Jose Quintana, his trade value, and fans' and media perception of it

Jose Quintana

White Sox left-hander Jose Quintana has had his name mentioned in trade rumors for months. And he'll probably continue to have his name mentioned in trade rumors until the day he actually is dealt, whenever that may be.

In the meantime, one of the things that drives me insane about situations such as this is the constant speculation and near-daily fluctuations in what fans and media perceive Quintana's "trade value" to be.

Just last week, Quintana had his best outing of the season. He pitched eight innings of one-hit, one-run ball in an extra-inning victory over the Seattle Mariners. After that performance, Quintana had posted quality starts in five out of six appearances, going 2-2 with a 2.70 ERA over than span.

"Hey, Quintana is on a roll! His trade value is up! The Sox should be able to get a couple good prospects for him at the trade deadline!"

Then, a game such as Wednesday's happens. Quintana retired the first 10 Arizona Diamondbacks he faced. He appeared to be on his way to yet another strong outing. Unfortunately, things turned on a dime, and eight of the second 10 Arizona hitters Quintana faced got hits. He ended up allowing eight earned runs. He got knocked out in the fifth inning, and the Sox lost, 8-6.

"Oh, boy, there goes Quintana's trade value. Nobody's going to want him now that his ERA is up in the high 4s."

This morning, I saw some click bait on the Chicago Tribune's website that Quintana is "Spanish for John Danks" or some such nonsense. I didn't click on it, we're not going to link to it here, and it should be dismissed for the idiocy that it is. However, it's worth bringing up as an example to illustrate how folks -- even media members who should know better -- sway in the wind about a player's "trade value" based upon a very small sample size.

Teams that might interested in acquiring Quintana's services are not going to cross him off their list based upon this one horrible outing against the Diamondbacks, nor were they going to call Rick Hahn and offer all the crown jewels of their farm system for Quintana after his brilliant outing against the Mariners. One game just doesn't make that much of a difference.

Scouts are looking at longer-term trends, what the track record and makeup of the player is, and what kind of stuff he's been featuring as of late. Quintana's fastball command was poor against Arizona, to say the least, but there has been no downturn in velocity or movement. His assortment of offspeed pitches looks the same as it always has.

If Quintana improves his fastball command, and he has a track record of being able to do so, he'll still be a pitcher who is in demand when July rolls around. His ERA might be 4.82 right now, but his career ERA is 3.49. As long as his stuff hasn't fallen off -- and it hasn't -- he's due to trend in a positive direction toward his career norms. An acquiring team may be positioned to take advantage of that trend.

The quality of prospects the Sox would be able to acquire in a Quintana deal remains an open question. Fans and media are not privy to those trade discussions, and you can't believe much of anything you read in the rumor mill.

But it's worth noting that one good game here or one bad game there is not going to have a significant effect on Quintana's worth in the marketplace. As long as he's healthy, he's a pitcher that has value. How much value? Perhaps we'll see in July.

Ill-advised bunt attempts get in the way of potential White Sox rally

Leury Garcia

Let me preface my comments on Tuesday's 5-4 White Sox loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks with this: There is a time and place to bunt and play for one run. (For instance, the bottom of the ninth inning of a tie game.)

That said, I often see major league managers fall into the trap of giving away outs when they should not be playing for only one run. Sox manager Rick Renteria did just that in the eighth inning Tuesday, and it contributed to the Sox (20-24) dropping a winnable game.

The Diamondbacks brought Jorge De La Rosa in to protect a 5-3 lead in that eighth inning, and he fooled nobody. Jose Abreu homered to pull the Sox within a run. Todd Frazier walked and Melky Cabrera singled, and the Sox were set up with runners on first and second with nobody out.

That brought up Leury Garcia, who is not my favorite player, but the fact of the matter is he is hitting a respectable .288 this season. Thanks to a double switch, the pitcher's spot was due up after Garcia, followed by .182-hitting catcher Kevan Smith.

De La Rosa was laboring, so I liked Garcia's chances of doing something in that situation. Why give a struggling pitcher an out? And the Sox were moving toward a compromised bottom part of the batting order, so Garcia seemed as good a bet as any to come up with the hit the Sox needed. Unfortunately, Renteria called for Garcia to sacrifice bunt. After two failed attempts, he hit a weak grounder to third base. Now, that grounder did advance the runners to second and third, so it had the same effect as the bunt, but Garcia essentially gave away his at-bat. De La Rosa got an out he didn't earn, and some traction in that inning.

