It’s easy to be disappointed with the second baseman after his first full season in the majors. The former No. 1 prospect in baseball and prize of the trade that sent new World Series champion Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox has had his share of struggles through what is now 901 career plate appearances. An essentially league-average offensive season isn’t what the White Sox envisioned, and he simply hasn’t been the type of game-changing force we saw this season out of the likes of Juan Soto, Gleyber Torres, or Ronald Acuna Jr.

Simply put, it’s not what we signed up for.

Forget, though, for a second what your or the White Sox’s expectations for Moncada were two years ago. Forget that he was a No. 1 prospect, or that evaluators saw him as an elite All-Star talent capable of anchoring a lineup and competing for MVP awards, and your view might change a bit.

Moncada was a league-average hitter in 2018. Maybe a little better in the context of his position. As a 23-year-old whose shown the type of tools he possesses, that’s plenty to be excited about, because it’s clear he can still be a lot better.

Not all prospects are built the same. You can point to the aforementioned guys and a few others who came up and immediately dominated, but it doesn’t always work like that. Moncada needs to get better, but given all that we’ve seen in a year and a half, there’s plenty of reason to believe he will. He hit .235/.315/.400 with a 97 wRC+ in 2018. Across the season, he went through stretches where he mashed the ball to all fields and took walks at an elite rate. Between those stretches, he struck out too often and sometimes let his advanced eye and passive approach get the best of him.

But those stretches of greatness, his age, and the skill set he very clearly possesses outweigh the frustrations. We’ve been burned on a number of occasions by prospects who failed to live up to expectations, held back by glaring holes in their game. This is different. Even if he just cuts down a little bit on what was a league-leading strikeout total — something that his elite eye makes very much possible — he’d go from league average to legitimate asset, maybe even borderline All-Star given the position, and his gap-to-gap power has already showed up plenty in games.

This all may sound like blind optimism. I understand where the frustration lie with Moncada. You watch him play and ache for him to dominate like so many young stars have. But it’s not. Moncada was a good player in 2018, just not the type of game changer we envisioned. Thankfully, there’s still plenty of time for that.

Lead Photo Credit: Mike DiNovo-USA TODAY Sports

That said … 190 strikeouts with most of a month to play is really quite a lot of strikeouts. Mark Reynolds’s MLB record of 223 in 2009 has already withstood one challenge from a White Sox, with Adam Dunn totaling 222 in 2012. 33 strikeouts in the last 23 games seems like a lot for Moncada, but how (un)likely is it really? Let’s do some math and figure it out.

We can, for purposes of this exercise, treat each PA for Moncada like the flip of a weighted coin (with heads equating to a strikeout), making his total strikeouts for the rest of the season a binomial random variable. If those words don’t mean anything to you, just take away that it’s easy to the estimate the chances that Moncada strikes out 33 or more times if we know his “true talent” strikeout percentage and the number of PA he will have for the rest of the year.

I used a range of estimates for both of these parameters; for PA, I looked at every multiple of 5 from 75 to 105, which is about 3 PA per team game (a very low number) to 4.5 per team game (Moncada has averaged about 4.35 PA per appearance, so this is a high estimate). For K%, I used as the low number his ZiPS projection of 30.5% (from FanGraphs), which was the most optimistic projection I could find; for a mid-range estimate, his PECOTA estimate of 31.9%; for a high estimate, his season-to-date number, which is 33.7%. The two tables below show the different estimates of Moncada first tying or exceeding the record, then strictly exceeding. (Note that the chances of tying or breaking the MLB record are the same as the chances of breaking the Sox team record.)

Chances of Tying or Breaking K Record

Chances of Breaking K Record 

A glance at the tables shows there’s tremendous variation here, ranging from almost a zero % chance to an over 50% chance. My personal conclusion is that the most likely estimate is in the 5-10% range, since the White Sox are likely to hold him out of a game or two at the end of the year if he’s within striking range, as they did with Adam Dunn in 2012. I’d therefore expect his most likely PA remaining to be closer to 85, which gets us to the 5-10% range depending on how bullish you are on his K%.

With no Eloy Jimenez, there are fewer hitting prospect storylines this September than some of us were hoping for. Whether Moncada clocks in just above or below the record won’t change the overall value of his season, or alter what we expect from him going forward, but in a season that’s often felt like treading water at best, it’s at least some sort of narrative to look at.

Data from the mothership, FanGraphs, and baseball-reference. Code backing the analysis can be found here.

