The Chicago White Sox make two major moves in the farm system regarding former first-round picks

The Chicago White Sox present is not very good. The team's future does have some hope. At least when it comes to the team's pitching.

The Sox have the potential to have a young, talented, controllable, and most importantly, cheap starting rotation that can help the franchise turn around its downtrodden ways.

Garrett Crochet looks like an ace pitcher with every start. Nick Nastrini and Jonathan Cannon provided a brief flash of potential in their brief callups. The Sox rotation at Double-A has been outstanding and it is about to get better.

The White Sox have correctly promoted their top pitching prospect and former first-round pick, Noah Schultz after he posted a 3.95 ERA in 27.1 innings at High-A Winston-Salem.

Schultz is the 40th-ranked overall prospect according to MLB.com. The Sox have been very conservative with Schultz as he has only made seven starts and been allowed to pitch no more than four innings.

Considering young arms only have so many pitches before potentially dealing with injury issues, it makes sense to be careful with this prized pitcher and move him up if he is getting results.

The Sox have plenty of internal options to piece together a great rotation around Crochet. It can also be ruined by injuries the organization has to walk a tightrope if they hope to replicate the success like the Milwaukee Brewers got by developing pitching that allowed the club to compete for the postseason. Developing pitching has also kept the Cleveland Guardians relatively competitive for a couple seasons.

Schultz is not the only former first-round pick getting promoted to Double-A.

Gonzalez was last year's first-round pick who gave everyone a pause for concern with a .211/.333/.260 slash line last year between Rookie and High-A ball.

His slash line at High-A ball this year was .273/.364/.399 with three home runs. Gonzalez is a shortstop, but with Colson Montgomery ahead of him in the system, he might have to move positions to get to the big-league club. That is a good problem to have and a big reason to always draft up the middle because guys like Gonzalez can be moved to second base. Lord knows second base has been an eternal hole in the lineup since Tadahito Iguchi left town.

Maybe the White Sox farm system is starting to get this whole development thing down.

The White Sox still need to add some more talent to the system and that is why these next two drafts are so important. At least, it is good to see two recent top picks moving up the ladder.