The trade deadline arrives at 3 p.m. CT today, and when the smoke clears, I can see a White Sox left-handed reliever being a part of it.
The White Sox have a lot of them -- Xavier Cedeno and Luis Avilan as veterans, Jace Fry and Aaron Bummer as rookies, and they've recently added Caleb Frare to the pile of prospects. (Kodi Medeiros could also be in this boat, but the White Sox are starting him for now.)
James Shields? I can see him being an August trade candidate because his contract means he won't be claimed on a whim or, Hollywood Squares-style, for the block.
Avisail Garcia? His trade market didn't take off after an All-Star season, so I don't see him being a target when he's striking out 14 times for every walk, and hitting only 5½ homers for every hamstring injury.
Jose Abreu? He still hasn't authoritatively emerged from the worst slump of his career (he was doing that off-balanced hop in the batter's box again on Sunday).
Carlos Rodon? He's on track to ride out the rest of his team control period in a White Sox uniform.
Rodon has become an increasingly popular figure on the South Side by giving the White Sox the dominant starting pitching performances the rotation has lacked. He has a 3.24 ERA, opponents are hitting just .193/.277/.335 against him, and all of those numbers improved over the course of a dominant July.
He's also become the subject of mild trade speculation, both locally and nationally.
Teams should inquire about Rodon because 1) he's good, 2) he's been injured, and 3) he still has three arbitration years remaining. The White Sox couldn't extract a package anywhere along the lines of what they received for Chris Sale or Jose Quintana because Rodon has only topped 150 innings once in his four MLB seasons, and the team acquiring Rodon has the option to non-tender him should his shoulder problems return to an even more severe degree. The risk is hedged and the payoff could be huge.
While Rodon fell to the White Sox at No. 3 in the 2014 draft, it wasn't for a lack of respect. I'm reading "Astroball" by Ben Reiter, and he relayed Houston's pre-draft impression of the North Carolina State lefty.
"He's been the dude since he stepped on campus," [area scout Tim] Bittner said. "The big thing for this guy is he has a pitch you don't see normally. It's a seventy-grade slider, at eighty-eight to ninety-one miles an hour. It's a weapon. It's a weapon now, it's a weapon on all levels." [Analytics director Sig Mejdal's] team revealed that one of the players to whom its metrics suggested Rodon was comparable was Chris Sale, the White Sox' ace and annual Cy Young candidate.
Rodon shared something else with Sale, and with most number one starters: an authentic desire not just to get every hitter out, but to dominate him. "They'll come try to take him out, he'll refuse, and the head coach will retreat with his tail between his legs," a scout said approvingly. [Scouting director Mike] Elias concurred. "This dude has a fire-breathing, in-your-face, competitive drive," he said. "That's what you prize in what you're getting here. He's going to bleed out there to win Game Seven -- and he's probably going to win it, too."
You read that, and then you think of a montage sequence that cuts down the runtime of the movie. If Rodon were on another team -- affordable, dominant when on, hasn't yet put it all together, some flags -- he'd be the exact kind of pitcher the White Sox should try to pry away from another team.
Except the White Sox already have him, and he's on a great timetable. It'd be even better if he were under contract with team options through 2023, but 2021 is plenty of time for him to serve his purpose.
Remember how the Royals were panned for the James Shields trade? They were widely criticized for surrendering Wil Myers and other prospects for two years of Shields and a failed starter in Wade Davis. They were coming off their fourth consecutive 90-loss season, and it was highly unlikely that they'd capitalize on it before Shields hit free agency.
They won the gamble: 86 wins in Shields' first season, 89 wins and an American League pennant in the second year, and a World Series title the year after he departed (with Johnny Cueto in the Shields role). Shields didn't post a 14-WAR season, but his performance ensured that the Royals didn't give up any of the gains from their young core.
Most teams still wouldn't make that deal, swapping a top prospect for two years of pitching help. I don't know if even the Royals would press their luck twice. If this 2018 Rodon -- this guy who has pitched seven innings or more in three consecutive outings -- is a power lefty who has discovered pitchability and a personality, the White Sox might not have to even consider one.
The hangup with Rodon is that White Sox fans are not used to viewing a pitching rotation without cost-controlling contracts atop it. Sale and Quintana cemented the Sox' one-two punch forever because they signed team-friendly extensions. Rodon, with Scott Boras as his agent, is unlikely to do so.
Sure, if Rodon wanted to pull a Jered Weaver or Stephen Strasburg and drop anchor with his original team, I'd be all ears. But given his multiple bouts with shoulder issues, I'm rather comfortable with the status quo. Maybe it's because John Danks comes to mind. His legacy would be vastly different if the White Sox let him hit free agency rather than extending him before his final year of arbitration. Some things shouldn't be forced.
However it happens, the Sox can afford to let Rodon's situation ride out, because the rebuild is past the point where trading quality for quantity makes sense. Maybe Yoan Moncada and Michael Kopech will never have a Sale-type season, but if both are merely above-average, that addressed a particular White Sox problem. The same can be said for the Adam Eaton trade if two of Reynaldo Lopez, Lucas Giolito and Dane Dunning help fill out a rotation.
At this point, though, a similar trade has diminishing returns, which means the Sox would have to nail a Rodon trade for it to work. The rebuild doesn't need another fourth starter, utility infielder, or some other median outcome from dealing Rodon at this time. It's hard to like those chances.
Rodon has his own unrealized potential at an affordable rate, and the Sox may as well devote their energies to making the most out of the next three-plus seasons, because it won't be wasted. Should Rodon hit "great," it's one more prospect for whom "good" is plenty good enough.
