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.

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Reddick was a player that seemed like someone who could help the 2016 White Sox when they got off to their great start, but as we have discussed at length here, Rick Hahn et al. let the ’16 squad die on the vine instead of helping it. Now we have the White Sox posturing about shopping their core, which is easier said than done. It would be a very White Sox thing for them to try to pick a direction, hesitate, and still fail to do so, leaving themselves trying to buy instead when it’s too late.

I have yet to have anybody persuade me that they shouldn’t try to win one more time in 2017, and at first I was annoyed to see a guy like Reddick get plucked off the market. However, while he would make the ’17 White Sox better, a center fielder would be a much better fit. The clearest impact here is that Dexter Fowler, someone who could really move the needle for a playoff push, now has a contract he can point to and say, “I’m way better than that guy, so give me way more money.” Those four year, $60-70 million estimates for Fowler are looking even more accurate today.

The McCann trade essentially eliminates the possibility of Jason Castro returning to Houston. Several suitors have been connected to Castro, but one argument is that he is a fit for the White Sox regardless of what direction they choose. On a rebuilding team with their aces traded away, Castro’s great receiving and framing skills will help get the most out of the young, wild arms the White Sox would be counting on developing. If they choose to go for in in 2017, he will help the front line starters actually reach their potential instead of being sabotaged by their defense, as they were in 2015, or by awful pitch framing as they were in 2016.

As this was drafted, it was announced that St. Louis had signed Brett Cecil for four years, $30 million. Cecil is good and this deal is probably fair, but this does feel like it supports the hypothesis that the reliever market is going to balloon pretty significantly, which may make the remainder of David Robertson‘s contract a lot more appealing in trade to a playoff hopeful who loses out on the Uber Closer Free Agent Sweepstakes.

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1. The White Sox could use some more pitching;

2. A left-handed bat would be very nice; and

3. You get more value out of a player by adding them sooner rather than waiting all the way to the deadline; and

4. You can’t buy unless someone is out there willing to sell.

Several teams that looked like they would be sellers got off to good starts, which makes it harder to buy, although they have subsequently come back down to earth — the Brewers, for example.  However, the American League seems to consist entirely of teams that have non-crazy playoff aspirations, other than the A’s or the Twins.*  Meanwhile, teams like the Rockies, Phillies, and Marlins are performing better than pre-season expectations and would have a tough sell to their fanbases and clubhouses if they punted assets at this juncture.

*The Angels and Astros are at the bottom of the AL West, but the former are desperately scrounging about for supplements to the roster, and Houston is probably still too good for people to shovel dirt on them just yet. 

So Hahn’s remark about not having a dance partner is visible front and center, and not just in the smoky backrooms of MLB front offices.

But the White Sox don’t need a major piece to improve the roster.  The easiest places to get better are the areas of biggest weakness–it’s simply a lower bar to clear.  And right now, even if we give Avisail Garcia the benefit of the doubt, the bench is an unmitigated disaster.

Alex Avila is basically the backup catcher, so unless something crazy happens and they add like, Jonathan Lucroy, he’s not going anywhere.  Regardless, his TAv this year is .212.  Jerry Sands is at .208. Carlos Sanchez was just demoted because he was hitting about as badly as you possibly can and Tyler Saladino‘s presence made him completely redundant.  The former had a .129 TAv (!!!!!) and the latter is somehow putting him to shame at .226.

You don’t exactly need an NL cellar dweller to completely crash out on the season and scoop up all of your prospects to improve on that.  So while it is nice to fantasize about trades for Ryan Braun, Lucroy, and Jonathan Villar to plug every hole on offense and turn the team into a Mad Max: Fury Road-style war rig, you could still make improvements right now.  The 2015 Mets, for example, helped their team out a lot by replacing the Eric Campbells of their roster with Kelly Johnson and Juan Uribe well before they added Yoenis Cespedes.

The estimable Matt Cassidy of FutureSox pointed out to me on Twitter that Danny Hayes (of the Knights not CSN) and Jason Coats are players that he thinks could be useful internal options, and Matt Davidson is having his best year in Charlotte yet.  But, much like how Miguel Gonzalez–a freely acquired outside asset–looks like he may outperform Jacob Turner and Erik Johnson, the White Sox should be aggressively digging through the bargain bin.

Even if you want to keep Avila, Saladino, and Sands on board that should still leave a fourth spot on the bench that you can devote to the best bat you can find without compromising your backup at any given position.

The White Sox are in first place, but it is a tenuous hold, there is a long way to go, and AL Central rivals are seeing key players go down with injuries at an impressive rate.  There is an opportunity here, the margins are the easiest and cheapest places to add and hoo boy is the bar a low one to clear when it comes to improving the bench.

Before the season, the Orioles had agreed to a one year, $5.1 million deal to avoid arbitration with Gonzalez, but after a disastrous 9.78 ERA and 8:6 strikeout-to-walk ratio in spring elected to pay him approximately $1.25 million to play for someone else. Considering the complete dearth of quality starting pitching in the Orioles’ system, such a move says a lot about how the org felt about what Gonzalez can provide.

With that said, Gonzalez has had a fair amount of MLB success. From 2012-2013, he pitched nearly 300 IP of mid-3s DRA ball, with a slightly-below-average cFIP. Despite a sterling 3.23 ERA in 2014 159 IP in 2014, however, his peripherals suggested much less success, and in 2015 he was only useful as an innings eater. While throwing 150 IP a year certainly has value, his performance has offered little beyond that.

Given the state of the White Sox rotation, however, adding organizational pitching depth like this can still be helpful. Even with Don Cooper/Herm Schnieder magic, it’s not likely the White Sox will see their starting pitchers healthy for 161 of their 162 scheduled starts again in 2016, and when someone inevitably succumbs to injury (or one of John Danks or Mat Latos succumbs to being unplayably bad), Gonzalez is a nice safety net as someone who you can reasonably expect to throw passable innings. If the Sox are counting on much more than that from him next year, they’ll have much bigger problems on their hands.

One interesting ripple effect of this signing is likely moving Erik Johnson and Jacob Turner one peg down the depth ladder, and that presumably is by design. Both had similarly awful springs, and Johnson being outlasted in big league camp by 2015 draftee Carson Fulmer suggests a lot about how the Sox feel about his ability to pitch quality big league innings in 2016. And while this move likely doesn’t move the upside needle for the White Sox season outlook, the adage “you can never have enough pitching” seems to be instructive here.

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