However, it does sting to see Semien outhomering Jose Abreu as of the drafting of this piece.  Even if you hate his defense at short, you could slide him over to third and basically replicate what Todd Frazier has done this season–arguably better, given the park differential.

I will not pretend that I had Semien pegged as a guy who would threaten 30 home runs in a season while playing serviceable defense at shortstop.  And, given the White Sox’ track record, one could point out that if Semien had stayed in Chicago he would never have turned into this player. The pitfalls of counterfactual history notwithstanding, Semien really has turned into an excellent player, on pace to be approximately a 4-win contributor for Oakland in 2016–or, again, just about what Abreu is accomplishing this year according to Baseball Prospectus’ calculation of WARP.

The White Sox were wrong about Samardzija. Even if you give him the benefit of the doubt for how horrible the defense was behind him, Samardzija was straight-up bad in 2015, and his follow-up campaign with the Giants skews more in the direction of mediocre innings eater than No. 2 starter. Even if Semien sat more at the 2-win level of 2015 rather than leaping to basically an All Star, that would make him one of the better position players on the current White Sox roster, and though the season has been dead for a long time, it needn’t have been. Replacing the 550+ PAs given to the likes of Jimmy Rollins, J.B. Shuck, Jerry Sands, and Sanchez with Semien’s bat could have been the difference between being in a position to buy at the deadline or not.* Not to mention whatever boost the team might have gotten from rostering, say, Josh Phegley instead of Dioner Navarro.

*One wonders if Tim Anderson would have shifted to center field under this scenario.

Even pulling back from such linear substitution of Semien for the collection of sub-replacement level talent that have soaked up hundreds of PAs this season, generally speaking the White Sox have struggled so agonizingly for so long to field a lineup composed of even six credible major league bats. As a result, shipping one out in a misfiring Win Now move has devastating repercussions long-term.

No front office is perfect. By all accounts, Rick Porcello‘s contract extension was a big reason the Red Sox fired former GM Ben Cherington, and at the time, it looked like the Porcello deal was a huge mistake.  Now Porcello is, right or wrong, the favorite to win the AL Cy Young Award.  The Astros let J.D. Martinez go for nothing and drafted Mark Appel ahead of Kris Bryant. The Rangers traded Ian Kinsler for Prince Fielder. It happens.

Unfortunately, the White Sox have not given themselves the margin for error to make mistakes like this, whether due to their budget limitations or because they’re still simply that far behind from decades of incompetence (and a stretch of malfeasance) in amateur talent acquisition and development. While it is perversely heartening that they have finally started producing some major league quality position players–and in the form of Semien it looks like an impact one–this story is still a sad one. Regardless of how much money they’re allowed to spend, the organization has been just flat wrong on far too many player evaluations at every level for far too long. Semien was a player that they had drafted and had in their organization for four years, who they should have known more about than anybody, but they didn’t. And that is yet another reason the White Sox can’t seem to crack .500 despite their excellent, inexpensive core.

Lead Image Credit: Kelley L. Cox // USA Today Sports Images

Let’s check on how four of these former White Sox players are doing, and perhaps what’s lead to their string of success.

Conor Gillaspie

After departing from the South side after three very long years, Conor Gillaspie has returned to the franchise that drafted him, the San Francisco Giants. Gillaspie only tallied a line of .260/.314/.397 during his time with the White Sox, and in 2015 was striking out at over an 18 percent clip while only walking 5 percent of the time with poor defense at third. It’s safe to say among other things, Gillaspie quickly became the bane of many a White Sox fan’s existence.

Things aren’t much different for Gillaspie on the West Coast, though. Gillaspie is currently seeing a line of .258/.313/.393 which is less than impressive, but has improved his strikeout rate generously. Gillaspie is only striking out at an 11.5 percent clip in San Francisco, and walking 6.1 percent of the time.

The Difference: Gillaspie has only playing in 49 games so far in 2016. That’s comfortable for a player who’s posting a slash line such as Gillespie’s — that’s the type of role a player such as him should be taking on. When the White Sox organization was trying to run him out for 130 games a season while barely being able to scrape the surface of replacement level, a player like Gillaspie is bound to disappoint.

