McKnight: Moving Sale, Quintana may be better in winter

The decision White Sox General Manager Rick Hahn has in front of him is not one to envy.

Now that it's easier to measure the time before the MLB trade deadline in hours, every contending team needs pitching and the White Sox control two of the best, cheapest, youngest arms in the game; I'd bet Hahn's phone is ringing at a fairly constant pace.

The trouble with having Chris Sale and Jose Quintana under shockingly affordable contracts for the foreseeable future (Sale has team options through the 2019 season while Quintana has options through 2020) is that they're almost too affordable to trade. How could a contending team possibly give up fair value for Sale? No team making a run at a division would sell off a young piece that's helping them now.

The folks over at Fangraphs put together a piece a season or two ago researching returns on deals at the trade deadline versus returns during the winter. It found that deadline deals, on average, netted twice the return, on a wins per dollar basis, than deals in the winter. The problem with using solely that metric for value is that a team's desired window for competition isn't taken into account.

The Red Sox aren't giving up Mookie Betts in the next two days. The Rangers won't move Nomar Mazara by Monday at 3 p.m. The Dodgers may never, ever let Corey Seager go. Those teams need those players to make their respective runs into the playoffs.

In the winter, perhaps that changes. Perhaps, after the World Series is won, some of the also-rans will have changed their view on exactly who is and who isn't part of their championship window. Perhaps a certain deficiency will become so stark, they're forced to address it.

Whether the White Sox trade Chris Sale, Jose Quintana or both, I don't think the franchise wants to move their window of competition so far into the future. I think, like the David Price deal that brought Drew Smyly and Nick Franklin to the Rays, the White Sox might prefer to go after targets that are of the star-in-the-making variety rather than the stars in their infant stages. Unlike that David Price trade, I think the White Sox would want more than a 25-year-old starter and a 23-year-old second baseman without pop.

The Sox hold powerful cards. Cards that no other team (save the Angels with Mike Trout) in baseball hold.

And the clock is ticking.

But unlike some, I don't think this particular alarm goes off Monday at the deadline. I understand a desire to wait for the winter and see if more established players can be had in such a franchise-altering move. The deadline might bring the most in return for Sale or Quintana but will it bring the best?

• Connor McKnight is the pregame and postgame host for Chicago White Sox games on WLS 890-AM. He also can be heard on sports reports for WKQX, WLUP and WLS-FM. Follow him on Twitter @C1McKnight.