James Shields is the oldest part of a young and rebuilding White Sox ballclub. For that reason, he’s easy to overlook. Even fans of the team itself would presumably rather focus on, say, Yoan Moncada or Lucas Giolito or Reynaldo Lopez. Those guys, and others — they could be around the next time the White Sox make the playoffs. Shields, almost certainly not. He might not even still be in the game.

So this isn’t a tale with widespread implications. This isn’t a story that’s going to change how you think about the broader baseball landscape. All this is is a story of a pitcher who’s come back from the brink of professional extinction. James Shields will turn 36 a few days before Christmas, yet over the last couple months, he’s changed the way that he pitches. Shields still has something left to give after all; all he had to do was alter everything, at a time when it would’ve been easy to wave the white flag.

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There are five spots on a Cy Young ballot. This season, in the American League, only the first two are going to matter. Last year, Justin Verlander received the most first-place votes, with 14, but he was ranked second on just two ballots. Rick Porcello, meanwhile, received 18 second-place votes in addition to his eight at the top spot. Porcello ended up the winner.

This year, Chris Sale and Corey Kluber are likely to occupy the top two spots on every ballot, and whoever receives more first-place will probably take the award. The pair have produced very similar statistical records this year, so voters will have to split hairs to decide which of the two is more deserving. Let’s begin splitting some of those hairs right now, examining defense, contact quality, various sorts of WAR, and how they all influence each other when it comes to the two best pitchers in the American League.

To provide an initial tale of the tape of sorts, here are a few numbers with which most readers will be pretty familiar.

The strikeout and walk numbers are pretty equivalent. Sale has the edge in homers and innings, leading to a lower FIP and therefore WAR. Kluber has a much lower BABIP, which helps him lead in ERA. If you want to factor for league and park, we can do that. Sale’s FIP- is 50 to Kluber’s 57, and Sale’s ERA- is 61 to Kluber’s 54. Part of Kluber’s ERA advantage comes from that BABIP. He also has an 81.6% left-on-base percentage compared to Sale’s 76.7%, though, so part of the advantage is simply due to sequencing.

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With the spread throughout baseball of wearable technology — that is, devices like the Zephyr Bioharness which are capable of capturing all manner of physiological data — it’s tempting to consider everything that teams and players could possibly extract from the information that’s gathered.

While such technology is currently used to monitor mostly fatigue and workload via calorie consumption — noted foodie Russell Martin employed the Bioharness in Pittsburgh to better understand how much he could eat without gaining weight — there are certainly other possible areas for innovation. Like, what more can we learn from heart rate in the midst of performance? Could we better understand performance under stress? How emotions influence play?

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Chicago White Sox right-hander Mike Pelfrey is a survivor of Tommy John surgery, but only in the technical sense of having returned to a major-league mound after having undergone the procedure. Prior to going under the knife, the 6-foot-7 right-hander was a solid, midrotation starter for the New York Mets. Since surgery, however, he’s been a shell of his old self. Pitching for the Minnesota Twins, Detroit Tigers, and now the White Sox, Pelfrey is 18-47 with a 4.99 ERA over his last four-plus seasons.

Age-wise, he isn’t over the hill. The former first-round pick is still just 33 years old. And while his arm feels strong, it also feels… different. Pelfrey can’t quite put a finger on it, but ever since his ulnar collateral ligament — and subsequently an ulnar nerve — were repaired, something has been amiss. A dozen years — and countless pitches — into his big-league career, he has limited control over where the ball is going to go once it leaves his hand.

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Mike Pelfrey on his post-surgery command issues: “There’s been a little more adversity than I would like. Early in my career I was more of a power-sinker guy — I was about 75% fastballs — and my command was a lot better. In 2012, I ended up getting hurt. My elbow blew out after three starts, and I had Tommy John surgery. I’ve never been the same since. My command hasn’t quite been the same. Read the rest of this entry »

Nicky Delmonico demands our attention, if only for a moment.

In the midst of an all-in rebuild of the Chicago White Sox, general manager Rick Hahn has focused on acquiring high-upside, high-risk assets who could help the club in future seasons. Delmonico is not that. He was signed to a minor-league deal after being released by the Brewers in 2015, having failed to reach even Double-A.

Now, three years later, Delmonico is living a charmed life. Over his first 87 career major-league plate appearances, he owns a .315/.425/.589 slash line and .427 wOBA — a figure that’s 70% better than league average. He even hit his first home run in Fenway Park, against the club for which he grew up rooting.

Not surprisingly, there’s a lot to suggest the fun won’t continue — at least not to this degree. According to Baseball Savant, Delmonico has been nearly the most fortunate hitter in baseball this season among those who have seen at least 200 pitches. He’s recorded the fifth-highest wOBA relative to his xwOBA of the 474 players in that sample.