That brought up the pitcher's spot, and Avisail Garcia -- who did not start the game because of flu-like symptons -- was sent to the plate to pinch hit. Alas, first base was open. There was no way the Diamondbacks were going to face the .342-hitting Garcia in that situation. The intentional walk was issued, and Renteria's best option off the bench went to waste.

That brought up the right-handed hitting Smith, and gave Arizona manager Torey Lovullo a good reason to remove the left-handed De La Rosa. Lovullo did just that. He brought in right-hander J.J. Hoover. The Sox used Omar Narvaez to pinch hit for Smith, but Hoover struck him out. Then, he struck out Yolmer Sanchez to escape the bases-loaded situation and preserve Arizona's 5-4 lead.

The Sox did not mount a threat in the ninth against Arizona closer Fernando Rodney, so their best chance to score was against De La Rosa, who had nothing going for him out there. Unfortunately, Renteria did not give Leury Garcia a chance to take advantage of that. Instead, he managed the Sox into a situation where Lovullo had good reason to remove a struggling pitcher and replace him with a pitcher who had his stuff together.

Losing proposition for the Sox.

And, there was no reason for Renteria to want the game to be tied. He needed to get the lead in that spot, because the Sox are carrying 13 relievers and playing with a short bench. Starting pitcher Dylan Covey lasted only 2.1 innings in this game, and three Sox relievers already had been used by the eighth inning. Narvaez was the last position player available when he was used in the eighth.

This was not a situation where the Sox wanted to go to extra innings. They needed to win it in regulation, and by playing for the tie, they increased their odds of losing it in regulation. Lose it they did.

Frustrating loss.

Injury updates: When will Carlos Rodon pitch for the White Sox again?

Carlos Rodon

Forget about the White Sox's 5-1 loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on Monday night. Nothing to see there, nothing much to talk about, an inconsequential loss in a season that is expected to be full of them.

The most important news of the day was on the injury front, where left-hander Carlos Rodon met the media for the first time in a long time after throwing 60 pitches in a simulated game against minor leaguers Monday at Chase Field.

Relief pitchers Jake Petricka and Nate Jones also worked during the simulated game, but the big story is Rodon, whose recovery from left bicep bursitis has taken much longer than expected.

For Rodon, this was his fourth simulated game, and he says he considers himself to be on an every-fifth-day schedule at this point. Still, there's no timetable for his return, and general manager Rick Hahn used the phrase "in the coming weeks" when asked when Rodon might return to game action.

“He’s been out there now three or four times throwing to hitters,” Hahn told Sox beat reporters. “Each time has been a little more crisp from what I understand from the previous ones to today. Hopefully here in the coming weeks we are able to announce he’s starting a rehab assignment and we’ll have a better sense of his time frame at that point.”

Let me take an educated guess: Rodon might be back around the All-Star break. Say it's three more weeks until he heads out on a rehab assignment. Realistically, he'll probably need three or four starts in the minors before he's got enough strength and endurance to start in a big league game.

So, maybe we'll see him in July.

Why does this matter so much? For two reasons. One, the 24-year-old is seen as a cornerstone pitcher in the Sox's rebuilding plan. If he cannot get healthy and pitch effectively at some point this season, his status as a building block for the future would have to be called into question.

Secondly, his status affects the Sox's strategy at the trade deadline. With Rodon and James Shields both on the disabled list, the team's organizational pitching depth has been stretched thin. Retread veteran Mike Pelfrey and Rule 5 pick Dylan Covey don't belong in a major league rotation, but they are there because of the injuries, and because the Sox don't want to rush prized pitching prospects such as Reynaldo Lopez and Carson Fulmer into the starting rotation.

A healthy Rodon -- and a healthy Shields, for that matter -- makes it a little easier for Hahn to deal ace Jose Quintana for a package of prospects when July comes around.

If Rodon is not healthy for the second half of the season, and the Sox choose to deal Quintana, they might be faced with having to force-fit a prospect into the big league rotation before they really want to. That's a situation everyone would like to avoid, and it can be avoided if Rodon can take the ball 14 or 15 times before the 2017 season is over.

White Sox recover to take three out of four from Seattle Mariners

Avisail Garcia

Now is the perfect time to have the Seattle Mariners come up on your schedule.

There isn't a team in the American League that has dealt with more key injuries than the Mariners. Seattle's best player, second baseman Robinson Cano (quadriceps), is on the disabled list. Eighty percent of the Mariners' starting rotation  -- Felix Hernandez (shoulder), Hisashi Iwakuma (shoulder), James Paxton (forearm) and Drew Smyly (elbow) -- also is on the disabled list.

