Unlike some rebuilds, the fruits of the White Sox teardown came in the form of some close to ready-made young talent, and among the players the White Sox acquired who made their team debut during an otherwise forgettable season were Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, and Reynaldo Lopez. Throw in incumbents Tim Anderson and Carlos Rodon (health pending) and the start of a hopeful new core was already starting to take place on the South Side, even as we wait for Eloy Jimenez, Michael Kopech, and others to join them.

If 2017 was Phase 1 of the rebuild, 2018’s Phase 2 won’t be too dissimilar. There likely won’t be as many veterans Rick Hahn & Co. can flip for shiny new toys, but as the aforementioned “next core” continues its development either in the majors or the minors, the White Sox will likely search for roster filler with two thoughts in mind: 1. Someone has to play, and 2. A good few months could generate even more young talent in the form of even more trades.

Setting aside the White Sox two most obviously valuable trade candidates, Jose Abreu and Nate Jones, which Nick outlined Monday, there isn’t much “roster filler” leftover from 2017, save for the expensive and ineffective James Shields. Thus, it’s likely the White Sox will spend this offseason identifying and pursuing players who fit the archetype of cheap veterans looking to rebuild their value on a shorter deals. Think Derek Holland, only hopefully with better results. Actually, forget Holland. Think Anthony Swarzak. That’s better.

With that in mind, a perusal of the available free agents brings … less than stellar options, as you might expect.

Still, there are bargains to be had. And when you project what the White Sox roster might look like in 2018, the rotation and bullpen are likely where most of the action will take place. Positionally, the White Sox have their starters at first base, second base, shortstop, and right field. One could make the argument for bringing in veterans at catcher, third base, left field, and center field, but the White Sox will have to weigh the desire to do that with ensuring more reps from guys like Omar Narvaez, Kevan Smith, Yolmer Sanchez, Leury Garcia, Matt Davidson, and Nicky Delmonico.

With that in mind, here are a few players who, at first glance, could be on the White Sox radar if the price is right:

Starting pitchers

James Fegan wrote about Tyler Chatwood as a potential free agent target over at The Athletic and I’ll echo those sentiments, as Chatwood is younger than your average free agent and the type of ground ball pitcher the White Sox like to target. Andrew Cashner is now 31 but was once a flame-throwing top prospect who could want to rebuild his value after posting the worst K/9 of his career in Texas. Jhoulys Chacin will be 30 in January and has a dwindling strikeout, but may come cheaply enough if he’s willing to leave the friendly confines of PetCo for a less pitcher-friendly environment. Chris Tillman had a disastrous season in Baltimore and his value couldn’t be much lower, but that’s kind of the point here, right? Wade Miley technically still exists. Why not bring back Miguel Gonzalez?

Relievers

Trevor Cahill gave up more home runs in 23 innings with the Royals than in 61 with the Padres, but is somehow still only 29. Asher Wojciechowski is a slider/change-up guy who gives up way too many fly balls to make sense but is young enough that maybe the White Sox would be interested. Steve Cishek and Tommy Hunter represent classic “sign and flip” candidates if they have a few good months. Luke Gregerson is only a year removed from being a valuable bullpen piece, but was so bad for Houston that he only pitched in mop-up duty in the playoffs. The actual answer to this question, of course, is Matt Albers.

Outfielders

Carlos Gonzalez was among the worst everyday players in baseball for the first half of 2017, but rebounded to the tune of a .921 OPS in the second half. He was linked to the White Sox plenty during the years they were actually trying to contend, so it would only be logical for them to get him now to split time between left field and DH. Leonys Martin plays a good center field but can’t hit a lick, making him basically an older version of Adam Engel. Ichiro Suzuki is who they sign in my dreams, and sometimes my dreams come true.

Infielders/catchers

There really isn’t much to work with here, and these groups are probably the least likely to see any sort of free agent additions. Maybe Will Middlebrooks on a minor league deal excites you, since he’s a name you know. Hey, they gave Cody Asche a shot so who knows? Chris Iannetta has always been well regarded for his receiving skills and would be a good candidate to help groom the White Sox young arms from behind the plate, but would only likely be considered if the front office’s opinions on Narvaez or Smith’s handling of pitchers are less glowing than they say publicly. Old friend Hector Sanchez will only be 28 and had a random dinger-laden streak for the Padres last season.

