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

Cleveland is a pretty good comparison for the White Sox in many respects.  It is a team with strict financial limitations that frequently finds itself drafting in the teens rather than the top five, and is built primarily around the excellent, cheap front of its starting rotation.  It’s just that Cleveland has addressed the same problems better than the White Sox have. They drafted Tyler Naquin, who hit .296/.372/.514, two picks after Courtney Hawkins, who hit .203/.255/.349 in his second attempt at Double-A this year. They signed Rajai Davis as their veteran stopgap center fielder, who provided about one win above replacement instead of Austin Jackson, who did not. Jose Ramirez turned into an All-Star whereas Carlos Sanchez has shown no discernible progress in about three years.

But hey, drafting is hard, injuries happen, and sometimes a player just hits his 90th percentile and the organization only deserves the faintest of credit for it. I am hard-pressed to find an excuse for why Cleveland signed Napoli for one year, $ 7 million, while the White Sox stood pat with Adam LaRoche and Avisail Garcia. Obviously the White Sox believed they would have LaRoche on hand and they were not expecting his retirement. They probably should have had more contingency plans generally, but I won’t pretend that LaRoche’s departure was predictable.  But even if LaRoche had stayed for 2016 and even if he had somewhat of a bounce back year, he still needed a platoon partner.

Avisail Garcia was tendered a $2.1 million contract in his first year of arbitration eligibility, meaning Napoli would have cost about $5 million more — or, assuming you’d be bidding against Cleveland, maybe $5.5 or 6 million more. Napoli would go on to post an .800 OPS while receiving the most playing time of his career. He has had better rate stats when used more selectively against right-handed pitching, but if you were planning on having LaRoche around, it looks like you could have used him for ~450-500 high quality PAs, or if pressed into full-time duty, you could still expect him to hold his own as a designated hitter who can spot start at first base.

Was the cost prohibitive? That seems strange, even for the White Sox.  A one-year deal for less than $10 million should not be prohibitive for any organization, especially given that they spent approximately $ 5.1 million on Garcia, Jimmy Rollins, and Justin Morneau. Nor can they say they wouldn’t have enough plate appearances for him. People get hurt, players need rest, and the team wound up giving more than 1,000 plate appearances to sub-replacement bats, on a roster with tremendous positional flexibility.

How much of the decision was continuing to double down on their bet that Garcia would develop? It’s not crazy, even now, to suggest that there is a non-zero chance that he improves to make himself a useful major leaguer in some capacity. It is crazy for a team genuinely attempting to win, with elite talent in its prime, to rely on Garcia improving to the point where he has to be a quality major leaguer in order for the roster to function. It appears that after years of dashing themselves against the rocks of Dayan Viciedo — the Mike Napoli of Japan! — the White Sox bet the farm on Garcia once again, and unsurprisingly, it blew up in their face again.

600-plus plate appearances of Napoli and a couple of other minor changes would have made the 2016 White Sox a lot better.  And again, mid-to-low-end free agents could make the 2017 White Sox a lot better.  There just isn’t a lot of evidence that the White Sox as currently constituted have the ability or willingness to identify that you need redundancy and depth, or even the most rudimentary description of evaluation — which players are good and which players are bad?

So while I still believe that, given the cards they have to play, the White Sox should try for the playoffs again in 2017, I certainly understand those who disagree based on despair, frustration, and lack of confidence in the organization.

Lead Image Credit: John E. Sokolowski // USA Today Sports Images

Taking a look at the American League Central, let’s highlight what the biggest concerns the White Sox specifically could be facing with each team, and what aspects of these teams flaws they may use to their advantage. We’ll start with two clubs that the White Sox be facing for the first time in 2016 this coming week; the Cleveland Indians and the Minnesota Twins.

Cleveland Indians

2015 vs. White Sox: 9 wins, 10 losses; 66 runs scored, 73 runs allowed

The Offense

Advantage: Francisco Lindor is still young and adjusting to the majors, Michael Brantley is not back in the lineup yet, and finally — no more Ryan Raburn.

Disadvantage: Mike Napoli’s sole duty vs. the White Sox will be to smash lefties, and eventually, Michael Brantley will return to the lineup.

