The 2017 White Sox will be the team that every fan on the South-Side points to as the turning point. Whether it will be the moment that leads to the Sox turnaround every fan is clamoring for, or the beginning of a desolate time at Guaranteed Rate Field (It’s still hard to believe they named it that).
However, through all the budding infielders and gloomy options in the outfielder, the White Sox have quietly assembled a solid pitching staff for 2017.
For starters, the club is trying to prepare it’s future ace in Carlos Rodon for a major workload this season, giving him the “Chris Sale treatment” as pitching coach Don Cooper put it a few weeks ago.
A smart move by the club, as Rodon was great in his final 12 games of the season after returning from the DL, posting a 3.45 ERA with 77 strikeouts in 73 innings. Apparently the time off to address his supposed arm fatigue was what he needed to assemble easily the best stretch of baseball he’s ever played in his young career.
With Jose Quintana still apart of this team, for the moment at least, alongside the auspicious 24-year-old Carlos Rodon and a decent supporting cast including James Shields, Miguel Gonzalez, and Derek Holland, this pitching staff isn’t half bad.
With plenty of bounce-back candidates mixed in with known commodities with a slight injection of youth, Rick Renteria has a quality group of players to work with in his first year as skipper for the Sox. However, this is just looking at their players in a vacuum, but taking a deeper look at these pitchers and it easy to see some of the key flaws each has.
Of course, everyone remembers the dreadful 22 games that James Shields trotted out to the mound for, and if you don’t he registered an 6.77 ERA and allowed 31 HR’s as a member of the White Sox. Understandably, most fans want nothing more to do with the 35-year-old righty, and no matter how you spin it the guy is going to be apart of this Sox roster.
I can tell you he was great two seasons ago, and that he was a legitimate Cy Young Candidate in 2012, but he’s clearly not that guy anymore. His inflated HR/FB rate has jumped from 9.7% in 2015 to 17.8% last season, maybe if he can keep the ball in the yard the rest of his numbers fall in line with a back-end starter. But nor you or I should hold our breath.
Derek Holland has started a collective 35 major-league games since 2013, where he put together a career-best 3.42 ERA in 33 starts, and while Holland looks like the healthiest he’s been in a half-decade, I wouldn’t call him reliable.
Last season Holland managed to secure 22 games under his belt and while the numbers were nothing spectacular, 4.95 ERA with a 5.62 K/9, he proved to himself and the league he can be at the very least an innings-eater when healthy. If Holland can put together a full season on the South-Side, he could turn into an excellent piece for the Sox to keep for the future or flip at the trade deadline.
And clearly, the most devastating thing that could happen to this rotation would be an injury to either Carlos Rodon or Jose Quintana, with the latter being easily the worst thing that could possibly happen to this club in 2017. But, if both perform to their perceived abilities, there is no reason not to assume the Sox rotation could carry them this season. But, the reality of the White Sox current situation is that for this team to get better they have to be bad. And like an absolutely terrible-type of bad.
For the Sox to get the most out of their draft picks, they essentially have to be the worst team in baseball, which is hard to do with all the other teams tanking. Plus, the Sox cannot afford to simply just tank, as Rian Watt outlines in this great piece in Chicago Magazine, there just isn’t the necessary financial support on the south-side of town that can be found for the team that’s located in Wrigleyville, making it borderline impossible for the Sox to do a full rebuild.
On top of all this, the league has also limited the restrictions on international players with teams only being allowed to spend a collective $6 million per season. So, if the White Sox are looking to overhaul their roster, the best option is to field an awful team in 2017, however the Sox are entirely too dependent on the sales they generate from games for that to be a viable option. Meaning: The Sox are kinda boned because their pitching staff and team overall isn’t bad enough to guarantee a top pick. And they can’t trade all their good players for prospects because then people will stop coming to watch the current team.
The good news is that the White Sox have promising arms ready to contribute soon in newly acquired Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, Reynaldo Lopez, and former No.8 overall pick Carson Fulmer waiting in the wings. However, none of those arms outside of Fulmer seem ready for the big-leagues. But if they do move a player like Quintana or even Holland this season, that forces the Sox to bring up one of the aforementioned four young arms possibly earlier than they intended.
All of this leads me to believe that the White Sox, while it may make sense to move an overachieving arm in Derek Holland, they could stand pat during the season in hopes of staying somewhat relevant. Of course, Quintana will be dealt at some point this season, but only for elite-level prospects, which has everything to do with the crap-shoot that is the MLB draft.
A rotation like this for a team like the White Sox is almost more of a problem than having an atrocious one, but this is the best that the team can do in their current situation. And I think they might turn some heads. Whether that is the right or wrong move for this team is still up for debate, but turning points take risks, something this White Sox club has refused to take.
An over-correction from the previous people in charge, and the truth of the matter is you have to toe the line, so here is your 2017 White Sox leaning back and forth between rebuilding and retooling. And regardless of which side of that line this team eventually lands on, management will be forced to pick a direction.
