It’s not exactly a developmental position. The only qualified DHs under the age of 30 last season were Khris Davis and Corey Dickerson (Davis is 29), and is mostly occupied by aging players whose elite bats have kept them in the game past the death of their defensive utility. The Sox don’t figure to have any of those types unless they force that status upon Jose Abreu against his will, so they will probably be filling it the other commonly seen way: a rotating cast of players with some power potential and no consistent defensive home.

While reviewing a still in-development effort by Baseball Prospectus to project playing time for the 2017 season that I probably shouldn’t be discussing yet, I couldn’t help but notice that Sox DH was…a hodgepodge, to put it politely. They basically listed every position player on the 40-man who is not already a regular at another position, and they were not wrong to do so.

Avisail Garcia saw the most time there in 2016 of anyone returning, which, gives him some vague theoretical leg up. Melky Cabrera is still on the team, can hit, and is a declining defender who would figure to take some days off playing the field if he sticks around for a while, Rymer Liriano and Jason Coats are corner outfield types who will be looking to squeeze into whatever gap they can fit in, and Matt Davidson is on the 40-man roster, and thus in the mix. And this is alongside the possibilities of guys like Abreu, Todd Frazier and Brett Lawrie swinging over for some occasional PAs, just because they’re currently around.

Garcia is likely the worst defender of the three corner outfielders, but his power drought only ended when he got into the field more in the second half. He only slugged .366 as a DH in 2016, compared to .435 as a right fielder. It’s hard to work up a great reason to project success for Davidson, as he got nearly 2000 plate appearances in Triple-A alone before a mild, still strikeout prone (26.4 percent in 2016) turnaround earned him a short-lived call-up last season, but how is anyone too stalled to give a shot when Garcia is still in the mix?

Liriano is the freshest face in this regard, since the last significant playing time he received saw him hit .292/.383/.460 with San Diego’s Triple-A affiliate in 2015. He seems like a longshot to perform well enough in Spring to win a job, given that he will have a full year of injury rust to knock off, but really is just a mystery box since he was a raw prospect who showed promise but has now missed two years of development. But everyone has a specific advantage over Coats, who is otherwise projected by many to lead the field in playing time. Coats was only added to the 40-man roster last Summer, and can easily be stashed in the minors without risk of being claimed off waivers, whereas Liriano and Davidson cannot.

Coats has never suffered through a long stall in production at any stage of the minors, and has certainly earned a shot on a rebuilding club, but lacks the standout tools to project him as a consistent regular. If not wanting to lose a guy on waivers was enough to give Jerry Sands an Opening Day slot last year, it could definitely keep Coats in Charlotte for the start of April.

A sentiment we’re at risk of losing when discussing the turgid mechanics of figuring out playing time, is that unless Melky just becomes a full-time DH, none of these guys figure to fill the position particularly well. Davidson was supposed to have plenty of power, but also strike out a ton and hit for a low average that would make his offense an asset only if he could stick at third base. Liriano was always revered as a toolshed, and his throwing arm and athleticism were supposed to help prop up the unrefined elements of his game at the plate, and Garcia was looked upon similarly but with more reverence for his speed and hit tool, and all three have seen hopes of fulfilling those past expectations dim drastically.

So all three are options to slot at DH for the sake of giving them at-bats and a chance to prove themselves, but are not necessarily great fits that would preclude the Sox from finding a veteran bat and hoping they hit well enough to be flipped for prospects. Mets writers have been very keen to suggest the White Sox relieve New York of their inability to trade Jay Bruce, but that could be a very expensive and thankless favor.

But maybe the Sox should be in the business of doing expensive favors with little chance of paying off; they have all of $69 million in pre-arbitration obligations for 2017 and figure to shed Frazier’s expensive third year of arbitration at some point, not to mention David Robertson and possibly Cabrera’s contract. If the budget-conscious Mets are willing to sweeten the pot with a prospect to have Bruce taken off their hands, it becomes a worthwhile maneuver. The Sox could similarly do well to inquire just how disenchanted the Cardinals are with Matt Adams, and see if the 28-year-old could reclaim any of his promise on the South Side. The Cardinals have a lot of infield options and no true first base bat, and would probably be interested in shedding some of them for Abreu, while we’re at it. And that’s before we glance at a slow-playing free agent market that still has Chris Carter, Pedro Alvarez and Mike Napoli hanging around.

Just because the big league club is set to become a clearinghouse for reclamation projects doesn’t mean they need to be inherently overmatched ones, and the realm of hitters with some chance of success who are too risky for contenders to take a chance on does not end at the Sox 40-man roster, and they would be wise to leverage their ability to survive a flop.