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This was after all, a collision that appear so brutal that Hawk Harrelson felt compelled to sprint down from the booth to the clubhouse, in an endearing burst of energy, just to check on the health of the Sox still relatively new third baseman. Attempts on Twitter to recall previous instances when Hawk felt compelled to do this included the Jake Peavy injury, which Deadspin’s Tim Marchman once described as (paraphrasing) “muscles bunched up like twisted miniblinds inside a man’s back,” which was not a fun moment to recall.

The White Sox have been uncommonly achy so far this year, but this was their first real brush with a significant blow that would alter their season, and the prospect of exploring their positional depth was not a cheery one. To some degree, it’s hard to understand why the Sox are as good as they have been, and any threat to fuss with the magical calculus seems disastrous.

2. But now that his teeth have been taken out of his lip, and with an off-day, Frazier is expected to not even miss a day. It would be histrionics to pretend Frazier is the most valuable member of the lineup, but he’s been exactly as advertised. From the eerily similar stats (.309 OBP/.498 SLG in 2015, .303 OBP/.496 SLG through Wednesday) to the stabilizing defense that’s been a godsend to an infield going through a, ahem, transitional year at shortstop, Frazier has improved everything he’s touched, and helped make navigating the Sox lineup more complicated than ‘get around Jose Abreu.’ Frazier’s 31 RBI–as Tom Fornelli pointed out, 20 percent of the Sox runs–doesn’t reflect his talent level, but speaks to his level of involvement in every key breakthrough.

More importantly, he’s in a stretch of four home runs in six games and is just too hot to sit. Which brings up this top-notch Robin Ventura quote:

“Ventura on rest for Frazier, Lawrie: ‘Fraze you want to give a day off, but he’s swinging well. Brett, I just don’t want him sitting by me'”

-Daryl Van Schouwen

Shades of Ozzie Guillen discussing A.J. Pierzynski with that one.

3. Mat Latos is no longer pitching to weak contact, conserving energy, using his defense or doing anything besides failing to miss bats. Wednesday’s five-walk, zero strikeout performance was the culmination of a three-start slide into ineffectiveness, and while the inability to keep hitters off his fastball (MLB-worst 1.25 percent whiff/swing rate for minimum 100 pitches) has been a lingering issue all year long, this last start even lacked the zip (90.5 mph) of previous outings.

This is not inherently crippling data, but Latos did not make his career as a high-contact, soft-tossing, junkballing guy. He flashes some very tight overhand curves and splitters, but he’s six-foot, six-inches tall and used to regularly run it up at 95 mph. He’s used to being able keep hitters off-balance and get whiffs on his fastball, and the ability just has not been there in 2016, resulting in a 11.2 percent strikeout rate that is worst among qualified starters. It was worrisome when Mark Buehrle dipped to these type of rates near the end of his career, and Latos is not Buehrle.

Latos obviously has not hurt the Sox much yet with his play, and maybe players really can make a tidal wave of adjustments to their limitations overnight (/flashes glance to Avisail Garcia), but the warning signs are clear. Mid-rotation help is not what I would have bet on for the first area of trade need, but here we very much are.

4. Hector Sanchez, DFA’d when Alex Avila was re-activated because he was out of options, has been claimed by the San Diego Padres. There will be no great Chicago ballads sung for their outgoing No. 4 catcher, but his departure, and with Kevan Smith having not played an inning since tweaking his back hours before his would-be major league debut, the Sox have no one currently on the 40-man to step up if something happens to Avila or Dioner Navarro. The next man up would be Omar Narvaez, a 24 year-old non-prospect with no major league experience.

Once Smith returns this situation looks more tenable, but even then it’s probably time to find someone off the street, if only to booster minor league depth, as neither Navarro nor Avila managed 100 games played last year.

5. Robin Ventura is probably the manager least likely to publicly raise a stink about his contract status. It would be intensely at odds with his personal style, and this is the guy who turned down an extension offer after his first and only winning season. Finally on the winning side of things again, and helming a team that both navigated an internationally recognized ridiculous clubhouse crisis, and emerged from it with all key personnel remaining publicly steadfast about their cohesion, Ventura’s consistent and relaxed demeanor is being given a lot of credit.

And why not? 23-12 is not really the time to launch an ‘in-game tactics > clubhouse management’ diatribe. But since the White Sox do not have to offer Ventura extra commitment to keep the peace with him, so he will keep the peace with the players, then they should take the full year to test whether this dynamic can work with the contending team they hope to have for at least the next two years.