The outfielder possesses a pedestrian average exit velocity of 82.9 mph through his first 59 batted balls tracked by Statcast. He’s barreled just 5.1% of those balls in play, another pedestrian figure.

Nor are the underlying skills indicative of a future star. Delmonico was never rated as a top prospect (though he did rank 92nd on the stats-only KATOH top 100 list this year). Confined to the corner outfield, Delmonico has to hit just to be average.

But Delmonico — a former bat boy at the University of Tennessee, where his father coached — doesn’t need to be a star for this to be a success story. Steamer and ZiPS project him to be a league-average bat (99 wRC+) going forward this season.

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Daily notes on prospects from lead prospect analyst Eric Longenhagen. Read previous installments here.

Pedro Avila, RHP, San Diego (Profile)
Level: Low-A   Age: 20   Org Rank: NR  Top 100: NR
Line: 7.1 IP, 4 H, 2 BB, 1 R, 13 K

Notes
This was Avila’s fifth double-digit strikeout game this year and his second in the last three starts, as he K’d 18 at Great Lakes on August 8th. A stocky 5-foot-11, Avila doesn’t have a huge fastball, sitting mostly 91-93 and dipping just beneath that from the stretch, but he frequently demonstrates pinpoint command of it, working to both his arm and glove sides. That gets Avila ahead in the count and sets up his deep-diving curveball, which bites enough to miss bats in the strike zone as well as below it. He also flashes a plus changeup. Avila began the year in High-A and struggled to throw strikes (but not miss bats) there for nine starts before a demotion. He has 102 strikeouts in 74.2 innings since then. Avila was acquired during Winter Meetings from Washington in exchange for Derek Norris.

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Below are the updated summer top-10 prospect lists for the orgs in the American League Central. I have notes beneath the top 10s explaining why some of these prospects have moved up or down. For detailed scouting information on individual players, check out the player’s profile page which may include tool grades and/or links to Daily Prospect Notes posts in which they’ve appeared this season. For detailed info on players drafted or signed this year, check out our sortable boards.

Chicago White Sox (Preseason List)

1. Yoan Moncada, 2B
2. Eloy Jimenez, OF
3. Michael Kopech, RHP
4. Lucas Giolito, RHP
5. Luis Robert, OF
6. Reynaldo Lopez, RHP
7. Blake Rutherford, OF
8. Alec Hansen, RHP
9. Dylan Cease, RHP
10. Zack Collins, C

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Below is a ranking of the prospects traded this month, tiered by our Future Value scale. A reminder that there’s lots of room for argument as to how these players line up, especially within the same FV tier. If you need further explanation about FV, bang it here and here. Full writeups of the prospects are linked next to their names. If the player didn’t receive an entire post, I’ve got a brief scouting report included below. Enjoy.
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Several trades occurred while I was on vacation. I’m profiling the prospects involved in those deals in a belated nature. This post analyzes the prospects involved swap between the White Sox and Yankees, centered around the Yankees new bullpen weapons and prospect Blake Rutherford. A reminder of those involved.

Yankees get

• 3B Todd Frazier
• RHP Tommy Kahnle
• RHP David Robertson

White Sox get

• OF Blake Rutherford
• OF Tito Polo
• LHP Ian Clarkin
• RHP Tyler Clippard

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The surging Kansas City Royals bolstered their Major League club on Sunday by adding veteran OF Melky Cabrera. They sent RHP A.J. Puckett and LHP Andre Davis to Chicago in the exchange.

Royals get

• OF Melky Cabrera

White Sox get

• RHP A.J. Puckett
• LHP Andre Davis

Puckett, Kansas City’s second round pick out of Pepperdine in 2016, is an above average athlete with a potential plus changeup. He was a promising two-sport athlete in high school before a car accident left him in a medically-induced coma for two weeks to slow his blood loss, and essentially ended his football career. His rashes of wildness in pro ball have been surprising to those who saw Puckett attack the strike zone in college, but scouts are still optimistic that his athleticism will yield at least average command at maturity.

His fastball sits in the low-90s and his curveball is fringey. The curveball and command both need to improve, and if they do Puckett could pitch at the back of a rotation. He had a 3.90 ERA at High-A Wilmington before the trade and was owner of a 20% K% and 9% walk rate. He turned 22 in May.

Davis, an eighth-round pick in 2015 out of Arkansas-Pine Bluff, is a big-bodied lefty with a bat-missing changeup of his own. He isn’t as athletic as Puckett and there’s dissent about his ability to start (scouts don’t love his delivery), but Davis has thrown strikes this year, will flash command of all his pitches, and his funky delivery helps his otherwise fringe slider play up against left-handed hitters. He sits 92-94 with some movement, and while he’s already 23 and only in Low-A, we are talking about a small-school, 6-foot-6 lefty here, and these types of pitching prospects are often a bit behind. He projects into a relief role, but I think there might be more than that here.