Lead Image Credit: Kamil Krzaczynski // USA Today Sports Images

Defensive metrics can be sketchy, this we know, but they do provide a good at-a-glance baseline when judging a player’s ability in the field. Here are two player options you have:

Player A

Player B

If we’re looking for an immediate upgrade to help push towards the postseason, offensively, I’d take Player B.

Player B is Jay Bruce and Player A is Avisail Garcia, though you’ve probably already guessed the former, judging by the atrocious power numbers. Granted, some of the sample sizes are smaller for Garcia than they have been in the past few seasons for Bruce, but it’s not as though adding 100 more games to his totals will suddenly change Garcia into a superstar. The White Sox have seen enough.

During a time when the White Sox looked like solid contenders back in April, things in the outfield were good. They were very good. The Sox had figured out what Adam Eaton’s niche was by stashing him in right field, a place where his defense was so good some wondered if he might draw Jason Heyward comps, and newcomer Austin Jackson held down Eaton’s vacated spot in center quite well.

But just as we’ve seen on the North side of town, outfields are injury prone. Everyone is injury prone. It’s baseball. Things happen and by mid-season players are banged up. When a team is looking to contend they simply cannot afford to stash a any warm body in the field when tragedy strikes. Sufficient depth, a title that Garcia does adequately not live up to, is needed.

Having an outfield that currently consists of J.B. Shuck in centerfield, along with a tandem of Eaton and Garcia night after night is barely holding the fort down (at least Melky Cabrera is doing just fine in left), much less making the outfield a plus one as it was for the short time in which Jackson was an everyday starter.

So then, back to Bruce. The Reds are in a heavy rebuilding period and have been looking to move Bruce since what feels like the dawn of time, and the White Sox need a right fielder who is actually able to hit for power, not one for whom they’re still waiting for to do so after four years in the majors.

The White Sox are, let’s use the term “conservative,” when it comes to shelling out for high quality players, and as I pointed out last week when detailing my feelings on Justin Morneau, they’re more interested in bargain hunting and squeezing as much talent as they can from their finds than mortgaging what’s left of the farm system to land a player still in their prime or possessing plus talent.

This is what leads me to believe Bruce is a realistic target for the White Sox. He’s no superstar, he isn’t going to be netting Tim Anderson and Carson Fulmer. He seems to be the type of profile the White Sox would be willing to make a deal for.

Bruce’s defense has been bad in 2016, we can see that from the numbers above. But the real question now becomes, is his defense really much worse than Garcia’s could end up being?

Garcia’s positive defensive numbers season have come in very little playing time, and seem to conceal what we all know to be true: he is also very bad at defense. Just a few seasons ago Bruce was putting up slightly better numbers than Garcia. It’s certainly picking nits, neither are going to be winning a Gold Glove anytime soon, but when bargain hunting on the trade market, there are certain aspects of a players game you must accept as part of the “discount”. That’s when the decision is more heavily weighted on what specific tools the new player would bring to the table. The Sox need offense and power, and that’s something that Bruce will give you this season. Bruce is posting an incredible .539 slugging percentage this season, good for 11th overall among National League hitters with minimum 300 plate appearances.

Bruce is streaky, no doubt, but if the White Sox pick him up it’s not as though they’re committing themselves to a lifetime of wondering if Bruce’s bat will magically morph into Garcia levels of atrocity. Bruce is signed through the end of the 2016 season with a $13 million team option for 2017. If things don’t work out for the White Sox and they end up looking to go into full rebuild mode come October, they can simply shake hands with Bruce and walk away. But if they’re going to push now, they’ll need to add another piece of moderately priced depth to the outfield, as well as the bench when Jackson does return.

Bruce may not look like a completely well-rounded acquisition on a team that needs as much help to stay afloat in the second half as the White Sox do, but the important part is he’s an upgrade over Garcia. That’s a start, and a very important one at that.

Lead photo courtesy of Tim Heitman-USA TODAY Sports

And yet, they absolutely cruised, so much so that David Robertson likely had to blow dust off his shoulders when he started warming up Sunday afternoon.

This is no small part due to the Twins being absolutely terrible–a complete doormat that is only starting to realize how far away from contention they truly are. They might be at their most vulnerable right now, as they cycle through terrible veteran options (Darin Mastroianni is not a cure to Byron Buxton‘s struggles) before they just punt and let their prospects have at it.

But show me a White Sox fan who is unimpressed by this team being able to easily win games against awful clubs they should hammer and I will show you a brand new White Sox fan.

