Moncada, Giolito, Fulmer, Kopech, and Lopez among today’s spring cuts

The White Sox continued their weekly moves by optioning top prospects Yoan Moncada, Lucas Giolito, Carson Fulmer, and Reynaldo Lopez to Charlotte. Michael Kopech was also reassigned to minor league camp.

While many people will bemoan the facts that these players will not be starting the season in Chicago, we will take a quick look at their service time to see when they might come to Chicago.

As a quick refresher, in baseball math, a year of service time is 172 days. If a player is on the 25 man roster or the DL for more than 172 days, they get a full season of service time. Less than that amount is counted by days. If a player has even one day less than 172, that means the team effectively will get an extra season out of the players before they can hit free agency.

For the White Sox, the end of the season is Oct. 1, 2017. Adding a day for a possible game 163 just to be safe and subtracting 172 days gets us to April 14, 2017. That means that Yoan Moncada could be in Chicago some time around May 15 and would still be under the 172 day mark while Lucas Giolito and Reynaldo Lopez will need to be in Charlotte until almost the end of May before they would be considered safe to bring up.

While service time guaranteed that these guys wouldn’t be around on Opening Day, that doesn’t mean there isn’t work for all the pitchers. Giolito and Lopez both had limited arsenals based data from Brooksbaseball.net. This spring, Giolito has shown that he’s adding a sinker extensively into his mix this season. Lopez is working on a cutter, and Fulmer has been working to refine his as well.

With these moves, 41 players are still officially in major league camp. The White Sox head north to play Milwaukee on March 31 and April 1. Opening day is Monday, April 3.

By the way...