Lead Image Credit: Patrick Gorski-USA TODAY Sports

1. After a rocky June, pitching his first games in the majors since offseason shoulder surgery, Carlos Rodon has rattled off three straight quality starts against the Astros, Cardinals, and Angels, even carrying a no hitter into the sixth inning on Tuesday night.  Over three starts in July, Rodon has thrown 21 innings with an ERA of 1.71.  He’s still walking more batters than you’d like, but opposing batters have an OPS of .481 over that stretch.  Rodon has flashed excellence before, but in a season with a whole lot of ghastly pitching and failures at the major league level, it’s a pleasant reminder that not long ago, this guy was widely regarded as a front line starter of the future.  Even after his surgery, Rodon is averaging about 94 mph on his four seamer and touching 98 when he needs it.  July has also seen him abandon a sinking fastball for a more four-seam/change up pairing, which is worth monitoring moving forward.

2. On the offensive side of the ball, the team is oddly unremarkable statistically.  Of their top ten batters by plate appearance, five of them have an OPS+ between 96 and 103, and nine of them are between 96 and 120.  Adam Engel is the only real dud in the bunch with his .560 OPS.  While it’s good nobody in particular has cratered, per se, fora  team of young players we have seen more incremental improvement than any breakouts yet.  Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada have been uneven, if flashy, league average regulars, Matt Davidson, Yolmer Sanchez, Leury Garcia, and Omar Narvaez all continue to look overqualified as bench players but stretched in every day action.

It’s easy to forget Moncada still only has 657 major league plate appearances in his career, basically one full season’s worth and that’s reaching back to include his random 8 games cup of coffee with Boston in 2016.  There’s time yet for this group, particularly the middle infielders, to put together a strong finish to the season but as it stands it’s been a whole lot of Okay.

3. The trade deadline is coming up in less than a week, although it may be a quiet one for the White Sox.  Avisail Garcia has been good while he’s played, but he’s likely been too injury prone to draw much interest even if the White Sox did want to punt on someone who could contribute to a theoretical 2019 contention push. Jose Abreu looks like he’s coming out of his slump, but as we’ve discussed before, the White Sox would need to be blown away to part with the heart and face of the team and he hasn’t hit well enough to imagine such an offer would be forthcoming.  Still, there’s always a market for arms and James Shields has somehow pitched well enough in this weak market to be potentially worth something.

In fact, I would not be surprised to see the White Sox try to bundle a number of arms (or perhaps even hyper versatile bench pieces like Leury Garcia) to a team in the playoff race to improve their prospect return.  Thanks to some crazy win streaks and surprisingly open divisions, Oakland, Arizona, Washington, Seattle, Atlanta, Milwaukee, the Cubs, and arguably the Yankees could all upgrade their rosters with some combination of Shields, Joakim Soria, Leury Garcia, or even a Jace Fry or Xavier Cedeno.  The Blake Rutherford trade of 2017 is a model of what this might look like, even if Fry may not be as good as Kahnle and Soria is not as valuable as a David Robertson.

4.  It figures Nicky Delmonico and Avisail Garcia would come off the disabled list right about when Eloy Jimenez begins earnestly beating the door down for a major league roster spot.  Obviously, with a player of Jimenez’ caliber, you just make a spot for him and sort the rest out later, but this was the real tragedy of Delmonico’s injury, like Charlie Tilson’s before him, and perhaps Ryan Cordell’s as well–the White Sox had a window where there was a lot of playing time to be had for lesser players to show they are perhaps not lesser players, and that window is closing relatively quickly.

Center field still looks wide open, because Engel is approaching his 27th birthday with another couple hundred plate appearances of batting like the best hitting pitcher of the 21st century, but at Triple-A and above, the logjam is in the corners.

5. In case you missed it, our Collin Whitchurch has been writing regularly over at the mothership on the What You Need To Know team, covering all of the news around the league. He has an article up from Tuesday night to help you catch up on the insanity which has been the A’s, the Pirates, the Brewers and more.

1. It would be apt to describe Yoan Moncada’s first half as a roller coaster — albeit probably one with more drops than climbs — but he enters the All-Star break on one of those stretches of play that make it easy to see why he was and continues to be so highly regarded. As Nick addressed Sunday, his most significant funk can be traced back to a hamstring injury that kept him out for 11 days in mid-May, and his OPS dropped from .868 to a low-water mark of .683 at the beginning of July during that stretch. Sunday’s 3-for-4 effort, which included his 12th homer of the season, lifted that OPS up to .737, and he’s now reached base at least once in 12 straight games. Of his 16 hits during that span, seven have gone for extra bases.

I feel like every week in this space we’re writing some variation of “Moncada is struggling” or “Moncada is showing the goods,” but during an otherwise tumultuous first half, it’s certainly nice to end things on the latter.

2. Discussing Lucas Giolito of late has felt like defending your little brother who you just know has good intentions despite always putting himself in a position to make bad decisions. You’re grasping at any sign of optimism that maybe, this time, he’s turning over a new leaf. Giolito’s results have certainly been better of late, including 6 1/3 shutout innings in Sunday’s win over the Royals, but there’s still plenty of evidence that you should err on the side of caution in terms of hope for him putting it all together.

The six strikeouts, tied for his third most in a start this season, are nice, but he also induced just five swinging strikes against a very bad Kansas City lineup. And while he’s seen his ERA drop from 7.53 down to 6.18 over his last eight starts, Sunday’s start was only the third such occasion where he struck out more batters than he walked.

Finding the good and reaching for optimism during a half-season of mostly moribund results is certainly understandable, particularly when it comes to a player who came into the season with as high of hopes as Giolito. But while things are certainly looking better than they were the first two months of the season, consider me skeptical that he’s fully turned things around just yet.

3. During a first half where very few White Sox prospects made it out unscathed, Dylan Cease and Luis Alexander Basabe were two of the obvious bright spots. Cease, the second piece in the trade that sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs, and Basabe, the third piece in the deal that sent Chris Sale to Boston, elevated their prospect stock over mostly successful first halves, both jumping levels in the process, and both earning spots in Sunday’s Futures Game in Washington.

Basabe started in center field and hit lead off for the World team, putting him smack dab in the spotlight. After fighting off multiple high-90s fastballs from top Pirates prospect Mitch Keller in his first at-bat, he struck out on a curveball. In his second at-bat, against young Reds’ flamethrower Hunter Greene, he saw a slew of 100+ mph fastballs and , well …

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Basabe also recorded an outfield assist in the first inning, gunning down Nate Lowe with a dart to second base after the Rays prospect tried to take advantage with a brief bobble on a single to center.

As for Cease, we didn’t see all that much but what we did see was good. He threw only eight pitches in recording two outs in his ninth inning appearance, striking out Rangers prospect Leodys Tavares before inducing a fly out against a Padres prospect you may have heard of.

Cease gets Tatis Jr. to fly out and the White Sox somehow simultaneously win the Quintana trade and the Shields trade.

— Collin Whitchurch (@cowhitchurch) July 15, 2018

It wasn’t much, but BP minor league editor Craig Goldstein was in attendance and liked what he saw.

Dylan Cease looked real good for two batters. 97-98, plus looking curve at 78. Also flashed a slider.

— Craig Goldstein (@cdgoldstein) July 15, 2018

4. BP’s lead prospect writer Jeff Paternostro was on the latest episode of The Catbird Speaks with Nick this weekend to talk White Sox minor leaguers on the heels of the release of our Midseason Top 50 Prospects list. The two discuss a lot of prospects including the command issues of Michael Kopech. Give it a listen!

Kopech has had an up-and-down season at Charlotte, as he’s battled control issues and struggled to go deep into the game more often that one would hope. On Saturday, though, he had perhaps his best start of the season, striking out 11, walking just one, and giving up just one run in six innings of work. Given how undeniably advanced his stuff is, at this point for Kopech the focus should be on him proving he can consistently command his pitches. That’s proven difficult for a good portion of the season, but Saturday’s performance showed exactly what he can do when everything is working.

5. It’s starting to become difficult to ignore another much less heralded White Sox minor leaguer. 2016 fifth rounder Jimmy Lambert earned a promotion to Double-A late last month after a strong first two months in Winston-Salem and has continued his solid level of play in Birmingham, the latest being a seven inning one-hitter on Saturday in which he walked two and struck out 10.

Lambert entered the season as essentially a non-prospect and kind of still is. The only national site that goes deep enough into the system to mention him is MLB Pipeline, and they currently have him at No. 28 in the White Sox system behind guys like Evan Skoug and Thyago Viera. He’s a low-ceiling kind of guy who, if everything clicks right, can probably carve out a career as a back-end starter. But right now he certainly seems on that trajectory, and finding major league contributors outside of the top few rounds of the draft or major J2 signings is a good and important way to supplement a roster when trying to build a contender.

Lead Photo Credit:  Joe Camporeale-USA TODAY Sports

I can’t prove the injury is the cause for the slump, I suppose.  It’s based on my observations.  When he is going badly, he gets caught looking, or when he does get into a good count and gets a pitch he wants to drive he tries to unload and fouls it back.  When he’s been locked in, you can see him crushing first pitches, blasting the pitches he wants in play instead of backwards, and spitting on balls outside of the zone.

So, because this season is cursed, when he started to get back in sync—he’s hit .317/.417/.537 in his last eleven games—he gets hurt again, banging his knee on a pickoff play while running the bases.  He’s listed as day-to-day, but one has to hope against hope he not only comes back quickly, but shows he can hold his timing for more than short stretches.

In the era of prospects hitting the ground running as fully formed stars, it’s easy to forget that’s still unusual.  Moncada is muddling along as a roughly league-average player when you net out his performance, but he’s shown there’s more in there.  It just keeps getting interrupted.

Other notes:

• Bruce Rondon was designated for assignment in favor of Jeanmar Gomez. As he has for his whole career, he showed an intriguing skillset with plenty of velocity and a frequently-nasty slider, but after nearly 30 innings of walking virtually a batter an inning the White Sox pulled the plug on the experiment.  Rondon is the type of experiment they should be conducting in a season like this, but that doesn’t mean they’re all going to work.
• Gomez as the call-up is a somewhat surprising choice. The veteran scrap heap pickup has closing experience and has had extended periods of success in the majors in the past, despite not missing any bats.  It’s good to show priority minor league free agents and NRIs they’ll get a shot with your organization, but this profile isn’t really the kind you’d expect to mean anything at the trade deadline.
• The reason Gomez was a bit of a surprise callup is that Ian Hamilton is actually a prospect who is also in Charlotte and has now gone 8 innings there without allowing a run. In fact, he has more strikeouts in that time (10) than he has allowed baserunners (6).  When it comes to pitchers I still am of the opinion the White Sox know their business, and maybe they’re a little gunshy after Aaron Bummer’s Race to the Majors resembled a mad prospect rush.  But Hamilton is what it looks like when a relief prospect is Ready with a capital R.
• The White Sox outfield might get very crowded in the near future. Avisail Garcia isn’t expected to be out very long, Leury Garcia is hitting well, and Nicky Delmonico has begun a rehab assignment in Triple-A.  Given Avisail’s repeated lower body injuries this year, it may make sense to use him at DH a little more often, and obviously you can find other spots for Leury Garcia to play, but there are only so many plate appearances to go around.  The organization seems to love Adam Engel, despite another 270 PAs of sub-.600 OPS baseball, but at a certain point Engel, Charlie Tilson and Daniel Palka are going to feel the squeeze.

1. Imploring a player to be more aggressive when he has the second most strikeouts and fourth highest strikeout percentage in baseball seems a strange gambit, but it’s been a focal point for  Yoan Moncada as his advanced batter’s eye has sometimes worked against him in the sense that he hasn’t afforded himself to drive hittable pitches. On Sunday, an aggressive approach paid off for the 23-year-old in the most opportune of spots, as he drove a first pitch fastball for a bases loaded, bases clearing double in the fifth inning to put the White Sox ahead for good in what turned out to be an easy 10-3 victory. He added a three-run homer, taking a grooved, 94-mph fastball on a 3-1 count out to right field (he swung at the first pitch of that AB, too, for what it’s worth).

Moncada’s been mired in a terrible slump since returning from the disabled list in mid-May, hitting just .195/.247/.305 with 56 strikeouts in 166 plate appearances entering play Sunday. But the tools that made him one of the top prospects in baseball and the centerpiece of the White Sox trade of Chris Sale 18 months ago were on display in what was undoubtedly the best game of his still very young career.

That last point is worth repeating again: His still very young career. Moncada still has fewer than a season’s worth of plate appearances in his career, and while it’s frustrating that Moncada isn’t one of those top prospects to come up and just start outright mashing, it’s important to remember that there’s no linear developmental path all prospects follow. Moncada has flaws, but he also has an immense amount of talent. And Sunday we saw the best that talent has to offer.

2. It’s been discussed enough during the last two seasons, but the focus during a rebuild is more on the individual progression of key young players than actual wins and losses. Along with Moncada, the White Sox got promising outings from two others in the form of Lucas Giolito and Carlos Rodon in their pair of weekend victories over the A’s.

Giolito’s performance in Friday’s 6-4 win was perhaps more surprising but also more desperately needed. He looked more the part of his late-2017 or even Spring Training self over seven innings, striking out a season-high eight with a fastball that topped out at 96 and sharp breaking pitches. The line was only diminished after Rick Renteria sent him out to start the eighth inning at 89 pitches only for him to allow back-to-back singles that ultimately scored when Jace Fry and Chris Volstad couldn’t limit the damage. Still, it was the type of performance that makes one optimistic the pitcher the White Sox hope he’ll become is still in there somewhere.

“I felt in sync,” Giolito said. “[Omar Naváez] and I were working really well, finally commanding the fastball the way I should. Definitely the best I felt out there this year, for sure. Velocity was up a tick. Just felt right, felt in sync. Just competed from there.

“Feel for slider today was really good. I felt like there were a couple of times I could have gotten it down a little bit better with two strikes but other than that it was a good go-to pitch. Curveball feel was a lot better, though I didn’t throw it very much. Overall just felt like I was getting on top of all my pitches a lot better. I’ll look at it tomorrow but especially the angle of my fastball was probably the best it has been, too.”

Rodon wasn’t at his absolute peak in his eight innings of work Sunday, as we didn’t see the overpowering fastball or devastating slider induce a whole lot of strikeouts. He only had three, but was efficient in a 99-pitch outing with 69 strikes, which is nice, and perhaps more importantly zero walks. Despite the low strikeout total, he still got 10 swinging strikes, including eight with the fastball.

MOST importantly, though, is that through four starts Rodon looks healthy and unencumbered by the injuries that plagued him for most of the last year and a half. Seeing Rodon perform well and injury free for the rest of 2018 will make you feel a lot better for both him and the team going forward.

3. Believe it or not, it’s not all sunshine and roses with this 26-51 team. Dylan Covey got battered around for his second straight start before leaving with what turned out to be a groin injury. Fortunately for both him and the White Sox, it doesn’t seem as serious as the oblique that sidelined him for three months a year ago, but it’s still unknown how much, if any, time he will miss.

It’s amazing we’re at a point where Covey missing starts is considered a detriment to the team, but here we are. If he’s sidelined for any significant amount of time, the White Sox will have a couple of different options in terms of what to do with that rotation spot. The obvious and boring answer would be to insert Hector Santiago back in that spot, or even to call up Triple-A veteran Donn Roach, who’s 28-year-old but put together solid results for the Knights.

4. The option everyone will be clamoring for, of course, is the promotion of Michael Kopech. The 22-year-old top prospect has struggled mightily over the last month, and James Fegan of The Athletic detailed his command issues at great length last week, but given his pedigree and advanced stuff, the White Sox are bound to give him a shot at getting major league hitters out before long. He’s still posting high strikeout totals amid the slump, after all.

BP’s lead prospect writer Jeffrey Paternostro said in his weekly chat that “you should be a little worried” when it comes to Kopech, and when I asked him to expand on that thought he mentioned that, at some point, you get tired of waiting for the command to show up, particularly with a pitcher who is as close to major league read as Kopech.

It’s true that the command is a worry, but no prospect is a finished product by the time they reach the majors. Even with the struggles, you get to a point where you need to prove it at the major league level and Kopech has about reached that point. (Some may argue he was there long ago, and I wouldn’t necessarily disagree). We don’t yet know if Covey is going to miss significant time, but if he does, whether or not the White Sox opt for Kopech will be interesting to see.

5. Kopech hasn’t been promoted, but several White Sox prospects were, in fact, promoted after their respective leagues’ All-Star breaks last week. You surely already know the whole list, but the highlights include Eloy Jimenez and Seby Zavala going to Triple-A, Dylan Cease and Luis Alexander Basabe going to Double-A, and Luis Robert going to High-A.

Starting from the top, Jimenez’s promotion had been telegraphed and was wholly unsurprising. That he’s off to a solid start in Charlotte (he hit his first home run Sunday) only further proves how close he is to the majors. Zavala’s promotion isn’t what you would consider surprising, but it’s an important step for a player who has continued to surprise along every step of his development since the White Sox selected him in the 12th round of the 2015 draft. The difference between Zavala and his former Double-A counterpart, Zack Collins, as James Fegan detailed, was the defensive improvements, with Chris Getz saying he’s “major-league ready” in terms of how he handles the pitching staff.

Cease’s promotion would have been considered aggressive at the beginning of the season, as the 22-year-old had yet to surpass 93 innings at any point in his still very young professional career. Having a clean bill of health thus far in 2018 has allowed him to show the advanced stuff that make many scouts project him as a potential frontline starter, as he struck out 82 in 71 2/3 innings at High-A before his promotion. Similarly healthy after an injury-riddled and ineffective 2017, Basabe is displaying all the tools that the White Sox believed he had when they acquired him in the Sale trade prior to last season.

Robert going to Winston-Salem after just 13 games in Kannapolis may surprise some, but even at just 20-year-old, he’s advanced enough that his initial Low-A assignment was never going to be much more than a pit stop.

One final note: In the area of prospects who aren’t yet technically prospects, first round pick Nick Madrigal is not yet a White Sox. The reason being that his collegiate season just won’t end. Madrigal and Oregon State begin a three-game series with Arkansas Monday night in the College World Series final. His season will end no later than Wednesday, we know now. One would hope he’ll be signing with the White Sox shortly thereafter.

Lead Photo Credit: David Banks-USA TODAY Sports

2. This makes two positive nights at the plate in a row for Moncada who had a pair of very hard-hit doubles, and nearly had a third double in the second inning. Unfortunately, Indians’ left fielder Michael Brantley made a nice running catch on the warning track in deep left field to turn the line drive into a loud out. Moncada has drawn the ire of a lot of White Sox fans in recent weeks with his struggles since coming off the DL, so it’s important to keep context in mind when evaluating his season’s work. He entered last night’s game as a league average hitter, .257 TAv, at a premium defensive position, all while starting the season at less than 23 years of age. Moncada’s struggles with strikeouts were always going to yield lean periods in the early part of his career, as he works to iron out those issues. Expectations for Moncada have always been sky high, but not every prospect is going to be Kris Bryant right away. Moncada is still going to learn and develop over the rest of this year, and most likely the next couple of years, so let’s table the “bust” talk for say, two to three years, and revisit the issue after the 2021 season. Let’s not forget how well Moncada was playing before his DL stint and also remember that Moncada still has some of the best athleticism in the Majors.  I believe that is eventually going to translate into above average production at the plate.

3. Speaking of unfinished products, the full Carlos Rodon Experience was on display Tuesday night in Cleveland. His slider was electric when he was getting ahead in the count and locating it well, but Rodon’s control was largely erratic and that led to mixed results on the evening. Rodon may have only walked two Cleveland batters (and hit another), but after the first inning, he really wasn’t hitting his spots and looked like he was fighting his own mechanics all night. Still, Rodon managed to make it through 6 1/3 innings allowing only four runs, all of which came in the second inning. Rodon’s ability to go so deep into the game after throwing 46 pitches in the first two innings is really a testament to how good his stuff is, even when he doesn’t have pinpoint control. It seems like this has been said for years now, but the sky is the limit for Rodon if he can harness his control. Unfortunately, Rodon hasn’t been able to do so yet in his career for a variety of reasons. Hopefully he can stay healthy the rest of the season and settle into a grove and finally translate more of his potential into performance.

4. The White Sox had no answer, again, for Mike Clevinger. Once he got through a rocky first inning, Clevinger threw it into cruise control and dominated into the eighth inning. Just five days after he threw seven innings allowing only two runs while striking out eleven White Sox batters, he delivered 7 2/3 innings and struck out ten while allowing only one run. Clevinger truly embodies the “surprise contributor” as a player who has developed into a very solid MLB starter while never being ranked as a top MLB prospect. Hopefully the White Sox can find their own Mike Clevinger over the next couple of seasons, as teams generally need players like this to help support upswings in their competitive cycles.

5. In the third inning, Steve Stone and Jason Benetti started talking about the first major trade of the season, a deal that sent Kansas City Royals’ reliever Kelvin Herrera to the Washington Nationals for a trio of prospects. Stone opined that the Royals were smart to deal Herrera earlier in the season, increasing the amount of time the Nationals would benefit from adding a strong reliever to their bullpen. Stone also added that he thought the Herrera trade may jump start the trade market and lead to more deals in the coming weeks. Herrera is probably better than any reliever on the White Sox, but it’s encouraging to see the Nationals give up a couple of decent prospects for a bullpen upgrade. The White Sox will likely have a few veteran relievers available for trade, most notably Joakim Soria, who is having a very good year. It’s unlikely that any reliever brings back a top prospect, but if the White Sox are able to hit on just one prospect they bring in by trading some of the veterans on this squad, they could significantly improve the long-term outlook of the franchise. In the meantime, I’ll continue to root for positive contributions from the veterans while they’re still on the White Sox and hope that they can pass on valuable lessons to the younger players.

With the loss, the White Sox fall to 24-48 on the season. Up next is the series finale against Cleveland featuring Reynaldo Lopez and Corey Kluber.

Lead Image Credit: Winslow Townson-USA TODAY Sports

2. Moncada’s two runs were enough support for Reynaldo Lopez, who needed 106 pitches to get through seven scoreless innings. Lopez’s start was once again something of an enigma as he struck out only four batters while also walking four Twins.  Lopez got 11 swinging strikes on the day (10.4 percent), which is just below the league average (10.6 percent) in that department. Lopez didn’t give up any runs in large part because very few Twins were able to put good swings on the baseball.  Yes, you’d absolutely like to see more strikeouts and fewer walks, but we need to get enjoyment from this season where we can and it is really fun to watch a young starting pitcher throw up goose eggs on the scoreboard against a division rival, and there are certainly other factors at work which are working against Lopez in each of his starts, but more on that later.

3. The two runs, however, were not enough support for the White Sox bullpen. Nate Jones came into the game in the eighth inning and retired the first two batters he saw. Jones then proceeded to allow a “hit” (a generous scoring decision) to Brian Dozier, a walk to Eddie Rosario, a laser single to Miguel Sano which scored the first Twins run, and finally the decisive blow, a three run home run to old friend Eduardo Escobar.  Dozier’s single was a sharply-hit grounder that bounced off of Yolmer Sanchez’s glove. Sanchez then recovered the ball with a nifty barehanded grab, but was unable to get the ball over to first on a fly and Abreu could not pick it out of the dirt, which opened the floodgates for the Twins. Based on the very solid defense we typically see from Sanchez, I’m sure he’ll tell you he should have made that play. Alas, it was not meant to be.

4. In the top of the sixth inning, the White Sox broadcast showed a highlight of Giancarlo Stanton hitting a monstrous home run off of Mike Fiers. The home run itself is nothing new for Stanton, but what was remarkable about it was that it came after Fiers had drilled Stanton with a pitch earlier in the game. This led to an enjoyable dialogue between Jason Benetti and Steve Stone in which Stone revealed that he was not a fan of Major League Baseball teams getting into beanball wars. I couldn’t agree more with Stone on this, and certainly do hope that MLB teams can move away from this frontier-style of justice. It’s really dangerous for the players and no one wants to see their players get hurt.

5. Calling back to No. 2, Lopez got very little help on the day from Omar Narvaez behind the plate. Narvaez has been worth a staggering -9.8 FRAA on the season and White Sox catchers have been worth nearly -15 FRAA as a unit, worst in the majors by a significant margin. Tuesday was no exception. On several occasions, Lopez threw borderline pitches that could very easily have been called strike threes, but instead were called balls because of poor catcher positioning/framing. Catcher framing has been a huge concern for the White Sox for a number of years now, and I certainly hope that they can find a catcher in the near future that can accentuate their young starters instead of actively harming them on a pitch-by-pitch basis.

6. After a short recess, the White Sox and Twins were back at it again for game two of their doubleheader. The Sox jumped all over Twins starter Zack Littell, who was making his Major League debut, and put up a big crooked number on the scoreboard with four runs in the first inning. Abreu kept up his hot hitting with a two-run blast. Tim Anderson got his first hit of the day with a double, Kevan Smith (welcome back!) drove in Anderson with a single and Adam Engel kept the party pumping with a line shot over left-fielder Eddie Rosario’s head to score smith.  Lucas Giolito followed up the big first inning by getting the Twins to go 1-2-3 in the bottom of the first. Why can’t the entire game be made out of the first inning?

7. Speaking of Engel, he’s really been hitting the ball well as of late. Since his OPS hit its season low of .396(!) on April 25, Engel has put together 111 plate appearances with a triple slash line of .275/.321/.422. His OPS on the season is now up to .621.  Engel’s speed defense has always been his calling card with the big league club and his bat an afterthought, but it’s nice to see him start to come around with the bat and make the most of his extended opportunity on the big league club.  When the White Sox are competitive again, they’ll need players like the more recent version of Engel to provide positive value off of the bench and guard against season-sinking injury replacements like the J.B. Shuck experiment.

8. As with most Giolito starts this season, I was skeptical that four runs would be enough for the White Sox to have the lead after Giolito departed. I ended up being wrong, but Giolito was not as sharp as his two runs allowed over six innings would indicate. He got some batted ball luck to get out of trouble in the second inning after he allowed the first two batters to reach, and then he benefitted greatly from a Twins base running blunder in the third. Eddie Rosario sent a towering fly ball to right field with no outs and runners on first and second base. Neither of the runners nor White Sox right fielder, Trayce Thompson, seemed to be able to pick up the baseball which ended up hitting the top of the right field wall. The runners were only able to advance one base and Sano bounced Giolito’s next pitch to short for an incredibly well timed double play. The Twins would get one run on the double play and Escobar would drive in the remaining runner on base with a double to the left-center gap.  Giolito may have only walked two Twins on the evening, but his control was largely erratic, as he threw only 56 of 95 pitches for strikes. While it’s good to see Giolito make it through six innings allowing only two runs, it was mostly lipstick on a pig. At some point he needs to limit the amount of solid contact he is giving up and start striking out more batters than he walks (he only got one strike out over the six innings) if he’s going to see his ERA fall significantly from its 7.08 mark.

