So far so good.

Two things caught White Sox fans’ eye on the heels of the announcement:

1) The press release said it left the White Sox’ 40-man roster at 38 rather than the 39 fans counted.  The mystery was subsequently solved, as it was announced Ian Clarkin was claimed by the Cubs on waivers.  Clarkin was one of the supplementary pieces acquired in the Blake Rutherford deal with the Yankees.  He’ll turn 24 before the 2019 season starts, and between injuries and ineffectiveness he has yet to conquer Double-A after six years in pro ball, most recently posting a K:BB ratio just a shade over 1.00 in Birmingham.  A well regarded prospect once upon a time, it was understandable the White Sox would want to see if they could get him healthy and back on track.  The Cubs will have to see if they can pull it off.  I wouldn’t be surprised if he’s a solid lefty reliever one day, but even if you knew he could be that in a year or two, just among lefty relievers on the organizational depth chart Clarkin would come in behind Jace Fry, Aaron Bummer, Caleb Frare, and Medeiros at a minimum.

2) A notable omission from 40-man protection was Spencer Adams.  Some outlets believed the White Sox had a steal when they took Adams in the second round of the 2014 draft, and the highly athletic prep arm has climbed all the way to Triple-A, pounding the zone relentlessly along the way.  Even if the control (i.e. not walking people as opposed to command) has been very good, and that has yielded some solid ERAs along the way, he has yet to show he can miss bats consistently, and scouts said he looked stiffer in 2018.  Still, this author, at the very least, thought he would be added to the 40-man roster, given that some were very excited about him not too long ago, and his proximity to the majors.

That said, the Rule 5 draft is an easy source of fear.  It plays on all of our concerns about losing talent for the low price of a 40-man spot, particularly if a player lost in such a way were to go off and become something significant.  But, the White Sox have been good about this of late.  Some began making concerned noises when Jordan Guerrero and Jake Peter were exposed to Rule 5 last year only for neither of them to get taken.  There’s a good chance Adams makes it past Rule 5 and just returns to Charlotte next season, and hopefully he takes a step forward and reaches his potential as a back end starter with the White Sox, or polishes himself up into a nice trade chip. Or, if he does get taken, there’s reason to believe the White Sox have a basis to decide it’s a loss they are willing to stomach.

And, this leaves room for them to make other additions, or even claim someone they like even better in the Rule 5 draft themselves.

• Carson Fulmer pushed his good stuff onto the scales against his horrible command, the horrible command won and now he’s walking about a batter an inning in Charlotte.
• Lucas Giolito finished 2017 well and looked great in spring training, including increased fastball velocity.  Now the fastball velocity is the lowest it has ever been in the majors (91.4 on average), he’s walking 14.3% of the batters he’s facing, by far the worst rate in the majors, and unsurprisingly has an ERA above 7.00.  Barring injury this is about as bad as it could have gone.
• Miguel Gonzalez, brought in to stabilize the rotation, did the thing where he tried to pitch through injury, got absolutely annihilated and is now on the 60-day DL.

The only reason the rotation is tied for last in the majors in ERA with 5.76 instead of 30th and not within shouting distance of 29th place is because James Shields has managed to muddle through admirably and Reynaldo Lopez has posted excellent run prevention results albeit ahead of merely okay peripherals.  Hector Santiago and Chris Volstad are present purely as insurance policies and frankly, their presence has been absolutely necessary as they’ve combined to soak up 71.67 innings of sub-5.00 ERA ball.  I’m not saying they’ve been great, but they’ve been better than a lot of the Plan A guys and without them the team would somehow be worse than 16-37.  It has to get better than this, right? Well, I won’t guarantee anything, but the rotation might undergo some serious changes in the near future:

• Carlos Rodon made significant progress from his 2015 rookie season and 2016.  Despite throwing to the worst framing catchers in the majors and finishing in the Top 10 for strikes called balls in the majors, he still essentially halved his walk rate over 165 innings.  Then 2017 was largely a lost year due to injury, with vague throwing arm pain culminating in shoulder surgery in the 2017-8 offseason.  Shoulder surgery is pretty much the last thing you want for a pitcher, but he looks to be nearing a return to the majors.  On Tuesday, he threw his third minor league rehab start in Charlotte, going 5 innings, striking out 8 while allowing only 5 baserunners and no runs.  Across 12.67 minor league innings he’s posted a 20:2 K:BB ratio while allowing only 1 run and walking two.  Obviously, the Rodon we think we know should be doing this against the minors, but at the very least there’s no red flag in the stat line as to his health or what he’s throwing.  Barring incident, Rodon should be back in the majors soon, and there’s every reason to believe he’ll be a massive upgrade for 20% of the rotation.
• Jordan Stephens has been old for every minor league stop along the way to Triple-A.  That’s what happens when you’re drafted out of college while recovering from Tommy John surgery.  However, he still turns 26 in September and the White Sox conservatively assigned him to Birmingham to start 2018.  After 40 dominant innings there, he got bumped up to Charlotte where he hasn’t skipped a beat.  After Thursday’s outing, Stephens has thrown four quality starts in four attempts for the Knights, generally limiting walks and homers well.  Stephens is more of a back-end profile, but he’s polished, compensates for unremarkable fastball velocity with good carry, and boasts a nice curveball.  He hasn’t been in Charlotte long, but at a certain point how do you keep down a 25-year-old pitching like this in Triple-A when your rotation is performing the way it has been?
• Of course, the elephant in the room here is Michael Kopech.  The lone blemish on his stat line remains a high walk rate, as he continues to miss bats at a prodigious rate while clamping down hard on quality contact.  His 3.86 ERA is sufficiently Good Not Great for the White Sox to keep him in Charlotte with a straight face, I suppose, but one has to imagine unless he gets hurt or suddenly regresses like crazy he’s going to be in Chicago before the All Star Break as the Super Two “deadline” passes.  He’s even added a good curveball to his already terrifying arsenal!

With Dylan Covey suddenly returning and featuring a 93-95 mph sinker we hadn’t really seen in 2017, a flood of reinforcements is beginning to arrive.  Watching White Sox games might get a whole lot more fun in short order.  It’s a low bar to clear, but hope is always a good thing.

Image credit- Patrick Gorski, USA Today

1. Part of the odd tension of the 2018 season is despite the pitching staff’s massive struggles, there hasn’t been an obvious candidate to call up from Charlotte. Sure, Michael Kopech is a megaprospect, with all of the service time and fears of getting his development anything other than perfect which come with that status.  After him was a collection of veteran organizational depth and arms like Tyler Danish and Dylan Covey who aspire to fifth starter status.  However, the White Sox recently promoted Jordan Stephens from Double-A to Triple-A.  There was reason to believe Stephens could have started the year in Charlotte, as a college draftee who performed solidly over ~90 innings in Birmingham in 2017.  He’s already 25 and won’t be confused with the Kopechs of the world, but he’s much closer to a Prospect with a capital P who is now at the highest affiliate.
2. Yoan Moncada returns from his DL stint on Tuesday. Hopefully he can just pick up right where he left off when he tweaked his hamstring, as he was finally converting his excellent eye and power into results on the field.  Losing at the same clip as the ’03 Tigers is never going to be enjoyable, but at least with Moncada morphing into a superstar it’s more bearable if it does. It also makes victories a little bit more likely as well.
3. Matt Davidson’s renaissance continues apace, as he has now set a career high for walks in a season with 22, after only 141 PAs. Indeed, his K:BB is at 43:22 compared to his 2017 ratio of 165:19.  Accordingly he’s hitting a complete and excellent .261/.383/.591 on the year.  As I have pointed out, along with those smarter than I, the Astros championship goes far beyond “Tank for high draft picks à” Jose Altuve and Dallas Keuchel were already in Houston before the tank, but when they tore down it meant a lot more playing time, giving two relative non-prospects the run to become stars.  If Davidson can keep this up moving forward, it may be a lot more significant than, say, if Blake Rutherford develops.
4. Every time I voice doubt about Adam Engel’s hitting, it seems as though he goes 2-for-4. Then again, here I am looking at his stat sheet and he’s at .193/.265/.250 after another 100 PAs.  Unlike with Stephens and the imminent Kopech, the solution here is less clear short of simply giving the job to the superior Leury Garcia full time, unless and until Eloy Jimenez comes up.  Even then, it doesn’t create an elegant remedy for the hole in center field.  Instead, the rampaging Eloy puts pressure on…
5. …Nicky Delmonico. After a surprising breakout 2017, the 25-year-old outfielder is hitting .231/.339/.317.  His patience and contact skills are still apparent, but his power has absolutely vanished.  The weather’s been cold, it’s still not a lot of at bats to judge by, but there’s reason to believe the ball is less juiced than 2017.  What’s more, it’s worth remembering Delmonico has a career .432 slugging percentage in the minors.  Players get better, and this isn’t me giving up on him, but it’s fair to remember before last year, he didn’t have much game power, and it could be last year is the aberration not this one.

The Rebuild is still on, despite lots of injuries pausing the progress of a variety of big names in the system — Alec Hansen, Luis Robert, Jake Burger, etc. — and it’s inching closer. Just…very slowly.

Lead Image Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports