One of the quieter franchises in baseball spent their hearts out this offseason. Now it’s time to see what the Chicago White Sox are made of.
At the top of the list of “Most Improved Teams This Offseason,” we have to look at the Chicago White Sox as one of those teams after the Winter they had, and 2020 looks all the more promising for the South Side because of it. Is this going to be the year the White Sox breakthrough into the playoffs, or are they still too young and inexperienced?
For me, I’ve been eyeing the Sox for a number of years now with the amount of talent they possessed in their farm system, and that notion has only been enhanced with continuous success through the draft as well as the surprising surge of Lucas Giolito last season.
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I saw this team as a future powerhouse with the likes of Luis Robert, Dylan Cease, Eloy Jimenez, Dane Dunning, and Michael Kopech leading the charge once they broke into the league, but they’ve managed to add onto that core group with the drafting of Nick Madrigal and Andrew Vaughn in most recent years.
In addition to all the young talent the White Sox has accumulated, we also have the resurgence of Lucas Giolito who burst onto the scene last year to the tune of a 3.41 ERA, 228 Ks in 176.2 innings, 3 complete games, and 2 shutouts. On top of that, we must also remember just who this guy was in 2018 and how much he grew from that year to last.
Giolito led the American League in walks (90) as well as the entire league in earned runs (118) in 2018, but in 2019, he cut his walks almost in half and tweaked his mechanics to suit is motion and retain his velocity he came up with.
He shortened his arm motion which, in turn, allowed him to use his legs more and generate power to get added velocity. And as 2019 showed us, his adjustments did him wonders because he was in that CY Young conversation for most of the year, so I’m excited to see if he can repeat or improve upon what he did last year because if he can, the Chicago White Sox have themselves the ace that they’ll need going forward.