10. Sanchez continues to have a very solid season at the plate. He added another double in the top of the fourth inning that drove in two more runs and chased Littell from the game. Sanchez doesn’t get the hype that Moncada or Anderson do, but he may very well be a great fit for the next White Sox contender and watching him on a nightly basis continues to be very enjoyable.

Sanchez’s double in the fourth was actually the last run scoring plate appearance of the game for the White Sox as their bats would fall silent against the Twins bullpen. Luckily enough for everyone invested in White Sox baseball, six runs would be enough as the White Sox took the nightcap in the doubleheader, 6-3. Chris Volstad was able to throw a scoreless seventh, and four relievers, Jace Fry, Bruce Rondon, Luis Avilan, and Joakim Soria, combined to allow only one run in the bottom of the eighth inning. Soria would stay on for the ninth, where the Twins would get runners on the corners with two outs, but he retired the final batter to preserve the win.  With the split, the White Sox start an amazing 21-games-in-20-nights streak of baseball on a relatively positive note. Next up is another match-up with the Twins. The probable starters are Jake Odorizzi and Hector Santiago.

11. As a bonus item, it was nice to see both the Twins and the White Sox wear their Jackie Robinson uniforms in the opener of the doubleheader.  The first game, of course, was a make-up game from the last time the White Sox traveled to Minnesota and were treated to some extended time off because of the early April snow. The two teams would have worn their Robinson jerseys on the original scheduled date, so I’m glad they decided to sport them again today to honor one of the most important players in MLB history.

Lead Photo Credit: Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports

The most obvious example of this was the trade that brought Adam Eaton to Chicago. The White Sox, long known for their successes developing starting pitching, traded one of those developmental successes, former 30th round draft pick Hector Santiago, to bring in an outfielder who had already been fully developed in Arizona.

As the White Sox transitioned into rebuild mode, acquisitions like Yoan Moncada and Eloy Jimenez weren’t exactly “ready-made” players, but hitters who were premium enough that it was (or is, in Jimenez’s case) more about getting more reps before being major league ready than anything specific in their development.

The White Sox have taken measures, as detailed in the above link, to streamline their hitter development, and the dividends thus far have been in the form of Tim Anderson fulfilling, at least thus far, more or less what they hoped he’d become. There are other lesser development triumphs, such as Yolmer Sanchez or Leury Garcia. Nicky Delmonico’s 2016 emergence, as fleeting as it might prove to be, is something you’d more likely expect from an organization like the Cardinals or Dodgers than the White Sox. Likewise, players like Marcus Semien and Tyler Flowers, who spent the better part of the developmental stages of their careers, have blossomed into useful players, although it’s unclear how much the White Sox had to do with either cases.

The rebuild becoming successful is going to be based primarily on the White Sox top prospects living up to their potential. Moncada, Jimenez, and the glut of young pitchers both at the major and minor league levels panning out will be the biggest factor in the White Sox snapping their long playoff drought sometime in the near future. Of course, ownership proving it’s willing to open its wallet for premiere free agents to supplement said roster should it come to fruition will be important in filling roster holes as they emerge, too.

But while the White Sox path toward future contention has primarily centered around a group of top-level arms and two top-tier hitters, proving the advancements they’ve made in hitter development will go a long way toward not only contention in 2020 or so, but sustaining that success long term. While not top-tier prospects like Moncada or Jimenez, there’s a group of talented but volatile hitters whose development is integral in them doing just that.

That group includes the likes of Luis Robert, Zack Collins and Blake Rutherford, but also Micker Adolfo, Luis Alexander Basabe, Seby Zavala, Gavin Sheets, and a few others you could convince me to mention. Jake Burger, of course as well, but his last few months has zapped a lot of that hope for the time being.

Some of these prospects have a better chance that others, but the point is that while Moncada, Jimenez, and the arms are the biggest keys in building the team the White Sox hope to have, some of that next tier becoming major leaguers is a big factor, as well.

Not every player in a contending team’s lineup is a superstar. But every contending team features a stable of capable players able to produce. The White Sox have a few players with star potential, and a whole stable of them who could become the latter. Hitting development has been a sore spot for a while, but has made great strides in recent years. Just how far they’ve come will be determined over the next few years.

Lead Photo Credit: Ray Carlin-USA TODAY Sports

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