Five years ago today, the White Sox continued their selloff and pulled off the trade that many said couldn’t be done, sending Jose Quintana to the Cubs in exchange for Eloy Jimenez, Dylan Cease, Matt Rose, and Bryant Flete.  At the time, the Cubs were looking for a boost to their starting rotation as one of the strengths of their championship season the year before had turned into a question mark during the first half of 2017.  For the rebuilding White Sox, Jimenez, who was the 8th ranked prospect in baseball, and Cease, who was the 63rd, gave them nine out of the top 100 prospects.

So how did it work out, five years later?  You can say the White Sox were the runaway winners of the trade, but not for the reasons you would have thought five years ago.  After a slow start in his rookie campaign in 2019, Jimenez seemed to figure things out down the stretch and followed that up with an pandemic-abbreviated 2020 campaign that earned him the Silver Slugger.  Unfortunately, he’s played less than 75 games since, with major injuries keeping him on the shelf for large portions of the 2021 and 2022 seasons.  When he has played, he hasn’t yet been able to put together the type of production he showed in previous years.

Dylan Cease, on the other hand, has turned into the ace of the White Sox staff.  After a slow start in 2019 after making his debut in early July, Cease has improved each season.  He currently leads the American League in strikeouts and is widely considered one of, if not the biggest, snub for this year’s All Star team.

Quintana, meanwhile, spent parts of four seasons with the Cubs, going 33-23 with a 4.24 ERA.  He was decent, but not great, and the Cubs never were able to replicate their 2016 success.  In the postseason, he appeared in four games in 2017, two each in the NLDS and NLCS,