Gordon Beckham

Part of the infield tandem that led to much of the disdain that is the root cause of jaded fandom, Gordon Beckham hit just .242/.304/.370 during his seven very long years with the White Sox. Finally this past offseason, the White Sox were finally able to cut ties permanently (or so we hope) with Beckham.

But now, fast forward to 2016. Not only did the White Sox lose a series to the Atlanta Braves — a team who had hit 57 home runs entering the break — to end the first half, but Beckham himself took his former team for a ride blasting a home run, and gathering three hits in his return to U.S. Cellular Field.

Beckham is now hitting — wait for it — .290/.387/.458 with the Braves. He’s taking walks at an 11.3 percent rate, something he’s never done in his career and he’s lowered his strikeout rate by over five percent from 2015 to 2016. Who would have thought that could ever be possible for a guy the White Sox tried so hard to groom into a franchise player for almost a decade?

The Difference: The thing with Beckham, is that much like Gillaspie, the sample size is small. Beckham has only participated in 34 games in Atlanta this season. The White Sox tried extensively hard to make Beckham into an everyday infielder, using him in as many as 151 games in 2012. When the sample size expands by that much, but the talent isn’t adequately available over the course of that many games per season, you get White Sox-era Gordon Beckham. When you use a player such a Beckham sparingly the way Atlanta has, you give him the environment he needs to flourish in the role he’s best suited for.

Marcus Semien

This one hurts. Always a big fan of Marcus Semien, when I heard that he was included in the trade that would bring Jeff Samardzija over to the White Sox for what ended up being one very heartbreaking season, in the back of my mind I was not entirely pleased.

And this is why. While Samardzija saw his ERA rise to 4.98 — a level he’d never reached as a starting pitcher — and allowed a career high number of hits and earned runs in 2015, Semien was on the path to Figuring It Out.

Semien played in 151 games in Oakland in 2015, and while he committed a harrowing number of errors and didn’t quite impress in the power department, that began to change.

Samardzija is now pitching in San Francisco and posting an ERA nearly a full run lower than that of the one he posted in Chicago. Meanwhile, Semien has slashed his error total significantly from an almost impressively poor 35 errors in 2015 to just nine so far in 2016, and seems to have found his power stroke, something he desperately was searching for in Chicago.

Semien is hitting .242/.307/.477 with an ISO of .234. While his strikeout rate is still quite high at 23 percent, and his OBP is leaner than one may like, he’s making up for it by hitting the ball with authority — and doing it at the Oakland Coliseum, a stadium that’s second to last in home run totals.

The Difference: Semien was still a work in progress. It wasn’t time to give up on him for a year of a pitcher who was on the verge of free agency and very unlikely to sign despite the rumors of a “hometown discount”. Semien had his flaws, but he wasn’t unsalvageable. They were simply kinks that needed to be ironed out, and 85 games in a White Sox uniform surely wasn’t enough to see if Semien could reach his full potential. The White Sox spent years waiting for the prophecies of Beckham and Gillaspie to be fulfilled, but 85 games of Semien and this organization had decided that they’d seen enough. The White Sox didn’t lose an All-Star talent in Semien, but considering that the trade they sent him away in as now left them empty handed, the loss of Semien stings just a bit more than it should.

Tyler Flowers

Yet another former White Sox player who ended up back with the organization that drafted him. After seven years with the White Sox, the South siders officially cut ties with catcher Tyler Flowers.

Flowers never truly dazzled in Chicago, he posted a meager .223/.289/.376 slash line during his time in with the Sox, and once had a strikeout rate that reached 36 percent.

But now, in the Braves organization, though Flowers isn’t blowing anyone away with his exceptional power numbers and hasn’t lowered that hearty strikeout rate enough to earn the status of The One That Got Away, he’s doing good things for someone who is still Tyler Flowers. Playing in just 53 games, Flowers has posted a slash line of .253/.343/.425 with the Braves and is walking at the highest clip of his career at over eight percent (minimum 50 games).