2. Speaking of bizarre news that can barely be understood, Jose Abreu‘s slow start, Todd Frazier‘s low batting average and Brett Lawrie cooling off a bit means Avisail Garcia, with his .256/.340/.463 line, is leading the White Sox in slugging percentage.

Garcia has provided false early hope before, as he carried a .300 average with moderate power all the way to the second week of June last year until posting .235/.288/.322 over his last ~400 plate appearances. The difference with buying into that hot streak is that it required hope that Garcia could suddenly just be an elite barrel-to-ball guy while maintaining all his problems with pitch selection and velocity on the inner half of the plate. There was a sky-high BABIP that he lacked the skills to maintain behind everything, and it came crashing down in precipitous and predictable fashion.

This year is powered by, well, power (an ISO over .200 at long last), and one look at Garcia’s frame and career 23 percent strikeout rate and it’s pretty clear that that needs to be a major part of making his living. Combine that with plate discipline numbers that show less swinging and less chasing across the board, and the only reason for cynicism is the cynicism that Garcia’s career invites.

He’s not doing much that has not been seen from Garcia before–crushing hangers, showing the ability to spray pitches on the outer half to all fields–but thus far he is simply showing the ability to do it reliably while curbing out some of his most egregious mistakes.

The book on how to attack him remains pretty clear–elevated velocity, especially on the inner half of the zone–and whether he can eat up mistakes at a rate that neutralizes this vulnerability feels like a long-term test for someone who was as relentlessly chewed up as he was by major league pitching in the second half. A Sox team that has its eyes on contention wants a left-handed complement to Garcia at the least, but Jerry Sands shouldn’t steal Avisail’s playing time anymore.

3. Per Jon Heyman, the White Sox are one of four teams abnormally obsessed with two-time NL Cy Young Award winner Tim Lincecum. Heyman says Lincecum sat 89-92 mph with sharp breaking stuff, but the last really productive Lincecum season was 2011 with steady velocity bleed since then.

Miguel Gonzalez is expected to start Monday night, Erik Johnson just submitted an unimpressive audition of his own and Latos has a discouraging recent injury history, beyond any concerns about his performance holding up. As such the White Sox are in a position to take all comers. But Lincecum has the potential to be significantly more expensive–in the sense that he even has something as large as Latos’ contract coming his way–than typical waiver wire refugees, without any recent history to suggest he will outperform them.

Almost any pitcher the Sox evaluate and determine there is hope for is inherently intriguing, but Lincecum’s last four years are considerably less interesting than Miguel Gonzalez’s when name recognition is taken out of the equation.

Elsewhere in the rumor mill, for what it’s worth, Nick Cafardo reports the White Sox could be in on Jay Bruce. Fresh off decidedly below-average offensive years, Bruce is currently hitting .234/.284/.467 with 31 strikeouts to six walks, but at least his bad defense wouldn’t be a factor. Thankfully, the connection to Bruce is more a general connection to all left-handed bats on the market, and there are better ones out there.

4. In addition to Gonzalez, Alex Avila is eligible to return to the team Monday from his hamstring injury. Dioner Navarro has been a house of fire at the plate since the moment Avila went down (.326/.354/.605 in 48 plate appearances) but it can be agreed that five-to-six starts per week is not great for either of these guys, no matter who should be getting No. 1 billing.

Navarro is currently the worst framer in baseball, but has strong endorsements from the pitching staff, and since Avila has not yet shown any signs of abating his multi-season power drain (one extra-base hit in 33 plate appearances), Navarro should be able to cling to a majority of the playing time.

5. Jose Quintana is second in the AL in ERA among starters, while Sale is fourth, but Sale is second in the AL in the lowest opposing OPS, while Quintana is a mere sixth, and Sale also leads all of baseball in wins, for what it is worth. cFIP has them stride-for-stride, with Sale fourth and Quintana fifth in the AL, and they are in the same order as seventh and eighth in DRA.

Point being, Quintana, a guy who had established his reputation as a good No. 2 starter with ERAs in the low-to-mid 3.00s like a metronome, is keeping pace with the best starters in the league in the early going. He was due for a hot start that got him the All-Star attention he deserves, but how you feel about the Sox’ potential to keep their status at the top of the division should have a lot to do with the ceiling of their top three starters. Save for Lawrie and Garcia, the regression arrow for the Sox offense mostly points up, but there’s no real precedent for someone like Quintana to just continually ascend from minor league free agent, to back-end starter, to mid-rotation guy, to bonafide No. 2, to All-Star/fringe No. 1. Still, he’s been steadily adding velocity, breaking pitches and elite command like rules don’t apply to him for this long, so who is to say when it stops.

