1.  It was another big night for the potential bats of the future. Yoan Moncada raised his line to .196/.366/.321 by going 1-for-2 with two walks and a scorched double on the night. Tiny sample size and arbitrary end points ahead, but he is hitting .389/.560/.444 in his six games since returning from injury.  Similarly, in his last seven games, Tim Anderson has hit .355/.355/.710, including a 2-run home run to open the scoring against the Astros on Wednesday.

It will take a lot more of that for Anderson to get his year-end statistics to a positive place, and there are still significant flaws in his game.  But as Collin pointed out, there are reasons to cut Anderson some slack, and over the past week we have seen a dramatic reminder of the dizzying potential that the White Sox’ middle infield of the future holds.

2.  Adam Engel and Nicky Delmonico don’t have the prospect pedigree of Moncada and Anderson, to say the least, but 2017 has represented a year of significant progress towards establishing themselves as major leaguers.

In Engel’s case, so far he has shown that he can convert his speed into plus range in center field.  FRAA agrees, having him as plus 4 already in very limited playing time.  Engel turns 26 this winter and his bat inspires healthy skepticism, but at the very least he has flashed some hitting ability during hot streaks in the minors, and he’s bigger and more physical than most speedy / glove-first center field options.  Engel may already have shown enough to get future looks as a bench bat, particularly for an NL team, but even if he is a .550-.600 OPS plus glove in center he would represent an upgrade over some of the back-up plans we’ve seen the White Sox deploy at that position.

Delmonico is hitting a totally sustainable .400/.455/.533 as he is clearly the second coming of Shoeless Joe Jackson.  Unless something changes and his power takes a leap forward, Delmonico looks like a guy who can play mediocre defense at all four corner positions while making good contact from the left side. He also has the scrappy part of the bench player down, as he is already 2-for-2 on bunt singles to punish infield shifts against him.

Engel was a 19^th round draft pick, Delmonico was a minor league free agent, and they both look like major leaguers, albeit as backups, which is a fantastic outcome in both scenarios.  Moncada and Anderson are infinitely more important to the future of the organization, but the White Sox continue to demonstrate an organizational leap forward in finding and developing complementary pieces with minimal investment, which could be a huge part of building the next playoff team.

3. Miguel Gonzalez continues his roller coaster 2017, holding a stacked offense to 1 run on a solo homer across 8 innings of very efficient work. Gonzalez struck out four while only walking one. He occasionally missed his spots with his fastball, but it had enough life on it that he got away with it, and was able to steal strikes and get swings and misses with his breaking pitches.  Since coming off the DL, Gonzalez has pitched two very good games with more walks than usual, one absolute disaster, one decent outing, and then one gem.

There are still three weeks until the waiver trade deadline.  The Cardinals have surged back into the NL Central division race, and good stretches from the Twins, Orioles, Mariners, and Angels have six teams within 2.5 games of the second wild card spot in the American League.  Whether the White Sox get offered anything they think is worth having to find someone else to pitch Gonzalez’ innings remains to be seen, but he would be able to help out a lot of teams trying to sneak into the playoffs.

4. Catcher defense is a complicated thing, but by our metrics, Kevan Smith has thus far been virtually neutral as a pitch framer. FRAA is still bearish on his defense given his shortcomings in other aspects of catching, but by all accounts the pitching staff enjoys working with him. Smith is already 29, but again, represents a big league return for a late draft pick, and there have been really good teams with worse catching situations than the White Sox currently possess.

5. Reynaldo Lopez will make his major league debut on Friday, August 11. Even after a shakier outing on Sunday, Lopez’ has pitched to a 2.70 ERA across his last eight starts, holding opponents to a .193/.262/.339 line in the process. There are still plenty of doubters as to whether Lopez can remain a starting pitcher, as he did not crack our Midseason Top 50 list for precisely that reason.  He has done everything the organization asked of him, the stuff is certainly there, and the results have matched the stuff for some time now in Triple-A, so now all that’s left is to see what he can do against major league hitting.

Lopez will join the growing list of players that are worth watching every time out on a team that is losing an awful lot of games this year.

Lead Image Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

It makes sense that teams both want to trade for Robertson and are wary of pulling the trigger. But the White Sox have an even better trade chit in their bullpen and as you’ve likely ascertained from the headline, his name is Nate Jones. Jones isn’t as well known by the common fan, though it isn’t through any fault of his. He’s never been the official closer and has been toiling in anonymity on mostly terrible White Sox teams since breaking into the majors.

Jones combines height (6-foot-5) with a strange delivery that seems to taunt hitters with an “I will hold this ball in the sky and smite you with it” motion, yielding an arsenal consisting almost exclusively of a power heater living in the upper-90s and a devastating slider. And as the years have added up, he’s done so to increasingly impressive results. Excluding his lost 2014 season (lost to Tommy John surgery), his cFIP has gone from 97 in 2012 to 75 in both 2013 and 2015, and, finally, 66 in 2016. His DRA- over that same stretch? 99.4, 76.0, 81.8, and 69.9. His WARP last season was 2.2. For comparison’s sake, Aroldis Chapman‘s WARP the past four years have been 2.3, 2.3, 2.1, and 1.6. Every year has seen Jones walk fewer and fewer hitters per nine while maintaining a K/9 over 10. He’s not lighting in a bottle. He’s just lightning.

Other than Quintana, there might not be a more valuable asset the White Sox have on their roster when realistically assessed for trade value. Not only is he an incredibly talented reliever who would be closing on more than a goodly few teams, he’s cheaper than a Hot-N-Ready. His next two seasons cost less than $6 million, combined with club options over the following four seasons for less than the market rate.

