Chicago White Sox: Learning from other service time issues

The Chicago White Sox are looking to have a good decade and the key to that is keeping their group they’ve built happy and healthy.

The Chicago White Sox have a plethora of great young talent. They are currently looking to put it all together for a stretch of sustained success. One thing that was necessary was making sure they did what they needed to do to keep their guys happy and healthy. They appear to be doing that as they have taken care of all of their players so far. They have everyone under control for a while and have locked up those who needed to be locked up.

Of course, they will need to extend Lucas Giolito and Yoan Moncada a little sooner than the rest but their recent track record suggests that it won’t be a problem. They have all the resources they need to make sure this group stays together for the long haul. They want to win and win frequently so that is the message they are trying to send to their fans.

The same can’t be said across Chicago baseball. The Chicago Cubs are currently on hold from any business because their grievance with third baseman Kris Bryant is making things difficult. They are waiting on an arbitrator to decide whether or not he has one or two years left of control. The Cubs are looking to trade him now but they can’t yet because they don’t know what a suitable return package is.

The reason this is happening is that the Cubs kept Bryant in the minors for the first few weeks of the 2015 season. He believes this was unfair as not only was he the best Cubs player during Spring Training that year, he was one of the best players in all of baseball. They called him up after the service time date and he went on to be the rookie of the year. It is a really tough situation for the Cubs as they try to deal with this.

This isn’t going to be a problem for the White Sox as of right now. They gave Eloy Jimenez and Luis Robert lucrative contracts ahead of their MLB debuts believing in them. They didn’t wait for them to make sure they get an extra year of service. There is risk involved in doing that but they are confident in their top prospects. They also called up Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Michael Kopech, and Dylan Cease later on in their respective rookie years when they were ready. None of them have much of a case that they were ready ahead of their MLB debuts.

This is a rule in Major League Baseball that might get reconsidered depending on how the arbitrator rules in the Bryant/Cubs case. The good news is that it shouldn’t affect the Chicago White Sox any time soon. It is also a learning experience for the Sox and the rest of the teams as well.