White Sox: Three players that should get contract extensions

3. Nick Madrigal

Samiya Green recently wrote about why Madrigal needs to be the next extension they look towards agreeing to and I completely agree.

While most teams don’t sign players to extensions that haven’t played a day above Triple-A, the White Sox aren’t most teams.

They’ve now signed Robert and Eloy Jimenez to long-term deals before they were in a major league lineup.

Even if the White Sox don’t plan to have Madrigal start the season with the team, having his contract cost-controlled going forward could be great.

They seem to think very highly of Madrigal and with good reason as the 22-year-old hit .311/.377/.414 with four homers, 55 RBI, and 35 stolen bases. He also, simply, has bat-to-ball skills that some can only dream of with a mere 16 strikeouts across 532 plate appearances.

Locking up Madrigal is actually probably the easiest of these three options to see happening given that both parties have strong reasons to make an extension work.

For the White Sox, it would provide a sense of security in terms of cost-control and would allow them to not worry about service-time manipulation.

Madrigal’s incentive to do this would be that he’s getting guaranteed money before he proves he belongs at the major league level.

Many top prospects have struggled in the majors, so there would definitely be more risk for him in declining an extension than someone who has already proven he belongs.

It remains to be seen if any of these players will sign extensions with the White Sox long-term, but the team should certainly try to agree to deals with them before it is too late.