Lead Image Credit: Jerry Lai // USA Today Sports Images

1. Well, so much for that.

Jon Heyman reported trade talks involving Jay Bruce and the White Sox are dormant in the wake of the Austin Jackson deal.

To be fair, Bruce is a power-first (power-only?) platoon guy with below-average defense. Saying that the Sox are not looking for a starter doesn’t necessarily disqualify Bruce; someone probably best used in a DH rotation.

The Sox also don’t need to be talking about trades Bruce right now. As I argued yesterday, his presence would make for a slow, inflexible roster unless the Sox have a way to move Adam LaRoche, and if they did, we wouldn’t be here. What they need to be doing is actively scouring what’s out there when LaRoche or Avisail Garcia bottom out or get hurt, because that is a real real real possibility hanging over the roster this season.

2. It’s normally not worth the time to focus on every article with a different opinion, but what David Haugh put out in a major Chicago news outlet is such an inaccurate representation of the state of the franchise that it bears a rebuttal.

Haugh joins a growing number of mainstream Chicago media members who are bizarrely sour on Adam Eaton: a great offensive player since the moment he donned the White Sox uniform. Eaton has repeatedly had his visible faults–below average center field defense, underwhelming base thievery–mistaken for damning ones, unless they are simply substituting for unspoken ones. But Haugh’s assertion that he would be a fourth outfielder behind Austin Jackson and a theoretical Jay Bruce acquisition seems based on information on 2013, back when both were impact players.

Rebuking the way the Sox and the league clearly value Eaton, Jackson and Bruce on nothing more than an unsupported assertion would be a bizarre launching point for a column, but it’s capped by an ill-advised comparison to the Cubs rebuild, seeking to contrast their youth movement to the Sox collection of one-year deals with veterans or “mercenaries,” as he put it. In doing so, Haugh is comparing the Cubs core to the Sox supporting cast, and then expressing shock at the stark contrasts.

The Sox core: Sale, Quintana, Abreu, Eaton, is mature save for Rodon, who is nevertheless ready to produce. Surrounding them with raw youngsters, as Haugh laments the Sox not taking a shot with Erik Johnson, Tyler Saladino, Micah Johnson, Trayce Thompson, Carson Fulmer and Tim Anderson, would be inappropriate and setting them up for failure and a wasted year, especially given that the first four names of this group might not ever be regular major league starters. Filling in the supporting cast with veterans is not dissimilar from the Cubs are doing now; as their interest in turning over full-time work to Javy Baez and Albert Amora has suddenly evaporated as their playoff dreams have bloomed (and those guys are actually prospects).

If there’s a criticism to be launched of the mercenary crop, it’s that the Sox emphasized bargains and and avoiding commitment over acquiring quality too many times, especially to fill out a roster that’s supposed to be aimed toward making the most out the years Sale and Abreu have left on contract. Instead, Haugh speaks critically of the Sox payroll reaching even $120 million, and knocks them for another “go-for-broke” season, when pretty much every non-core player will fall off the books after 2016.

In aiming for a story drawing a contrast between the young and old on the Sox roster, Haugh ignores the ages that matter:

Sale turns 27 at the end of the month, Quintana is 27 now, Abreu is 29, Eaton is 27 and Todd Fraizer is 30; they’re right in their prime.

3. Carlos Rodon is going to work on throwing his changeup more, or so he says to Scott Merkin.

“It’s just getting the feel back from throwing it. Just keep throwing it when I play catch every day, in the sides, in the games, especially in these Spring Training games. That’s what will make it better.”

As Merkin points out, in the furor of trying to hold his own as a major league starter pushed Rodon’s changeup to basically a show-me pitch (8.7 percent). Spring gives him a chance to reboot and go through the motions of working it in without consequence to where he hopefully gets comfortable featuring it, but it’s all projection until we see what he turns to when he’s challenged. That he’s pretty darn great just when he can throw his fastball for strikes is a solace, and also what’s holding him back from having to trust his changeup.

4. Spring Training is weeks upon weeks of dullness, lulling viewers to sleep to the point where Opening Day’s intensity is a sudden surprise. Then you hear something like Chris Sale vs. Sonny Gray will be the first game of the season and being excited about baseball feels very real and pressing.

Sale has only faced the Oakland A’s five times as a starter. He has never faced Sonny Gray, but somehow has managed to face off against the oft-injured Jarrod Parker three times.

5. Carlos, man, what happened to you?

Image from MLBTradeRumors

In all seriousness, Quentin seems like he’s in a good place physically and mentally. Here’s to hoping for a productive return to form for him, and that he’s been rescued from whatever temporary existential hell produced this image.