Stop me if you have heard this before: “Watch out for that young team from Chicago, they really have a shot this year”. We all know how flat out dominant the Cubbies were last year en route to a curse-breaking World Series title that did good for the whole city of Chicago and much of the MLB in general. But, in a couple of years the North siders could have some competition due to the resurgence of their crosstown foes in the White Sox.
If you are a daily fantasy baseball player, you could be scratching your head thinking, “I hardly know anyone on the Sox right now and you're telling me they are going to become contenders after they got rid of their best players over the last two years!?” The answer to that is a resounding YESSS!
To get an idea of how this is possible, you would need to take a look at the transactions that Sox have done over the last two seasons. Realizing they weren’t quite there to make a serious run at a playoff spot but still having guys that could garner some value to the right contending clubs, the White Sox have strategically gotten rid of their core players slowly but surely. The big names that were moved include: Chris Sale, Adam Eaton, Jose Quintana, Todd Frazier, David Robertson and a handful of serviceable other players. What was their net return? Well for a CY Young caliber pitcher (Chris Sale), the Sox got baseball’s number one prospect plus a handful of other developmental players from the Red Sox. In total, the White Sox have far and wide the best farm system in the league. As of right now, they have six of the top thirty prospects in the MLB and ten of the top one hundred. They got two of them from the Red Sox, three from the Nationals, and two more from the Cubs after sending the Jose Quintana to their cross-town rival, and one more from the Yankees after shipping the ToddFather to the bronx. And all of a sudden, a franchise that seemingly has been irrelevant since their miraculous World Series victory in 2005, now have the most hope of almost any franchise in the entire league.
By no means does this mean you should be targeting any of these guys when doing your fantasy baseball analysis because these guys are about three years away from fully get acclimating to what the big leagues is all about. Instead, this an ode to the Sox for fully committing to a rebuild and acknowledgment for how bright the future looks both the North and South side of Chicago. How cool would it be to see an all Chicago World Series in late October?
