Can We Start Believing In The White Sox Yet?

When can you start to believe in a team?

This is something that doesn't change just from person to person, but from team to team. If you're anything like me as a fan, and you should pray to God that you're not, then your favorite team is never really for real, not even if they've won the division and clinched home field for most of the postseason. Your favorite team's rivals, on the other hand, are legit the first time they have a four-game winning streak. As for everyone else—well, whatever, you'll check in on them around the All-Star Game. They're probably doing fine.

Our purposes now demand a bit more rigor. But also it is late April so not, like, too much rigor. I've found that around the 50 game mark, just under a third of the season, most of what you think you know about a team is probably true. That's not to say you'll know whether or not they'll miss the playoffs yet, especially not with the addition of the second Wild Card. Midseason surges or collapses will happen, as will the odd Yoenis Cespedes Supernova Experience; that's the fun part of all this. But by the 50 game mark, you'll usually be able to tell if a team is underperforming or overperforming, and how, and also whether or not you feel that those trends will continue. You will probably be wrong—most of us are wrong most of the time—but you can at least feel a little more confident about all of it.

As we're not at the 50 game mark yet, just about everything is still up in the air. Preseason predictions are still being desecrated, and no one has painted over the graffiti yet. The Seattle Mariners are currently in first place in the AL West. This is the time of year when anything seems possible for any team. Except for the Atlanta Braves.

But, also, anything seems possible for the Chicago White Sox. Unlike the Mariners and Braves, who are entering their first full seasons under the direction of GMs John Coppolella and Jerry Dipoto respectively, the White Sox are not a team struggling to find their feet under new management. The White Sox were basement dwellers each of GM Rick Hahn's previous three seasons, ever since he took over for Kenny Williams, who somehow got a promotion to Executive Vice President. The reasons for that weren't Hahn's entirely fault, to be fair. A combination of the ascendancy of the Kansas City Royals, roster mainstays like Paul Konerko and Adam Dunn aging into mediocrity, and a farm system that couldn't replace them with anything better put Hahn in a pretty bad position when he took the reins after the 2012 season.

Of course, Hahn shared some of the blame for putting the White Sox in that position in the first place, but the fact remains that when he took over, the White Sox were poised for a few lean years. What would matter is what he did to keep those years from becoming the start of a long, sad moving-into-the-basement-while-we-figure-things-out period like the one that that the Twins are currently enduring.

And Hahn, to his credit, has done his best to address that challenge. The White Sox' approach has been thoroughly practical, as compared to the more openly ideological ways the Houston Astros and Chicago Cubs went about rebuilding their rosters. There was no grand pronunciation of a Process, and no grim-faced proclamations of austerity and belt-tightening for the bad years until the promising young wage-slaves arrived. The lowest the team's payroll dipped was a tad over $90 million in 2014. Hahn found the pieces for the current roster in all kinds of places. Jose Abreu, the first baseman, was a highly touted international signing out of Cuba; Melky Cabrera was a market-rate outfielder coming off a decent few years in Toronto; Mat Latos was a reclamation project pitcher signed at the tail end of this winter's hot stove period; shortstop Jimmy Rollins was the face of another franchise, now playing out the last of his string. The new third baseman, Todd Frazier, came over from the Reds in a three way trade that saw the White Sox give up Trayce Thompson, a promising but expendable young outfielder. The outfielder Adam Eaton came over from the Arizona Diamondbacks in a three way trade that saw the White Sox give up…well, nothing much of note, really. The White Sox walked away from the Adam Eaton trade looking like geniuses.

Closer David Robertson came to Chicago on a huge free agent contract; he's pitched admirably this year. The rest of the bullpen—Matt Albers, Nate Jones, Dan Jennings, Jake Petricka, et al—joined the team by more humble means; short-term deals, trades, and by making their way up through the White Sox system.

And that doesn't address the two pieces Hahn was already building with when he took over before the 2013 season. The first is obvious: Chris Sale is the ace, a guy who a couple prominent national writers thought stood no chance in hell of surviving as a starter—he appears to be built out of pipe-cleaners and his motion is all torque and gangle—and who is off to what might be his best year yet.

The second is a bit less expected, and a testament to how the White Sox have quietly turned into one of the best pitching development shops in the majors, up there with the Mets, Pirates, Cardinals and Astros. That's Jose Quintana, who has been getting better every year since he joined the White Sox in the majors in 2012; last year was his first full season with a K/BB ratio over 4, and he's managed over 200 innings each of the last three campaigns. Sale and Quintana might not be the absolute best 1-2 punch in the league, but if not, they're quite close to it. Adding Mat Latos, who looks to have successfully reinvented himself on the South Side, and the promise of former first-round pick Carlos Rodon—he's been one of the team's few pitching disappointments so far this year, but should start showing results very quickly if he can find his command—and Chicago could challenge for the best rotation in the American League.

…But, again, it hasn't been 50 games yet. It hasn't even been 30, which makes it too soon to say that Hahn's incremental, practical moves are all finally starting to pay off. We can say, with some confidence, that Latos' ERA isn't going to be this good all year. Melky Cabrera and to a lesser extent second baseman Brett Lawrie probably aren't going to hit this well all year, either. The bullpen could be this good in the capable hands of pitching coach Don Cooper, or they too could turn back into a bullpen; nothing about Albers' or Jones' careers to date suggest they're shutdown short relievers. But the White Sox also have Abreu and centerfielder Austin Jackson (a thrifty March pickup) slumping hard to start the year, and Frazier hitting lightly given the numbers he's put up the last couple seasons. Even as things even out, they should just about even out.

What's important is: 16-6. The White Sox need about 88-90 wins to consider this season an absolute success, and they're almost a fifth of the way there before the end of the first month of the season. Some of their performances so far are unsustainable, but the team is hardly firing on all cylinders. When I made my season predictions for 2016; I said my heart was with the Chicago White Sox, but my head was with the Kansas City Royals.

That hasn't changed yet. Let's give it 50 games and then we'll see.