Chicago White Sox: Jose Quintana has a long, surprising list of teams scouting him

The Chicago White Sox are going to move Jose Quintana at some point before his contract expires in 2020, assuming the two team options in his contract are picked up. With a number of teams on hand to see him pitch on Saturday, there is some hope around big league front offices that he’ll be moved this summer.

The Chicago White Sox are a rebuilding club, and with the trades they’ve made so far it looks like they’re doing a pretty good job of acquiring young talent for their return from the cellar. Jose Quinatana is one of their last big trade chips, and the only one that is presumably left to be moved.

With the non-waiver trade deadline approaching quickly, the rumor mill is set to go from stagnant to blazing hot at any moment. According to MLB.com, plenty of scouts were on hand for his final start before the break, and perhaps his final start in a Sox uniform, on Saturday in Colorado. The 28-year-old lefty went 5 1/3 innings, gave up three earned on five hits and a pair of walks while striking out ten.

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Quintana has a 4.49 ERA and a 1.32 WHIP this season, with his earned run average being nearly a full run above his career average. His BB/9 is at a career-high at 3.5 per nine, but he’s also striking out more than a batter an inning on average for the first time of his career. His previous high was a K/9 rate of 8.00.

Last year Quintana was an All Star and finished tenth in the Cy Young voting, upping his trade value last offseason. Now, there has to be some concern about what kind of player a potential suitor would be getting and at what cost.

The list of teams with scouts from that MLB piece included the Yankees, Cardinals, Blue Jays, Orioles, Angels and Royals. While the first three teams on that list make sense with the Blue Jays’ window closing, the Cardinals’ strong farm and the Yanks’ strong farm and need to compete every season, the final three clubs are head scratchers.

The Angels don’t have a terribly good farm system, so seeing how they would be able to have the prospects to make such a deal is the odd part. They also need someone like Quintana in their rotation to give them a chance the rest of the way. The Orioles are in that same basic scenario.

The Royals may be the most perplexing team on this list. With a number of their cornerstone players set to hit free agency this winter, obviously their window is right now. I have argued before that the team should sell off some of those players before the deadline in order to build up their farm system, giving them a chance to contend in the somewhat near future, because without adding some talent to the system, they could be in for another decade of terribleness.

And that’s why trading away some of their already thin farm system to add Quintana would be a very odd proposition for Kansas City. Sure it would be nice to have the cojones to push all of your chips into the center of the table for one last shot at contending, but will adding Quintana put them on par with the Astros? Probably not. It would be a crazy gamble that likely wouldn’t sit well with the majority of the fan base, either.

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The simple explanation here would be that the O’s, Angels and Royals were doing their due diligence ahead of the deadline, and if Quintana’s price tag fell to something that they were more comfortable with, they could pounce. It would be hard to take any of those three as serious contenders for what is one of the two valuable starting pitching assets on the market this summer.