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His fastball in his last two times out has been a solid four miles per hour slower than even his Opening Day start, his slider has dropped by the same magnitude while he’s switched to a loopy slurve that didn’t get any swings and misses Tuesday, and his strikeout rate has dropped eight percent from last season’s reign as king of whiffs in the AL.

It could also be the best month of his career. It’s the first five-win month of his career, which is ephemeral, but since he’s averaging more than seven innings per start, Sale has more impact on the decisions than most.

Superficially, Sale is getting all the luck that eluded him last year. Even Philip Humber in 2011 rode rock bottom BABIP and high strand rates longer than Sale has so far without getting written up breathlessly. The difference is whether it can still be trusted that Sale has the whiffs in his back pocket when he needs them. He pops out top velocity (touched 96 mph Tuesday) and ramps it up over the start enough to keep the faith, and if 99 out of 100 pitchers would simply be grappling with physical decline rather than giving a feint to the entire league, the 100th would be Chris Sale.

2. Sale pumped in first strikes to 21 of 29 hitters Tuesday night, using a lot of low-90s fastballs early in the count against the Blue Jays lineup that’s one of the least aggressive in baseball so far in 2016. That’s one of the largest hints of how he was acting on his preseason goals for more efficiency, but Adam Eaton also threw out a quote that was a bit more provocative than the usual ‘this team is great’ fare.

“He has a chance to throw a no-hitter every night. He has that type of stuff,’’ Eaton said. “I definitely think his mentality has changed this year and that has to do with the catching. [With] Navarro and Alex [Avila], he seems not to get mad as much. He stays on task.’’

Sale had nothing but praise for Tyler Flowers, but that has little impact on the outside perception of Flowers’ ability to rein Sale in. Recently, Sale’s outings are too low stress for this principle to really get a workout, but it’s something to watch for the rest of the season.

3. Yesterday’s note about it still being early enough to flip a batting line with a few hot games certainly applies to Avisail Garcia, who vaulted his OPS more than 150 points just by having four hits over the last two games, including slapping a lifeless R.A. Dickey knuckler to the moon Tuesday night (and promptly getting a very eager free pass his next time up).

Garcia hasn’t done anything in the last two days that he hasn’t done before (spray singles to right field, swat hangers), but if the conversion rate on the things he can do was higher, he probably wouldn’t have people suggesting he be demoted. An Avisail Garcia full of limitations but being excellent at the things he’s capable of is not a foolish thing to hope for and can probably at least fight off Jerry Sands for playing time. The Sox’ ridiculously hot start will still ratchet up the scrutiny on Garcia either way, especially since DH help will be the easiest to find.

4. Hector Sanchez is now with the big club after injuries felled Alex Avila and Kevan Smith, and it would stand to reason that he would get into a game soon, since Dioner Navarro, of 32 years on this Earth, parts of 13 seasons in the majors and 921 games, has appeared in parts of the last six games in a row.

Navarro has been looking increasingly hitterish since working regularly, going 5-for-10 with two home runs and two walks in the last four games. Returns against right-handed pitching can probably be expected to diminish when the opposition is not a bad knuckleballer who can’t break 80 mph, though.

5. Zach Putnam worked the ninth inning of Tuesday’s blowout, striking out the side with his usual recipe of “Here, try to hit my insane splitter.” He threw splitters on 10 of his 13 pitches, and half of those 10 went for a swing and miss.

That actually dragged down his whiff percentage for a pitch he throws roughly three out of every five times on average (he gets whiffs on ~56 percent of swings). His success is … odd. That Putnam is striking out more than 30 percent of hitters again is actually a repeat of last season, but he was hurt down the stretch of 2015 and finished with a 4.07 ERA despite a flashy 64 strikeouts in 48.2 innings. Putnam’s one dimensional nature is hysterical to watch — everything we know about the complexities of pitching makes a guy throwing the same nasty tumbler over and over and getting major leaguers out absurd — but it also serves to make him more volatile. Naturally, if he comes out and doesn’t have his splitter working, he’s a tomato can and your first hint of such is typically a ball rocketing over the fence.

It would still be nice to see him get more high-leverage work due to just how useful a reliever with no real platoon split, a high strikeout rate and a pitch built to induce grounders can be in U.S. Cellular Field.

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