The Cleveland Indians have always been quite enigmatic to me. The old saying goes “pitching wins ballgames”, and the Indians have one of the best pitching staffs in the American League, one that some could say might get even better in 2016. But there’s omitted information in the “pitching wins ballgames” tale. That being the tale of run support, that you still must score runs in order to win those ballgames.

That’s where the Indians came to a screeching halt, coming in last season with just 669 runs, good for 11th place in the American League and they scored seven less runs than allowed vs. the Sox. A power outage in Cleveland’s lineup could be partially to blame, as the team’s power peaked last season with Carlos Santana, who hit just 19 home runs in 666 plate appearances.

But the times are changing for this Cleveland lineup. It’s tough to call Lindor a glove-first prospect, because though his glove is elite, his bat plays a large role in his hype. In just 99 games in Cleveland last season, Lindor hit an impressive 14 home runs. But just because Lindor had an offensive heyday in Cleveland while hitters were getting their first look at him doesn’t mean that this bounty of power will continue to flourish at this level. (For the record, from the White Sox standpoint, the only times Lindor really dominated them was against Jeff Samardzija and Zach Duke.) Pitchers will see him, study him, and figure out his weaknesses. He’s still a 22-year old hitter in the big leagues with fewer than 100 games under his belt.

As is the case with many young hitters, Lindor struggles with breaking pitches, and turned over ground balls at a 51 percent clip in 2015. Though that ground ball rate is almost virtually unsustainable for a full season with someone with Lindor’s profile, whiffing and making weak contact on grounders will still continue to be an area of struggle for him, perhaps mitigating the damage he will do against the White Sox’s clan of aces who thrive on such arsenal.

When the notorious Raburn, who hits a ludicrous .295/.415/.591 lifetime against the White Sox, was (finally) no longer a part of not only the Indians organization but the American League Central as a whole, White Sox fans were quick to rejoice. But the Indians didn’t go without attempting to find another hitter who might be able to torment the White Sox to Raburn-esque levels in 2016.

From the looks of it, they did so successfully. Mike Napoli, whose splits vs. left handed pitchers are as ludicrous as Raburn’s numbers against the Sox were, is the perfect cog in the White Sox’s quest for freedom from the clutches of Indians player who wishes to exploit their weaknesses. With the White Sox doling out four left handers in their rotation at the moment, the South siders will certainly be running into some trouble with Napoli in 2016. The Cleveland organization was quite clever with that one.

In the upcoming series (and a significant period after that), the Indians will be without Brantley as he recovers from offseason shoulder surgery. This is the time for the White Sox to take advantage of a weaker Indians lineup early on. When Brantley does return, the question will be how much of his 2015 form and contact skills came back with him. But for right now; no Brantley, no problem.

The Pitching

Advantage: As the weaker members of a strong rotation, Josh Tomlin and Cody Anderson are exploitable. That’s about it.

Disadvantage: This is likely the best pitching trio in the American League. Quite honestly — disadvantage everyone.

Now comes the ugly part. There isn’t a lot to the “advantage other team” side of this argument. The Indians top three starting trio of Corey Kluber, Carlos Carrasco, and Danny Salazar are elite — no matter which team is facing them or how strong said team’s offense is. Which isn’t going to bode well for the White Sox. The trio finished among the top 20 in American League ERA in 2015, and was in the top 5 for K/9 rate. Trying to squeak runs past this group will not be for the faint of heart.

The advantage the Sox will have, starting with the upcoming series, is that they’ll have weaknesses in the back end of this rotation that are much more exploitable than Kluber, Carrasco, and Salazar. Anderson is still a bit rough around the edges, a dominant run in the end of last season was more a string of crazy baseball luck than indicative of his future; cFIP has Anderson pegged for regression at 117. Tomlin is a typical back end starter, and with a 46 percent fly ball rate and extremely lucky .199 BABIP in 2015, the Sox and their new brigade of sluggers will need to jump on the opportunities to take those fly balls into the seats more often than not.

So the theory here would have to be: Mitigate the run scoring early on from a lineup that has a lot of potential for mediocrity, and try to hammer out as many runs as you can against this rotation. Even the Corey Kluber’s of the world are bound to have a few bad days, and the Sox can’t afford to let those opportunities pass them by.

