I can't wrap my head around a scenario that would make sense for the White Sox to deal Sale. While they're certainly not a good team, they're, unfortunately, not an egregiously bad one, either. No, they haven't had a winning record since 2012 - but they've shown steady, if incremental progress since, winning 63, 73, 76 games, and are on pace to win 78 this year. The jump from 78 to 88 wins isn't a particularly big one, especially when you have two aces who will make, combined, $63MM the next three seasons. Again, that's combined. That affords them a tremendous amount of financial flexibility to go out and get a bat or two to stick in their line-up around a promising rookie (Anderson) and a few still-relevant veteran bats (Eaton, Abreu, Cabrera) who should all be productive through at least the end of Sale's deal. Given all that, and their rather pedestrian farm system, I'm thinking... IF they decide to deal Sale, it'll be for a franchise-altering package. Something along the lines of 2 proven, young MLB bats + 1-2 proven, young MLB arm(s) + 1-2 high-level prospect(s) + 1-2 low-level, high-ceiling prospects. Specifically, if I'm Chicago and the Astros call, I'd want Springer, Bregman, McCullers, Martes or Musgrove + 1-2 of those low-level, high-ceiling prospects. I know that's outrageous - but why deal Sale otherwise? Put it this way: let's say the Astros were a middling, mid-70s win team but Jose Altuve is being every bit the MVP candidate he's been this year. What would you deal him for, if at all? A 26-year old MVP making peanuts? Why? Sale is the same, to me - if not more valuable, given the scarcity of aces available.
Or any team that is close to contending that has an Ace on their staff. I am convinced there are only two ways we get an ace: 1) You find one on a BAD team thats looking to rebuild and dump its assets. 2) We cultivate a home grown guy who emerges.
Hear me out ... what if we traded all of our top prospects for Sale? After two years of failing to make the playoffs or break 500 ftm, we could trade Sale for a prospect haul. Rinse and repeat.
Collapse is probably a harsh statement but that's perfectly reasonable to me to think if they both leave we won't legitimately be competitive. Altuve is looking like an all-decade 2B and Correa is looking like a generational talent. Even generously you couldn't project to replace that level of talent loss.
This is ... ridiculous. Does anyone really have any idea what this team will look like in 2022? If you look back at 2010, how many of the current players would you have said would be on this team? It's completely impossible to predict anything about this team - or any MLB team - 6 years out.
I agree that it'll be virtually impossible to find a match for Sale since Sox will be looking for 2-3 surefire impact players and that won't make sense for any acquiring team. They also are very unlikely to enter a full rebuild since they'd just be looking for the same kind of players they already have. Their roster next season looks deep and I think their best bet is to just dig deep payroll wise and buy the talent they need to make the jump to true contender. They just need a catcher and 1-2 outfielders. Add Castro, Fowler, and Reddick to their roster and they're as good as any team in the league: C Castro 1B Abreu 2B Lawrie SS Anderson 3B Frazier RF Reddick CF Eaton LF Fowler DH Cabrera Rotation: Sale, Quintana, Rodon, Fulmer, Gonzalez With Robertson and jones at the back of the pen.
