With winter meetings looming, it's time for White Sox to start rebuilding
Is clarity coming for the Chicago White Sox?
As major-league baseball's winter meetings get going this week, the Sox's direction might finally become clear.
Late this past season and again in the off-season, general manager Rick Hahn has strongly hinted the White Sox are going to rebuild. Most recently, Hahn talked about the future of the club at the GM meetings in early November.
"We've always been focused on putting ourselves in the best position to win," Hahn told reporters. "At the same time, I think we're veering away from the standpoint of looking for stopgaps. A lot of what we did in the last few years had been trying to enhance the short-term potential of the club to put ourselves in a position to win immediately.
"I feel the approach at this point is focusing on longer-term benefits. It doesn't mean we won't necessarily be in a good position in 2017. It means that our targets and whatever we're hoping to accomplish have a little more longer-term fits in nature."
In other words, no more Adam Dunns. No more Adam LaRoches. No more David Robertsons. No more Dioner Navarros and Alex Avilas. No more Jimmy Rollins.
After four straight losing seasons, the Sox clearly need to rebuild. And - most important - they have the trade pieces to launch a successful new start.
Hahn figures to be very popular at the winter meetings because he has arguably the two top trade chips in baseball, starting pitchers Chris Sale and Jose Quintana.
Both left-handers were on the American League all-star team last season and they both have team-friendly contracts.
Sale has attracted the most attention, for multiple reasons.
First, the 27-year-old pitcher has a career 74-50 with a 3.00 ERA and 1,244 strikeouts in 1,110 innings.
Sale has a composite 31.1 WAR.
He has been to five straight All-Star Games and has finished in the Top 6 in AL Cy Young Award voting five straight years.
Sale could fetch a package of young talent that could get a rebuilding project off to a great start, and the Boston Red Sox still look like the best trade partner.
In desperate need of rotation help, the Red Sox could offer the White Sox a combination of young talent that includes Jackie Bradley Jr., Yoan Moncada, Andrew Benintendi and Eduardo Rodriguez.
With so much success and such a favorable contract, why would the White Sox even consider trading Sale?
That is a question that has been tossed around for months, and here is the answer.
With Sale at the top of the rotation the past five seasons, the White Sox have gone nowhere.
The lanky left-hander has also had multiple off-field issues, and this past season it was almost as if Sale were trying to force a trade.
In spring training, he lost his mind after LaRoche announced his abrupt retirement when Sox vice president Kenny Williams asked the ineffective designated hitter/first baseman to cut back son Drake's time spent in the clubhouse.
In July, Sale cut up the throwback uniforms the White Sox were scheduled to wear before a game, drawing a five-game suspension.
After the final game of the season, Sale directly questioned the Sox's organization.
"What year is this, eight, that we haven't made the playoffs?" he said. "It's not good. We want to change that, we've tried to change that. Don't get me wrong, we're as frustrated as anyone in the world. We're the ones doing it. So we're probably more frustrated. Want to make some changes, shake things up and change the name, change the tone of the Chicago White Sox. Just be a better team, be a better organization, get to the promised land, to the playoffs, to show what we've been working for the last x amount of years."