White Sox Doing All They Can To Be Noticed In Chicago

The Chicago White Sox are like the New York Mets were when the Yankees went on a run in the late 1990’s that sucked all of the air out of New York City reserving a spot somewhere deep in the sports pages for the Mets. The Chicago Cubs are poised to take off on a similar run. But the White Sox are not quite ready to surrender and take the back seat. Not just yet, anyway.

Typically, the headlines went to the teams in the hunt for the players the White Sox were selling at the Winter Meetings. And by all accounts, pandemonium broke out when the Red Sox took Chris Sale off the shelf to wrap up the 2017 World Series, or so you were led to believe.

And then yesterday, the White Sox sold off Adam Easton to the Nationals , who is arguably the best lead off hitter in baseball, and once again social media was lit up with a storyline that suggested the Nationals had just clinched the National League East title in December.

The White Sox Are Not Done Yet

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But the real winner at the Winter Meetings has yet to be determined because the sleeper outside all of the hullabaloo is the White Sox who took a bold gamble by trading off two of their main attractions and they are not done yet. Next up is Jose Quintana, who has attracted the attention of the Houston Astros and others. The talk surrounding that one is familiar with MLB Trade Rumors quoting the Astros GM Jeff Luhnow,
“We’re just not prepared to trade away players that are core to our production in 2017 that are sometimes the players that are required to get these deals done.”

Sure Jeff, that’s what they all say. The price is too steep. We can’t give away our future just to win today. We just won’t do it! Until they do.

But for the White Sox, they could literally do this all day long reeling in prospects each time they put another guy out there. You need a proven reliever, yup we got one of them. What’ll you offer for David Robertson? You say you need some pop in your lineup? We’ve got just what you need. What are you offering for the 40 home runs and 98 runs that Todd Frazier drove in last season? And on and on again until their 25 man roster is whittled down to Melky Cabrera and Brett Lawrie.

And before you know it, the White Sox have made off with the biggest haul of prospects since Brian Cashman stole the shirt off the back of every team he dealt with last summer. Because we’re not just talking prospects here, we’re talking Prospects like that kid from Texas, Michael Kopech, who hits 105 on the gun and looks like the second coming of Noah Syndergaard. And in the same trade with the Red Sox for Chris Sale, they get Yoan Moncada, the top-ranked prospect in the game, according to MLBPipeline.com. That’s top prospect as in Number One!

White Sox To Cubs: Today Is Yours But Tomorrow Is Ours

And so what if they’re a year or two away. The Cubs own the town anyway for now. But at the end of the day, you’ve set yourself up for tomorrow. And in baseball, there’s nothing more exciting than the prospect that tomorrow will be better than today. Fans love it. The City loves it. Because after all, before the Cubs finally ended all the drama they were the team that was all about the future.

These intra-city rivalries can be the best that baseball can offer. In New York, the inner city Yankees compete for attention against the suburban Mets from Queens. And you could have the Dodgers and the Angels doing the same thing, except that LA is too damn big and they’re not passionate about anything out there. But in Chicago, the Cubs represent the North Side and the White Sox the South Side. And never the twain shall meet.

Next: Yankees bring back Chapman

So while the Red Sox and Nationals grab the headlines today, and the Cubs get ready to defend their World Series title, there’s another team out there that (down the road) could easily be declared the real winner in Washington DC this week and the offseason as a whole.

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