Teams don't like to make excuses, and they often say injuries are not an excuse. The reality is a little different: If your best dudes get hurt, chances are you're gonna lose. And the Mariners lost three of four to the White Sox this weekend.

The Sox (20-22) took the final three games of the series, the last two in blowout fashion. Here's our recap of the weekend that was:

Friday, May 19
White Sox 2, Mariners 1 (10 inn.): It's well-known that Sox ace Jose Quintana has suffered from a lack of run support for years, and the same has held true this season. But, Quintana hasn't been pitching up to his capabilities as of late, as his 4.38 ERA coming into this game would attest. So, he's hasn't been quite as sympathetic of a figure as he has been in the past.

That changed in this game. It was back to business as usual for Quintana. He was brilliant over eight innings, allowing one run on only one hit. He struck out seven and walked one -- and got a no-decision. Typical.

Fortunately, while Quintana did not get the win, the Sox did. Melky Cabrera's two-out, RBI double on an 0-2 slider from Seattle's Tony Zych (2-1) plated the winning run in the top of the 10th inning.

Sox closer David Robertson (3-1) retired all six men he faced over two innings to pick up the win, which snapped a four-game losing streak for the Sox.

Saturday, May 20
White Sox 16, Mariners 1: I doubt the Sox will have a more lopsided win than this one all year. They jumped on Seattle starter Yovani Gallardo (2-4) for four runs in the first inning, highlighted by Avisail Garcia's three-run homer on a first-pitch curve ball, and never let up from there.

The South Siders pounded out 19 hits, and while we've still got three-quarters of a season left to play, it's getting harder and harder to overlook Garcia's performance. He became the first Sox player to total 12 bases in a game since Dan Johnson hit three home runs in the same game on the final day of the 2012 season. Garcia homered in each of his first two plate appearances, then added two doubles for good measure, as he finished 4 for 5 with six RBIs.

Garcia leads the Sox with 34 RBIs, and he is tied for the team lead in homers with eight.

Not even Mike Pelfrey (1-4) could lose this game. The erstwhile veteran pitched six innings of one-run ball to earn his first victory in six starts this season. If you get 16 runs of support, hey, you better win. That's about a whole month's worth of runs for Quintana, you know?

Sunday, May 21
White Sox 8, Mariners 1: Seattle called up right-hander Chris Heston to make his first start of the season, and let's just say it didn't go well. He walked the bases loaded in the first inning, and that led to a five-run outburst for the Sox.

The BABIP gods were with the South Siders in this one, as they got a couple solid base hits in the inning -- a two-run single by Yolmer Sanchez and an RBI single by Matt Davidson -- and two really cheap RBI infield singles -- one by Tim Anderson and the other by Kevan Smith.

Heston didn't deserve any luck, of course, because walking the bases loaded in the first inning is not a recipe for success.

Left-hander Derek Holland (4-3) has been the Sox's most consistent starting pitcher this season, and  he capitalized on having a 5-0 lead before he threw a single pitch with another strong outing. He went eight innings, allowing only a solo home run to Nelson Cruz. The veteran pounded the strike zone, throwing 70 of his 105 pitches for strikes, which is precisely what a pitcher should be doing with a big lead. He fanned six, walked only two and lowered his season ERA to 2.47.

Sanchez extended his hitting streak to 12 games with the first-inning single. Anderson added a solo home run in the third, his fifth of the year, and a three-hit performance raised his batting average to .264.

Better to fight back and lose than to lay down and die, right?

Tim Anderson

The White Sox trailed the Seattle Mariners, 4-0, after six innings Thursday night.

Is it wrong that I didn't get excited when they fought back to tie it up? I just figured they'd get walked off in the bottom of the ninth inning anyway, and they did, as Guillermo Heredia singled home Jarrod Dyson with the winning run to give Seattle a 5-4 victory.

The Sox (17-22) are now 0-4 on their current 10-game road trip, but we can't say the failure is for lack of trying.

The South Siders' rally from the four-run deficit started with a two-run homer by Matt Davidson in the top of the seventh. Todd Frazier and Tim Anderson hit back-to-back solo homers in the top of the eighth to even the score at 4, and get starting pitcher Dylan Covey off the hook.

