-The Brewers’ acquisitions of Christian Yelich and Lorenzo Cain, what that means for them in 2018, and if this kind of model can be expected from the White Sox in a year or two.

-What the White Sox roster is going to look like heading into Spring Training, as well as if they will or should take advantage of the stalled free agent market.

-The differences in prospect lists from source to source, including some deep diving into the back-end of the White Sox farm system rankings.

-Jim Thome’s election into the Baseball Hall of Fame, and some thoughts on the ballot as a whole.

Be sure to follow BP South Side on Twitter @BPSouthSide. You can follow Collin @cowhitchurch and Nick @Nick_BPSS.

And, uh, it’s a bit of mismatch.

Liriano is the type of toolsy, post-hype Quad-A guy that winds up on waivers when he is 25 years-old, and might not be news that leads the website unless he’s acquired in late-October. That a Spring Training beanball led to him missing all of 2016 with facial fractures and concussion symptoms means he’s had less failure at the major league level than other players with his profile (he turns 26 next June), it does mean that he just missed an entire season with facial fractures and concussion symptoms.

There are probably way too many Avisail Garcia parallels here for anyone to get very comfortable. To list them out, we have:

–Big right-handed raw power that has yet to show consistently in game situations

–Once lauded for plus-speed that has little chance of sticking, given his six-feet, 230-pound frame

–Technically “toolsy” but is still relegated to an outfield corner and is unlikely to be good enough defensively to be worth it if he’s not a plus hitter

–An injury robbed of him of an opportunity to show his worth during a rebuilding year, and now it’s a guess as to whether he could contribute to a winning major league team

In this case, Liriano has lost out on two years, as he spent 2013 recovering from Tommy John surgery on his throwing arm.

The plus side of the ledger for Liriano is less yellowed and dog-eared than Avisail’s, however. While he will not be making any return to a top-100 prospect list anytime soon, and is out of minor league options–which mutes hope of him providing minor league depth–Liriano has just over 120 bad major league plate appearances to his name, rather than the thousands Garcia and Dayan Viciedo racked up. The last time he played in games where people cared about the statistics, he hit .292/.383/.460 in 549 plate appearances for the Padres’ Triple-A affiliate in 2015, drew a 11.7 walk rate, and stole 18 bases in 26 tries.

The odds are stacked against Liriano, who was always a raw talent that has now missed two years of crucial development time, but he’s the type of guy major league teams would still give a chance to at this point in his career. The question is what kind of chance is he getting?

The 2016 Brewers, openly in a strip-down rebuilding mode, were an ideal environment for Liriano to get hundreds of major league plate appearances before tragedy–or more literally, a baseball–struck. If the 2017 White Sox are the same sort of team, then they will be a fine home for Rymer, but likely a grim outfit to watch overall.

But if the 2017 White Sox are trying to contend for a playoff spot, then they will be a team that should be fairly hard for Liriano to make, unless he is so undeniably brilliant in Spring that the Sox must break camp with him.

Consider a Sox team like the one envisioned in our offseason plan, where they have acquired an everyday centerfielder, and signed proven veteran bats to contribute at DH. Liriano would need to prove himself more important than having an extra up-the-middle defender or pinch-runner on the roster, or somehow make Melky Cabrera look expendable, which would be an uphill battle. The Sox would likely need to try to make some minor Conor Gillaspie-for-Jeff Soptic type deal at the end of camp to get something back for Liriano, or just option him and likely lose him, which would be unfulfilling but also not cost them anything.

But another Sox team that seeks to compete, but breaks camp with a skeleton roster akin to the last two seasons, could potentially be taking a chance on Liriano in a significant role, which is the only scenario in which this acquisition becomes regrettable.

Adding more talent to the organization is never bad, and Liriano is that, but how he’s used will probably be the big determining factor in how his Sox tenure is remembered.

Lead Image Credit: Rick Scuteri // USA Today Sports Images

Since the White Sox went 78-84, it would be hard for something short of a bus crash, a pestilence, everyone getting pinched for wire fraud, or the like, for any one element to claim sole fault for ruining their season, but that just means all of the smaller factors are worth exploring. To start, having James Shields be the worst starter in baseball for 114.1 innings ranks pretty high as far as disastrous contributions go.

“Contributions,” is the key word, because while the Sox scouting team certainly could have some hell to pay for their pre-trade assessments, reaching out for Shields was met with near-unanimous approval, including from us, given how small of a burden was being placed on him. With Chris Sale, Jose Quintana, Carlos Rodon and Miguel Gonzalez, the Sox just needed a fifth major league-quality guy after Mat Latos and Erik Johnson failed that test and their depth was tapped out.

Someone who could have fit that bill was 31-year-old rookie Junior Guerra, who managed to twirl 121.2 innings with a 2.81 ERA in 20 starts this past year for the Brewers, before he hit an imposed innings limit. Guerra, who had never started a major league game prior to 2016, and only started 16 of the 72 games he previously appeared in while in the minors, is only relevant because he was in the White Sox organization last season.

In fact, up until this year, Guerra was their reclamation project. They were his ticket back to affiliated ball after a seven-year absence punctuated by a PED suspension, they plucked him from Venezuelan Winter League, and they were the ones who pushed him from Double-A to a September call-up that season.

Despite being at the forefront of identifying his potential, despite burgeoning enthusiasm for his unusual arsenal and his splitter-change, Guerra still found himself available on waivers after 2015, where he was claimed by Milwaukee. For a team that rostered Matt Albers all year and found itself relying on rookies Chris Beck and Michael Ynoa in high-leverage for much of the second half, not protecting the guy who struck out 105 batters over 83.1 innings across Double and Triple-A seems like a regrettable miss. It’s when Guerra suddenly became a successful starter that things really get beyond the pale.

Guerra, a converted outfielder after the first five years of his professional career, who bounced around independent leagues and Mexican Leagues, in addition to his annual pilgrimage to Venezuelan Winter League, is the type of guy where you hope he can be built up to work his way through a major league inning.

While the stuff was electric, Guerra had no control. He was pretty much a disaster as recently as 2012, and even in 2015, he walked 29 in 63.2 innings at Triple-A Charlotte. And even after arriving in Milwaukee, he struggled in his first month in the volatile PCL. When he was called up in May, he had a 4.02 ERA and was still walking over 10 percent of opposing hitters. His success in a major league rotation was immediate and fascinating–his peripherals are a fair bit worse than a 2.81 ERA but the ability to turn over a lineup is clear–but also the kind of low-probability shot that only an openly rebuilding team with a degraded rotation like the Brewers could take.

The White Sox have not been rebuilding, and while it’s worth wondering what the Brewers were able to identify in Guerra to know he could be capable of this, the Sox are simply not positioned to give opportunities to extreme long shots like Guerra. The problem is that they are not deep enough in prospects nor cash reserves to pursue top options on the market, and instead wind up in the middle, trying to find bargains like a situation where a former top starter like Shields has had his value diminished.

In retrospect, it would have been nice to have Guerra, but it would have been a happy accident to have him in tow for 2016, and he’s the type of fringe guy that contenders teams lose all the time. It’s rare that he’s the type that a would-be contender can’t afford to lose.

Lead Image Credit: David Kohl // USA Today Sports Images