The White Sox had a ridiculously encouraging start to their season

Here’s how well the White Sox have played so far this season: I wrote this whole thing, top to bottom, and realized there wasn’t a single joke about the Drake LaRoche situation. So I had to go back in and edit the stupid thing. That’s how well the White Sox have played so far.

Let’s talk about the different classifications of teams in Major League Baseball. There are the zombie teams, like the Yankees and Cardinals, who stumble around, undead, always contending no matter what happens to them. The Braves used to be here. The Dodgers might earn a spot after this season.

Then there are the sad sacks. This used to be where the Royals and Pirates hung out, but it’s mostly just Brewers and Phillies for now. They aren’t very good sad sacks, as they’ve each enjoyed thrilling postseason runs within the last few years.

We’re here to talk about a purgatory team, a team that hovers between planes of existence, never too good, never too bad, not exactly forgettable, but certainly not unforgettable. The Mariners have a timeshare in this tier. The Blue Jays used to live here, but then Jose Bautista flipped a bat into purgatory and broke it.

The Chicago White Sox might be baseball’s best purgatory team, though. That makes it odd that they were the source of spring training’s biggest pseudo-controversy, the team everyone was talking about for a week. They had a very busy offseason, far busier than they probably get credit for. They were one of the only teams in baseball to hit November with a laundry list of needs and spend the next few months checking them all off. Improve at second? Check. At third? Check. Better outfield defense? Check. A new catcher? Check. A starter for the back of the rotation? Check.

The only problem is that none of the solutions to those problems were especially sexy, with the exception of Todd Frazier. And possibly Brett Lawrie’s Twitter recommendations. The White Sox spent the offseason bunting the runners over instead of swinging for the fences, which didn’t make them a popular preseason pick for the AL Central.

Now the White Sox are 3-1, and while that means about as much as them going 3-1 from April 22 to April 26 last year (which they did), the important thing to note is that they’re showing you the template of a good White Sox team. It doesn’t have to happen like this, but if it were to happen ...

We all know Chris Sale. We also know that a purgatory team can’t just use a Chris Sale-shaped pickaxe to dig their way out. There’s no postseason White Sox without him having a tremendous, Cy Young-kind of year, but he’ll need support behind him.

In the first series of the season, Carlos Rodon missed bats without missing the plate, as did Jose Quintana. The White Sox starters combined for 25-⅔ innings and allowed just three walks. We’re used to that from Sale and Quintana, less so from Rodon, but pitching like that would seem like a good way to limit the damage in one of the AL’s least forgiving ballparks.

Counterpoint: It’s possible the A’s, as presently constructed, aren’t anyone’s idea of a formidable, unstoppable lineup, especially when they’re playing in Oakland. But that’s taking too much credit away from the pitchers who did well. And if the White Sox are going to contend, the pitchers will have to pitch like this, more often than not.

Adam Eaton is a fine center fielder, but Austin Jackson is an outstanding center fielder. Which pushes Eaton to right, where he’s probably overqualified. Jimmy Rollins might not be an upgrade on Alexei Ramirez defensively, but it’s at least close, and Todd Frazier, Alex Avila and Brett Lawrie are clear, obvious improvements.

I’m not sure if the White Sox got a play this good from second base all last year (Hawk Harrelson warning):

They have several months left of quality defensive plays at second. And third. And catcher. And ... well, just about everywhere, at least compared to last year. It’s an unfamiliar spot.

In 2012, Jackson hit .300, led the American League in triples, and played fantastic center field defense. It was his third straight season with 5 WAR, and he was just 25. That’s the kind of player you lock up for seven years. Three years later, he was a forgotten free agent in an oversaturated outfield market.

In 2012, Mat Latos was a key pitcher in one of the better rotations in recent memory. The 2012 Reds had four starters throw more than 200 innings, and they all had adjusted ERAs way better than the league average. Latos was just 24, and his career looked like it was on an upward trajectory. With his command and stuff, a Cy Young chase wouldn’t be out of the question. Three years later, he was a forgotten free agent in an oversaturated pitching market.

The White Sox made great low-cost, painless moves to get both. Now one of them should probably work out and shock the world if the team wants txxo do the same. It’s not ludicrous to hope for, even if it’s a little daffy to expect. Still, we’re talking about two under-30 talents who were considered building blocks of a franchise just a couple years ago.

Jackson still has a hole in his bat. And Latos isn’t throwing hard again. Both are off to fine starts, though. If you’re looking for a surprise season from the White Sox, you should probably check in with the players who wouldn’t have been a surprise in very recent seasons.

(Apropos of nothing: Latos threw 81 changeups last year according to PITCHf/x. He threw 23 of them on Thursday.)

(Also apropos of nothing: I made this six seasons ago, and don’t want it to be lost to history.

So I’ll just leave it right there.)

It’s like famed poet Corey Dickerson wrote: Four games is four games is four games. We don’t know if the White Sox are going to escape purgatory yet, and they have the makeup of a team that could lose 90 just as easily as they could win 90.

But if you’re looking for a template of how it could all work out, the White Sox did a dandy job of giving us one in their first series of the season