox hope to have, some of that next tier becoming major leaguers is a big factor, as well.

Not every player in a contending team’s lineup is a superstar. But every contending team features a stable of capable players able to produce. The White Sox have a few players with star potential, and a whole stable of them who could become the latter. Hitting development has been a sore spot for a while, but has made great strides in recent years. Just how far they’ve come will be determined over the next few years.

Lead Photo Credit: Ray Carlin-USA TODAY Sports

Both players were removed from the game. Saladino was diagnosed with a mild concussion and will enter MLB’s concussion protocol, meaning he won’t play again for at least seven days. Delmonico suffered a left shoulder subluxation. Rick Renteria said after the game that both players are day-to-day.

While it appears Saladino and Delmonico (hopefully) escaped serious injury, the list of injured White Sox has grown to a concerning level during camp. Jake Burger’s torn Achilles’ has already cost him his first full season as a professional, Luis Robert’s thumb injury is expected to cost him 10 weeks, Micker Adolfo’s elbow injury is going to limit him to DH, and Eloy Jimenez, Alec Hansen, Jeanmar Gomez, Gregory Infante, and the recently released Willy Garcia have all dealt with minor injuries over the last few weeks.

2. While Saladino’s injury is unrelated to the back injury that plagued him throughout 2017, it’s nonetheless unfortunate as the utility player has looked healthy and effective thus far this spring. A healthy Saladino would be a big boost for the White Sox depth, especially when you consider the uncertainty of Yolmer Sanchez as an everyday third baseman. And at 28 and coming off a lost season, his opportunities to prove himself as someone worth rostering as the White Sox next contention cycle opens are dwindling. Concussions are both scary and impossible to predict, but hopefully he can return sooner than later and this winds up a minor blip in his attempted return to productivity.

For Delmonico, any sort of long-term injury would represent a setback to a player who you wouldn’t even fathom to be in this position one year ago. But it also serves as an indicator at the precarious depth in the White Sox outfield. An injury to Delmonico would presumably elevate Ryan Cordell — already returning from his own injury last season — on the depth chart and also mean more playing time for Leury Garcia. Beyond them there’s … Daniel Palka?

Delmonico’s injury, as noted, appears minor, so hopefully he’s back out there relatively soon. And as far as the outfield depth goes, well…

3. Eloy Jimenez returned from the sore knee that sidelined him for two weeks and in four plate appearances in the last two games, has hit two home runs, a triple, and walked.

.@Lamantha21 showing off that opposite-field! #SoxSpringTrainingpic.twitter.com/QaPqFkUqCO

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) March 11, 2018

I’ve written a few times about how, at the very least, spring training is more fun when the exciting young players do well, but it’s not unfathomable that Jimenez torches Triple-A upon the season opening and finds himself in Chicago sooner than expected. At the very least, it’s nice to see him healthy and performing at a level that makes him one of the top prospects in baseball.

4. Speaking of young players performing well, Lucas Giolito looked downright dominant during his Saturday start against the Cubs, striking out eight over four innings and flashing the nasty curveball that scouts have long drooled over.

.@LGio27 is looking sharp early in Mesa! pic.twitter.com/jWBHH0BB9F

— Chicago White Sox (@whitesox) March 10, 2018

On the latest episode of The Catbird Speaks, Nick and I discussed the appeal of post-hype prospects. Giolito qualifies in that you don’t read his name on top prospect lists anymore, and it’s easy to forget how much potential he has while dreaming on the hype of Michael Kopech, Alec Hansen, and Dylan Cease. But showing consistent velocity (he reportedly sat 93-95 throughout Saturday’s start) to go along with that curveball will go a long way in him developing into the front-line starter the White Sox hope he can be.

5. Carson Fulmer had another inconsistent start on Friday against the Padres, and while he entered the spring as the presumptive No. 5 starter in the opening day rotation, his struggles coupled with the presence of Hector Santiago make it worth wondering if he’d be better served starting the season in Triple-A.

Fulmer showed flashes of what the White Sox hope he’ll become during a few September starts last season, but the former Top 10 pick has yet to show any semblance of consistency as a starting pitcher, and his performances both in Charlotte last season and this spring leave a lot to be desired. The White Sox will one day need to make a decision on whether or not Fulmer can start in the majors, but there’s no rush. Having other internal options means the White Sox can continue his development in Charlotte, and it’s looking like that might be the best option right now.