Minnesota Twins

2015 vs. White Sox: 13 wins, 6 losses; 107 runs scores, 57 runs allowed

The Offense

Advantage: There will be weaknesses to expose against the plethora of new and young hitters in this lineup.

Disadvantage: Trevor Plouffe, Brian Dozier.

As a developmental organization the Twins are now showing off their shiny new prospects to the baseball world. With Byung-ho Park now joining Byron Buxton, Miguel Sano, and Eddie Rosario in the big leagues this year, it could be a time for the Twins offense to really shine.

Sano will be the toughest challenge for the White Sox to face, and although he’s participated in about 19 fewer major league contests than the Indians young star Lindor, he posted significantly better on base and slugging numbers than Lindor. The one cause for concern while Sano is exploring the big leagues is his tendency to strikeout. Sano struck out at nearly a 36 percent clip last season, and if it wasn’t for the staggeringly strong slash line (.269/.385/.530), Sano could have likely been back on his way to the minors. Pitchers with nasty stuff such as Chris Sale and even Jose Quintana and Carlos Rodon (though Rodon was a victim of one of two Sano home runs vs. the White Sox, the other being Nate Jones) will need to unleash the filth in order to silence the power of Sano. It’ll be a challenge, but it is possible.

Never having faced MLB level pitching, Byung-ho Park has had to adjust to the level of velocity that he will now be regularly facing, which is a level up from that which he faced in the KBO. Though Twins manager Paul Molitor thinks that the spike in velocity doesn’t much faze Park, we have yet to see how he handles the movement and velocity of Sale, Quintana and Rodon this year.  

Even should the aces of the White Sox pitching staff find the weaknesses of the new comers in this Twins lineup, unfortunately, they’ll still be left to face Dozier and Plouffe.

Even during Dozier’s historically bad second half last year, he still managed to put up a slash line up .277/.318/.530 against the White Sox pitching staff. That, coupled with Plouffe, who hit .329/.410/.557 against the White Sox in 2015, could spell some serious trouble for this team.

The Pitching

Disadvantages: Somehow, the White Sox bats have been silenced by a middling Twins starting pitching staff, who also have a pretty good bullpen.

Advantages: It’s still not a very good rotation that leaves a bevy of ways for an improved White Sox team to gain the advantage.

While the White Sox’s toughest challenge facing the Indians will be starting pitching, almost the opposite can be said for the Minnesota Twins. The Twins are certainly the Achilles heel that the White Sox face nearly every year, and the legitimacy of this Minnesota team is likely to improve this season. But with the additions of better defense and a more sound roster that in years past, the Sox can look to target the one area of Minnesota’s weakness: their starting pitching staff.

It’s quite the feat when you look at the 2015 run differential for the White Sox against the mystifying Twins. Of a rotation that includes Ervin Santana as their No. 1 starter, followed by Kyle Gibson, Phil Hughes, Tommy Milone and Ricky Nolasco, the only pitcher the White Sox have even had mildly above average success against is Nolasco, who pitched to a 6.75 ERA in 37 innings last year (but didn’t do much better in 2014 with a 5.38 ERA in 159 IP).

The rotation the Twins will be sending out this year isn’t one that will be sailing strikes by hitters and raking up the whiff counts though. Last year’s Twins pitching staff came in dead last in the American League in K/9 rate, and without much change to this rotation, it doesn’t look as if they’re fit to raise that rate anymore. Bum luck and poor power numbers were most likely the culprit for the Sox only scoring 57 runs on Minnesota last year, but with the upgrade to their lineup, that will likely change.

They will need strike early though, as the Twins bullpen that consists of starter-turned-reliever Trevor May, Kevin Jepsen, and Glen Perkins, is a quite solid.

Unfortunately for the White Sox, there doesn’t seem to be an exact rhyme or reason to why they encounter such bad luck with the Twins, it’s just one of those weird baseball things. But perhaps the new dose of talent in this White Sox order will finally help them team route the pesky Twins.

The White Sox will begin their first inter-division series against these two teams starting with three games against Cleveland at home on Friday, and three at Minnesota on Monday.

Stay tuned for more on the Kansas City Royals and Detroit Tigers just before the White Sox being their first series against them in mid-May.

Photo courtesy of Ken Blaze-USA TODAY Sports