It’s a system that allows teams to pick one of two routes for getting more value than they pay for out of their players. They can simply enjoy the years of league minimum salary, or they can use their players’ uncertainty about their future as a negotiation tool to sign them to long-term, below market deals.

The White Sox clearly opted for the latter path on Thursday, signing Chris Sale to a five-year, $32.5 million extension, with team options for a sixth year at $12.5 million and a seventh year at $13.5 million. Both of those options have $1 million buyouts, which are factored into that $32.5 million total, in case you were wondering why the following doesn’t add up.

• 2013: $850,000
• 2014: $3,500,000
• 2015: $6,000,000
• 2016: $9,150,000
• 2017: $12,000,000
• 2018: $12,500,000 – OPTION
• 2019: $13,500,000 – OPTION

If he played out the entirety of the deal and both options, Sale would receive $57.5 million, with a $2.5 million escalator in place for the final season if he wins the Cy Young award, or a more mundane $1.5 million escalator if he finishes second or third in the voting. Suffice it to say, if the White Sox are paying Chris Sale $16 million in 2019, things have worked out pretty well.

Just looking at those prices, and projecting the value of having Sale making $8.57 million per season over the next seven years, when FanGraphs’ wins above replacement values placed his worth at $22.2 million, is enough to get very excited. Excited because we tend to automatically make the logical leap that having Chris Sale around at an affordable rate means that the money saved will be spent elsewhere, and wisely. But also excited for the fairly straight-forward reason that Chris Sale is a joy to watch, Chris Sale has been a consistently dominant player, Chris Sale is a likable player who tried hard and now Chris Sale is padlocked to the White Sox for a very long time.

Color me surprised.

Just this past Sunday, I wrote how that strange moment in time last May when the White Sox briefly yanked Sale out of the rotation due to concern about elbow tenderness stood apart from an otherwise flawless pattern of downplaying his velocity loss and concern in his mechanics, and expressing confidence in his future. Now that Sale’s been handed a ‘cornerstone of the franchise’-type contract, it really stands out.

Sometime over the last 10 months the White Sox shifted from perhaps overly cautious about Sale’s ability to hold up as a starter to unapologetically zealous in their belief, to where their trademark ability to avoid pitcher injuries has to be presumed to be at work in order to explain why such a commitment would be made to not just a pitcher, but a particularly risky-looking pitcher.

Of course, the contract reflects the White Sox knowledge of the risk they’re taking. Sale’s more than good and young enough to miss one–or hell, even two–of these seasons and still provide $60 million worth of value. Injuries don’t work so simply, they linger, leave scars, sap away at effectiveness and break wills. But ignoring that, the Sox at most committed to paying Sale two years worth of elite starter pay, with three years of providing extra pitching if he’s feeling up for it.

If there ever was a player I figured the White Sox would go year-to-year with–besides of course, a Scott Boras client, or a marginal talent that they had no business committing to, of course–it would be Sale. I’m not sure what star player you do go year-to-year with if not Sale. Maybe none, if it can be helped. I imagine it would have to be an offensive player, outside of the White Sox developmental wheelhouse.

The White Sox have made a living scraping out extra value by being better at keeping pitchers healthier and more effective than they should be. Now, they’ll be putting their organizational strengths up to a very high profile and important test, one that represents the White Sox newest, latest (and first under Rick Hahn) attempt to establish a new franchise core. It’s a risk, but it’s the risk that they, more than any other team in baseball, should be willing to take.

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There’s  a pitcher who recognizes his own oddities, and has worked to iron out his rough edges while maintaining a delivery that works for him.

“Obviously, arm angle for one. Lower three-quarters,” Sale said. “Kind of hunched over a little bit when I kind of come up to balance. I cross-fire a little bit.

“My landing foot is here [toward home plate] and my other foot is more toward first base. I’ve actually corrected it a little bit. I’ve moved it over three or four inches, but I still have that. Those are the main things that I do different from most.”

There’s a pitching coach who values results over the aesthetics of his wacky-looking prodigy.

“He’s closed. He’s closed up. I want guys closed,” said White Sox pitching coach Don Cooper of Sale’s funky delivery. “The only time that could be a problem is if he’s not able to throw the fastball down and away to lefties or in to righties, and he does that. Chris Sale‘s delivery is a solid delivery. We’ve got to maintain it.”

And there’s a GM, who speaks for an organization that has spent a great deal of time and energy analyzing the risk in their top hurler, and made the decision to move forward.