And this is a baseball market where one year of Wade Davis can get you Jorge Soler. Where 1.5 years of Zach Duke turn into Charlie Tilson. Half a season of Aroldis Chapman netted a Top 15 prospect (Gleyber Torres), two more prospects, and a swingman. And, of course, 2.5 years of Andrew Miller netted the Nos. 16 and 52 prospects (Clint Frazier and Justus Sheffield), as well as another pitching prospect and a reliever. And while he is not on the pedigree level of Chapman and Miller, he costs less and comes with far less baggage. Some lucky team is going to trade for Jones in the near future and the White Sox’s rebuild will benefit very heavily from it.

White Sox currently focused on a rebuild, but it’s unclear whether they’ll find offers acceptable to them for Chris Sale, Jose Abreu, etc.

— Buster Olney (@Buster_ESPN) November 14, 2016

This decision is questionable at the very least, but it’s the direction in which the front office seems confident. One of, if the not the most important part of a White Sox rebuild is trading Chris Sale.

Rather than fielding a competitive roster around Sale for the past five seasons, the White Sox have found themselves “mired in mediocrity” thanks to a refusal to spend at the right times and an inability to identify the right players to spend on. Now that the Sox are look ready to rebuild, and the best and most decisive way to start that process is to dangle their ace in front of the market and sell him to the highest bidder.

The 27-year-old lefty has three more years left of team control and has finished in the top six of AL Cy Young voting in every year he worked as starter, and is likely to do so again in 2016. Simply put, a pitcher of Sale’s caliber at a team-friendly price (he can earn up to $38 million over the next three seasons) is hard to come by.

When searching for precedent of a trade of a pitcher with Sale’s resume, low cost contract, and years of team control, I came up mostly empty. The closest trade of recent vintage is when the Kansas City Royals traded Zack Greinke to the Milwaukee Brewers for Lorenzo Cain, Alcides Escobar, Jeremy Jeffress and Jake Odorizzi before the 2011 season. Greinke had two years remaining on his contract, an AL Cy Young award on his resume, and was headed into his age-27 season.

The Greinke trade was instrumental in the Royals rebuild, which ultimately led to two-straight World Series appearances and one championship, but it did not start the process by itself. At the time of the Greinke trade, the Royals were already deep into the process of building their new core, and had Mike Moustakas and Eric Hosmer in the organization and nearly major league ready. Even after the infusion of major league ready talent, the Royals’ World Series Championship was not until five years after the trade; not a long wait, but slower and more typical than the Cubs’ accelerated ascent to the top of the league

If the White Sox were to follow a similar timeline, Jose Quintana, Jose Abreu, and Adam Eaton would all be gone from the team (assuming they don’t extend or re-sign) by the time their new acquisitions are at their peaks. Most additions made from a Sale trade would arrive and begin making an impact just as the rest of the current core was on its way out or in decline. As valuable as Sale is, trading him alone wouldn’t provide the Sox with a whole new core. It would place the White Sox in a similar position to where they are now: a several really good players, surrounded by insufficient depth, and what they gain in long-term assets and ceiling they would forfeit in immediate star power and production from a single roster spot.

That brings us to the next issue with a Chris Sale trade: finding a team willing to pay the right price. For the sake of comparison, in the Greinke trade the Royals received two of the Brewers’ best position prospects, their best pitching prospect, and a throw-in. Sale should theoretically be worth more than that because of another whole year of team control at a lower salary.

Teams that can trade that much talent without directly eliminating their chances to reach the postseason in the next season–and the strongest reason to acquire Sale would be the firm up a postseason contender–aren’t very common. Currently the teams that best fit the bill are the Dodgers and Red Sox, with the Rangers also a possibility. All three would love to add a top-end starter to take them to a whole new level, and all three of those teams also have prospects ready to make a major league impact in the next few years. But while this appears to make the White Sox and each team clear trade partners, problems are bound to arise when meaningful discussions actually begin.

The Red Sox, Dodgers, and Texas all have their own set of “untouchable” prospects they intend to shield from any trade discussion. Unsurprisingly, those prospects are the best ones in their respective systems. All signs and reports hint of a wide gap between the White Sox demand and what teams are willing to give. In other words, if the White Sox really want to trade Sale this offseason and begin their rebuild, they will need to prepare for a lengthy negotiation process to shake loose tightly-held assets, or for the sake of expediting the deal, they’re going to have to trade him for less than he’s truly worth. Lopsided trades happen all the time, of course, but starting a multi-year rebuild by getting owned in a trade for your best asset doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in the merits of the process.

Keeping Sale does not seem like a better option in a full rebuild. He’s the greatest asset on the team and if they sell away everyone but him, he spends another three seasons on a squad with an inability to win games. If they continue refuse to buy to add to the roster, he remains a star on a team with no purpose. It’s understandable to want the Sox to pick a direction, since sitting in the middle provides no hope for the future and only offers failure in the present. But selling away Sale at this moment is a careful process that could lead to a mistake if rushed. With his price as high as it is, it’s still tempting to consider giving Sale one more shot to win in a White Sox uniform by spending a small amount of money to improve the roster, but the Sox are simply unwilling to take that step.

In science, the second law of thermodynamics says that the universe is always moving towards increased disorder and chaos. Some call that Murphy’s Law, which often gets simplified into ‘anything bad that can happen, eventually will.’ With the misfortune they have found in their moves in recent years, the White Sox seem to be ruled by their own version of this universal law, which only heightens concern on how they approach this, the franchise’s most important trade of the next decade.

Lead Image Credit: Steve Mitchell // USA Today Sports Images