The Difference: Saying that perhaps the White Sox were trying to stretch too much out of Flowers would feel like an inaccurate statement, seeing as Flowers only played in over 100 games two of his seven seasons on the South side. Perhaps Flowers’ success in Atlanta is just a flukey, small sample size baseball thing, but the Braves seem to understand that Flowers isn’t the type of player you want behind the plate for everyday use — something the White Sox tried to make work for nearly two seasons. Again, understanding players limits seems to be key here.

The kernel to take away is this: It’s seems as though the White Sox have a penchant for looking at a utility player’s success in small sample sizes and try and stretch that success into everyday stardom. Only when these players end up with other organizations that understand their ability to flourish in a bench or backup role and don’t try to push their limits do we see their full potential at the major league level. Not every player is destined to become a starter, sometimes sufficient depth is all you can ask for.

And as we saw with Semien, perhaps prospects that haven’t reached their full potential yet shouldn’t be traded for one year of a highly-touted pitcher, because these things, much like with Semien, will come back to haunt you when you’re left empty handed. There’s nothing worse in baseball than watching prospect that was once in your organization have success with another because of a trade that your team is no longer benefiting from.

These are all simple lessons learned. Learned by fans, by baseball, and hopefully by the White Sox front office. Hey, at least the organization held onto Tim Anderson though, right?

Lead photo courtesy of Kenny Karst-USA TODAY Sports

Carlos Rodon has gotten a lot of ink this winter thanks to his strong 2015 finish and the expectations that accompany him into his sophomore season, including a piece this morning going into the details on why we may be looking at a breakout. What’s the big deal? After a rocky beginning to his career in which he basically alternated decent and tough-to-watch outings, he closed the year on a high note, lowering his ERA in each of his final eight starts. Getting deeper into games and limiting, but by no stretch eliminating, walk totals proved a good look for him, and leaves him room to build.

A couple of days recovered from sickness, Sonny Gray is now prepared to make his first start of the season. Gray is coming off of a season in which he finished third in Cy Young voting, but isn’t pegged by PECOTA to repeat on that success. As James pointed out earlier in the week, Gray’s peripherals don’t paint the picture of the same pitcher at home as they do on the road. For less than mysterious reasons, he pitches to contact much more, relying on the cavernous O.Co Coliseum to lend him protection. The White Sox have walked just three times in their first two games, and if Gray elects to consistently stay inside the zone, it may prove to be helpful to the seemingly aggressive swinging South side squad.

White Sox Lineup:

1. Adam Eaton – RF
2. Jimmy Rollins – SS
3. Jose Abreu – 1B
4. Todd Frazier – 3B
5. Melky Cabrera – LF
6. Avisail Garcia – DH
7. Brett Lawrie – 2B
8. Alex Avila – C
9. Austin Jackson – CF

Athletics Lineup:

1. Billy Burns – CF
2. Khris Davis – LF
3. Jed Lowrie – 2B
4. Danny Valencia – 3B
5. Billy Butler – DH
6. Josh Phegley – C
7. Mark Canha – RF
8. Yonder Alonso – 1B
9. Marcus Semien – SS

Yonder Alonso, the lone left-handed swinger in tonight’s lineup for Oakland, is 1-for-5 thus far in the series. The Sox failed to force Josh Phegley to make an out in last night’s contest so I’m sure he’s feeling pretty good about himself. The MVP of the series in the first two games for the Athletics could be argued in favor of Marcus Semien. The glove-last shortstop might be batting ninth, but he’s collected a pair of hits and a walk, and has even yet to commit an error. Some quick mental math confirms that puts him well behind his 2015 pace, where he committed 35.

Adam Eaton and Jose Abreu have both hit the ball well in each of the first two nights, despite the latter having a couple of poor looking plate appearances last night. Eaton is riding a streak of 24 games in which he’s reached base, the longest of his career. I’d be unsurprised to see both get aggressive early in the game before the cool air settles in to the East bay and keeps the ball from carrying much.

Lead Photo Credit: Kim Klement-USA TODAY Sports