Is This Rock Bottom for The White Sox?

White Sox current 17-37 record is one the of the worst in MLB. Is this rock bottom for a franchise that is currently rebuilding?

The only way to go from here is up. Right?

It’s no secret that the White Sox are reaching concerning levels of disappointment lately. Even their most promising and better prospects are hitting a wall.

The one bright spot over the last few weeks was Reynaldo Lopez and even he was no match for the looming doom overcoming the Boys in Black. As he was getting smoked by the AL Central-favorite Indians, the fear of an unsuccessful rebuild was ever-present.

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It’s way too early to call the rebuild unsuccessful and the chances of the rebuild being successful are more likely than it being unsuccessful.

In fact, looking back at the deals made, if Michael Kopech is every bit as good as he has been in the minors, the Chris Sale deal is looking like a win for the White Sox. Yoan Moncada is still learning the game but is showing major signs of improvement, while Luis Basabe is looking more serviceable than originally thought.

The Adam Eaton deal is up in the air for the moment because of Lucas Giolito but Lopez has been great this season, aside from a couple of bad starts. And Dane Dunning is one of the best prospects the White Sox have. Also, while it is extremely unfortunate, Adam Eaton has only played 31 games for the Nationals.

The Jose Quintana deal was very balanced from the onset but it seems as though the White Sox have won this deal based purely on the potential of Dylan Cease and Eloy Jimenez and how Quintana has been doing with the Northside club. Quintana is 13-7 with a 3.97 ERA with the Cubs since last July, with a total FIP of 3.74, a FIP of 4.44 this season. Fangraphs qualifies a 4.70 FIP as “Poor”.

Was it wrong to question the rebuild? Does that make one a lesser fan questioning the baseball faith?

Of course not.

Going through a complete rebuild like the one the White Sox currently find themselves in is not easy to endure. Both as a team and as a fan. They traded almost everyone they could and even had the tenacity to trade the players they traded for.

It’s difficult to be told that these players have so much potential and promise – many times without even seeing the players touch a baseball – and only to watch them fail often individually and as a team.

So after watching Lopez have his worst game versus an inconsistent but hot Cleveland team, right after Giolito pitched another disappointing game, it was hard to keep the White Sox emotions in check. But in reality, the question that came to mind was, is this rock bottom, what exactly is rock bottom for this team and what happens if the Sox hit rock bottom?

This is not rock bottom but it’s close. The two pitching prospects had bad games right after one another, while Tim Anderson and Yoan Moncada are being held to .240 batting averages.

Anderson is having a great year on the base paths, is drawing a crazy amount of walks and is hitting a lot of home runs. He is starting to struggle with defense again but still improving. He has five errors in his last five games, despite having five errors the rest of the season. Still an improvement from last year, however, committing 12 errors in April and May of 2017.

Moncada is still the Moncada we know and are struggling to love. He has meaningful at-bats, still strikes out a ton but is still a very promising athlete. Right now, he’s just very inconsistent.

7 games from 5/24 to 5/30: 4 for 29, 1 XHB, 0 HR, 14 K, .138 AVG., .194 OBP,

21 games prior to last week: 25 for 82, 11 XHB, 4 HR, 26 K, .305 AVG, .370 OBP, .549 SLG, .918 OPS.

This is definitely not rock bottom because rock bottom would have to be the White Sox calling up Jimenez, Zack Collins, Luis Robert, Blake Rutherford (not going to happen), all of them with Moncada and Anderson getting no-hit by Quintana while Carlos Rodon, Kopech, Lopez, and Giolito all give up 10 runs each in relief. Against the Cubs.

That’s an exaggeration but if you’re looking at this team top-to-bottom, there is no rock bottom because this isn’t the team yet.

You can make cases for every one of the prospects working out the issues they’re dealing with. Once you’re out of excuses and scenarios, the prospects are all up and continually failing with the team officially is beyond repair, that’s rock bottom. The Sox are not immune to failure and if there is a rock bottom, it’ll be in a few years.

Next: Danny Farquhar To Throw Out First Pitch

For now, the White Sox still have four months to grow and get better.

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