Gregor: It's past time for White Sox to start dealing

Chris Sale pitched awfully well for the Chicago White Sox Wednesday night.

Once again, it didn't matter much. And once again, it clearly showed why the Sox need to go in a different direction.

The White Sox know how to draft and develop starting pitchers. They're also good at bringing in starters from outside the organization, fixing their flaws and turning them into productive pieces in the rotation.

The Sox are not good at drafting and developing offensive talent, although that could very well change under new amateur scouting director Nick Hostetler.

In the June draft, Hostetler and the White Sox added three promising hitters - catcher Zack Collins and outfielders Alex Call and Jameson Fisher.

Collins, the No. 10 overall pick in the draft, is at high Class A Winston-Salem and had 3 home runs and 10 RBI in his first 11 games.

Call was batting .338 through 16 games at low Class A Kannapolis and Fisher was batting .310 through 29 games at Advanced Rookie Great Falls.

It looks like the Sox finally have some bats in the pipeline, but none of the trio figures to make it to the major leagues until 2018 at the earliest.

That's why it makes sense for the White Sox to trade Sale or Jose Quintana or both for young hitters that are much closer to the big leagues.

General manager Rick Hahn was ready to deal before Monday afternoon's nonwaiver trade deadline, and you better believe he wanted a huge return for Sale or Quintana.

He didn't get Yoan Moncada and Andrew Benintendi from the Red Sox, and Hahn didn't get Nomar Mazara, Joey Gallo and Jurickson Profar from the Rangers.

So the Sox' GM stood pat, and he'll patiently wait for better offers in the winter.

It makes sense that Hahn didn't panic at the deadline and move Sale or Quintana just for the sake of doing something.

Both left-handers are dominant starters, and they both have club friendly contracts.

But they are both being wasted, and the Sox had nothing to show for Sale's strong outing Wednesday in a 2-1 loss to the Tigers.

Sale (14-5) took the loss after allowing 2 runs on 6 hits in 8 innings while striking out 10.

Justin Morneau supplied the lone run with a homer in the seventh inning.

Before the game, the White Sox announced outfielder Charlie Tilson has a torn left hamstring and will have season-ending surgery Thursday.

Tilson, a New Trier High School product acquired in a trade from the Cardinals Sunday, was injured Tuesday in his first major-league game.