Chicago White Sox: Three Players To Be Excited For In Second Half
The Chicago White Sox are feeling good about themselves. There are three guys in particular that you should keep your eye on in the second half.
The Chicago White Sox are now 42-44. That is a much-improved record over what they were at this time in 2018, and if you know anything about baseball you know that this is an incredible rise in just one year. This is all with a bottom of the rotation that hasn’t been good and less than ideal production offensively from the guys at the bottom of the lineup as well.
The White Sox believe they will be great in the second half and see being a Wild Card contender as a real possibility. It might be unlikely if we’re being honest, but it certainly isn’t impossible and it is awesome to know that the guys in the room believe that they can go on a run and make it interesting down the stretch.
So what do the White Sox need to do to make sure this 2019 season is successful? More of the same from the first half would be a great starting point. They need to build around how good they have been over the last two months. The guys who are going to be here for the long haul are the ones you want to see improve and contribute to wins. Their record at the end of the year is sort of irrelevant because as long as the right players are playing well and they feel good about 2020, this season will be a success.
There are three players that you should be extremely excited to watch in the second half. These three guys are all a huge part of the future and it would be so sweet to see them finish 2019 strong.
Yoan Moncada
Yoan Moncada has arguably been the best all-around position player on the White Sox so far in 2019. He has been so incredible and that comes after a very disappointing 2018 season. He is now showing everyone why he was the number one prospect in all of baseball and that he is turning into a superstar.
He was one of the biggest snubs in all of baseball from the 2019 All-Star game. Based on numbers you can argue he deserved it over a bunch of players who made it but the positive is that he got some time off and can come into the second half a little more refreshed. He is allowed to just worry about the second half of the season and build on his amazing first half.
Moncada leads the White Sox in WAR with a 3.2 so it shows that he has been such a great player for this team. For them to maintain their near .500 pace Moncada is going to have to be just as good in the second half and beyond. They need him to be a star because they put a lot of stock into him and are building this team around him.
He has a slash line of .308/.364/.544 with 16 home runs and 48 RBIs. If he keeps this up in his age 24 season that says a lot about where he can go. The sky is the limit for Yoan Moncada and he is just scratching the surface of how good he can be. I would watch for him to keep it up in the post-all-star portion of the schedule and assert himself amongst the best players in Major League Baseball.
Eloy Jimenez
The White Sox really have something in Eloy Jimenez. This is a player that along with Moncada, has the opportunity to grow into one of the best power hitters on planet Earth. He is absolutely mashing the ball regularly and he is just a rookie. He has the same number of home runs as Moncada with 16, but with 85 fewer plate appearances. Moncada is a better pure hitter right now but Eloy has more power than any White Sox rookie to come through since Jose Abreu and he might even have more than him too.
There is no reason to think that Eloy doesn’t have the potential to go on to break Frank Thomas‘ franchise home run record. He missed a month due to injury and before that, it took him a couple of weeks to finally break through and get his first. But once he got his first, he got his second in the same game and it was off to the races from there.
We are expecting a monster second half from Jimenez. He is on pace to hit 30 home runs, which would be incredible for a rookie that hasn’t played a single Major League game until this year. He is for sure one of the brightest players on this team and watching him bud into a star is really fun for all White Sox fans. If he has a great second half, this is the kind of guy who has the talent to be a game breaker.
If he puts up monster home run numbers, gets that average of .241 up a little bit more, and plays some sound defense, this is the type of player that can really impact whether or not you win or lose baseball games. I would think that if healthy, this is the last year that he will be absent from the All-Star game for a while.
Dylan Cease
The third player to keep an eye on is another guy the White Sox acquired from the Chicago Cubs in the Jose Quintana trade, and that is Dylan Cease. This is another key guy to the present and future of this organization. He made his MLB debut last Wednesday against the Detroit Tigers and had a really good outing for his first Major League appearance. He rose through the ranks of the White Sox organization over the last couple seasons and now he is here.
Things aren’t going to go perfect for him in the second half. All that matters is that when he does struggle, he finds ways to get out of it and show he can be a great pitcher in this rotation. He has the stuff and velocity to be a top end of the rotation guy, and if Michael Kopech and Carlos Rodon come back and be their old selves this could be an awesome rotation.
It isn’t a coincidence that he got his first nod against a team like the Tigers who have struggled this season and his next start will be against the Kansas City Royals who have struggled just as much if not more. This will be his first road start in his big league career so we will be interested to see how it goes.
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The White Sox are expecting big things from Cease so the second half of this season will be very important for his development. If he has a good showing, the leash will come off and he will be relied on a lot in 2020. It will be interesting to see if he gets any starts against elite teams in the second half. Those are the situations that will be good for him, as there is a lot of great talented hitters that he will need to face throughout his career. Keep an eye on Cease to see if he can be as good in the second half as we think he will be.