Chicago White Sox: Making a team look foolish with a trade
The Chicago White Sox are the team that won one of the biggest trades in team history which helped their rebuild along even quicker.
The Chicago White Sox are not playing baseball on this April Fools Day but they can remember a time they completely fooled someone else. It might be fun for White Sox fans to remember the most recent time they made a trade with the Chicago Cubs. It was one of the bigger trades in the history of the White Sox and one that propelled the rebuild even further.
The White Sox sent Jose Quintana to the Cubs in exchange for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, and two other lower-level prospects. It was a trade that at the time gave both teams what they needed. In the middle of a run of multiple years in the playoffs, the Cubs needed another starter to compliment the likes of Jon Lester, Kyle Hendricks, and Jake Arrieta.
Quintana was coming off a very good 2016 season for the White Sox so at the moment, it looked like the Cubs were adding one more solid starter. The White Sox were in the infant stages of their rebuild. They had just traded Chris Sale to the Boston Red Sox for a similar haul of prospects earlier in the offseason. The difference is, Quintana is no Chirs Sale.
As even of trade as everyone wanted to believe it was at the time, it was pretty obvious that the White Sox would come out ahead at some point. The only way it would have worked out for the Cubs would be if Quintana was as good as he was in 2016 en route to at the very minimum another NLCS appearance.
Now, the White Sox are reaping the benefits of this deal. Eloy Jimenez has the looks of a superstar. He had a brilliant rookie year in 2019 which has a lot of people believing that he can become one of the best hitters in all of baseball. Then there is Dylan Cease who has a lot to work on, but he has all of the makings of a good Major League starter. They already are winning the trade based on Jimenez alone but if Cease turns into a really good pitcher at the MLB level, the White Sox win this trade in a landslide.
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One thing that doesn’t help the Cubs here is the fact that Quintana hasn’t been good at all with the Cubs. Every full season he spent with the White Sox saw him have an ERA under four. Since joining the Cubs, he hasn’t had a single year under four which is not good. The White Sox made the Cubs look foolish with this trade because Jimenez is a superstar and Quintana hasn’t been that good at all.