“When you have a guy who has a non-traditional or an atypical delivery, you have to look a little more closely in terms of where the pressure points are and where the leverage is coming from,” said White Sox general manager Rick Hahn of one of the team’s most valuable assets. “We have spent a fair amount of time breaking down his mechanics with video as well as with our coaches’ expertise and eyes and feel like, given the angle he comes from, that there’s not an inordinate amount of risk placed on him because of the mechanics.”

These are all tremendously encouraging quotes to hear, and are even paired against some specifics from Herm Schneider about the workout program Sale is on. It all combines to provide a pragmatic and optimistic outlook for Sale’s future.

It also makes the rapid-fire demotion and un-demotion of Chris Sale to the bullpen last May stand out more by contrast. It was a quick-twitch reaction move that cut down his long-term value and suggested that the organization lacked confidence in his ability to hold up over the course of a season from the beginning. Yet the hindsight rationalization of the move from Hahn attempts to put it on the same terms as the days off Sale received in the second half for “dead arm.”

“Obviously, we were concerned to get out in front of it,” Hahn said. “From my standpoint, that was probably an indication of fatigue/dead arm period that guys go through. Given what he was reporting in terms of not feeling any pain and structurally on exam there’s no issues, it very likely was just that period of sort of whether it be from the new usage level or just something that happens to pitchers from time to time in terms of a dead arm.

“He got through that. We skipped a start and extended him out a little bit when he came back. The velocity was back and maintained for the most part the rest of the season.”

But that doesn’t mesh with the season-long terms the move was put in at the time.

The timing is an obvious factor–Sale had yet to prove himself nearly as resilient nor as valuable by the start of May as he had by the end of July. Attitudes toward his place in the rotation have shifted from caution to defensive confidence. But is that switch propelled by a genuine about-face concerning Sale’s arm issues, or necessity due to how important he is to the team these days?

As much potential and self-awareness that Sale has, and as good as his support staff is and as glowing as the spring training words about him are, May 4, 2012 reminds us that the concerns about his health are real and have been acknowledged by the team in the past, even if they aren’t going to be acknowledged in the same way now. It’s great that it won’t be allowed to derail Sale’s career as a starter, but the doubt is still there.

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When Chuck Garfien broke the news that Robin Ventura had rejected a one-year extension offer that was to be lopped onto his initial three-year contract, it was clear what the big, surprising element of the announcement was supposed to be. Ventura had done something counterintuitive as we understand it–managers and players typically try to stockpile years and financial commitment in anticipation of leaner times. For them to reject a freely offered extension typically reflects either a dissatisfaction with the offered price, or deep desire to change locations.

But if there’s a figure in the sport for whom this sort of story should raise little to no concern, or at least, no new analysis on how he feels about his current situation, it’s Ventura. Lest we forget, the guy famously had a reverse-job interview where his prospective boss talked him into a position a, and now he is unsurprisingly not completely comfortable with committing to managing in 2015 just yet.

“I’ll worry about it at the end of it. For them, I want them to think that in two years I’m still the right guy for the job. It wasn’t anything that was a big deal so I’m not holding out for anything or disappointed in not wanting to stay here. I think at the end of that, that’s when you talk about it. I’m not worried about trying to extend anything right now. I’m more worried with this team in this spring training than I’m worried about 2015.”

As Jim already pointed out at South Side Sox, the current White Sox situation facilitates Ventura’s aspirations to be above it all even more than usual.  His relationship with the GM office is stable, and so is the current Hahn-Williams administration relationship with ownership, which is headed up by the famously loyal Jerry Reinsdorf. For a test case of the said ownership’s oft-bandied about loyalty, look no farther than Ozzie Guillen still managing to get his option picked up for the 2012 season despite mounting evidence of his creeping lethargy and discontent.

That option pick-up brings up another relevant item. A one-year extension doesn’t serve much purpose beyond avoiding a lame duck year–though apparently it can also be offered as a reward for a strong debut–and since Robin is still a season away from having to think about living in that manner, it’s not surprising that its appeal was not stronger than his uncertainty about the path of his still very young managing career.

If anything, this action should further encourage those that praised Ventura for his uncomplicated and genuine approach to his work that they’ve judged them rightly. And for those who would like to see him iron out some of the tactical oddities shown down the stretch of 2012 ironed out first before a larger commitment is made, this may feel like a dodged bullet.

Follow James Fegan on Twitter @JRFegan