We'll give Covey some credit -- he allowed four runs, but he got through six innings. That's more than we can say for Mike Pelfrey in any of his starts. Covey still gets demolished in the fifth inning, however, and Thursday was no different. Jean Segura hit a three-run homer off him in the fifth inning of this game, and opponents are hitting .538 and slugging 1.038 against Covey in the fifth.

Yuck.

But he's not the loser in this one. That would be left-handed reliever Dan Jennings (2-1), who couldn't work around two singles in the ninth. Sox killer Dyson, of course, was involved. He reached first base after his sacrifice bunt attempt resulted in a forceout at second base.

After a long at-bat and numerous throws over to first base, Carlos Ruiz hit a grounder to Frazier, who tried to start a 5-4-3 double play, only to see Dyson beat his throw to second. The Sox made the turn to first base to retire Ruiz, but that left Dyson in scoring position with two outs.

That set the table for Heredia to deliver the game-winning hit, and send the Sox to their 10 loss in their past 12 games.

But, I guess we should give the Sox some credit. It would have been easy to give away at-bats and just lose 4-0. We've seen previous Sox teams do just that. There are no moral victories in pro sports, but at least this team tries to win, even though they aren't good.

It's a feel-bad Thursday for White Sox fans

It's a feel-bad Thursday for White Sox fans, and here are the reasons why:

• The Sox blew an early 4-0 lead and lost, 12-8, to the Los Angeles Angels on Wednesday night.
• The enjoyable 13-9 start to the season has been more than erased by an intolerable stretch of bad ball during which the Sox have gone 4-12.
• The Sox have lost 14 of their last 15 games in Anaheim. The only blessing is they don't have any more games in that place this season.
• Sox starting pitchers have not won a game since May 4, and have a 6.36 ERA during that 11-game stretch.
• No. 1 prospect Yoan Moncada is going on the 7-day DL because of a persistent sore thumb. That would explain why he was in a 2-for-14 slump in the three games leading up to the DL stint. 
• Carson Fulmer's stretch of good pitching also ended Wednesday at Triple-A Charlotte. He got rocked for seven earned runs in 4.2 innings in a 9-2 loss to Durham.

BAH! I hate losing, so I'm going to go be pissed off now.

Soft contact costs White Sox closer David Robertson in dumb loss to Angels

David Robertson

Maybe it would have been easier if the White Sox had just lost Tuesday night's game against the Los Angeles Angels in nine innings.

Instead, they rallied for three runs in the top of the ninth to tie the game at 5 and force extra innings. Then, they took the lead in the top of the 11th inning on Tim Anderson's home run, only to lose, 7-6, on a series of dumb occurrences in the bottom half of the inning.

I can't blame Sox closer David Robertson (2-1), who pitched a clean 10th inning and still appeared to have good stuff when he came out for the 11th. But some bad luck and clownish outfield defense conspired to hand him the loss.

Robertson gave up a single to Andrelton Simmons to start the inning, and the runner advanced to second on a passed ball by catcher Omar Narvaez. But Robertson was able to cut Simmons down at third base on a sacrifice bunt attempt by Danny Espinosa.

That took the tying run out of scoring position and greatly increased Robertson's chances of closing out the game. However, it was just not meant to be.

Ben Revere followed with a bloop single over the head of second baseman Yolmer Sanchez. Somehow neither of the two Garcias in the outfield -- Leury or Avisail -- got anywhere near the ball, and Robertson was right back into trouble with runners on first and second and one out.

He continued to make decent-to-good pitches, however, and got Cameron Maybin to pop up into shallow left field.

OK, I thought it was a pop up into shallow left field, but it turned into a game-tying "double." The ball hung in the air forever, but apparently Sox left fielder Melky Cabrera "slipped" on a wet patch of grass (in Southern California?!) and shortstop Anderson couldn't quite range far enough out into left field the make the play.

What should have been an easy second out ended up tying the game at 6 and placed runners at second and third for the best player in baseball, Mike Trout. The Sox wisely put Trout on first base and took their chances with Albert Pujols.

A ground ball likely produces an inning-ending double play in that situation, but the veteran Pujols instead hit a fly ball that would have been plenty deep to score the winning run from third base regardless, but the ball clanked off the face of Sox center fielder Leury Garcia for a game-winning "single," adding injury to insult for anyone who bothered to stay up late and watch this mess.

The Sox (17-20) have now lost eight out of 10 and fell to 4-10 in May after a 13-10 April.

Have I mentioned that I'm not worried about the possibility of the Sox being "too good" to qualify as a rebuilding team?