Even after trading him away for Chris Sale, Red Sox know Yoan Moncada is ‘going to have success'

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Tuesday night is about Chris Sale and his return to the South Side.

But in the big picture, the White Sox are hoping the return for Sale — not by him — will be the defining part of the trade with the Boston Red Sox this past offseason.

Dealing Sale jumpstarted the team’s rebuilding process, bringing in a huge haul of highly ranked prospects headlined by Yoan Moncada, who on the day Sale pitches for the first time against his former team is ranked as the No. 1 prospect in baseball.

Moncada, it might be easy for White Sox fans to forget, has already had a taste of Major League Baseball. It was mighty brief, just 20 plate appearances in eight games last season in Boston, and it wasn’t very successful — he had four hits compared to 12 strikeouts — but it was enough give the Red Sox a glimpse at the kind of player he is.

“Special, talented young guy,” Red Sox manager John Farrell said Monday. “You look at the skills that he has, the athleticism is as good as you’re going to find. And he made his way pretty quick through the system to come up to us last year, and he was thrust into a pennant race.

“We were looking for a little bit of an uptick in performance at third base, he’s thrown right into it. I think he handled the situation as best possible. There were some challenges that any young player are going to go through, but there’s no denying the physical abilities that he has. A caring kid, thrown into a change in culture, a really aggressive challenge as far as on the field.

“Everything up to the point of coming up to the big leagues last year was handled all very well. And then I think he quickly found out that the big leagues is a little bit of a different animal.”

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While that brief bit of big league exposure didn’t go the way anyone wanted, the Red Sox obviously saw big things coming from Moncada. They’re the ones who gave him a record signing bonus worth more than $31 million, and they launched him through their farm system, promoting him to the bigs without any time at Triple-A. He played 81 games in Low-A in 2015, then 61 games at High-A and 45 at Double-A in 2016 before the cup of coffee in the majors.

An almost identical trajectory was taken by Andrew Benintendi, currently a Red Sox outfielder with similarly high hopes as a prospect in that organization. He played at all those same levels over the past two seasons, skipping Triple-A, too. He had and has continued to have much more big league success than Moncada did in that handful of games. But the two rocketed through the minors together, and Benintendi has an up-close knowledge of the guy White Sox fans will see on the South Side.

“He’s extremely talented,” Benintendi said Tuesday. “He’s fast, he can hit, play defense. Good teammate, just a good all-around player.

“In High-A last year, he hit a ball over the scoreboard at our home stadium (in Salem, Va.). The ball doesn’t carry there at all, and he cleared the scoreboard. So that was kind of like, ‘Man, this guy’s got some pop.’”

Much like Farrell’s assessment, Benintendi talked about how well Moncada fit in on the big league team — Benintendi beat Moncada to the majors by a month — despite his struggles to produce.

“I think he fit in well, and I think coming into this clubhouse, it's easier to feel comfortable right off the bat,” Benintendi said. “He just went about his business, did his early work, things like that. I know he struggled a little bit, but I think that was just getting a little too excited or whatever it may have been. But he’s going to have success.

“(Going back to the minor leagues) kind of just get back to the basics and try not to do too much. I felt like when I came up, everybody was preaching don’t try to do too much, to keep being the same player and that’s what I did. So going back down and kind of figuring out his routine again and just sticking with that will help him a lot.”

Moncada and Benintendi were two of the top five prospects in baseball in 2016. And after splitting them up with that blockbuster Sale trade, maybe the White Sox and Red Sox are setting up a longtime rivalry between the two organizations in the American League.

Benintendi, for one, is looking forward to the day he next faces his old teammate — maybe as soon as the Red Sox next visit to the South Side — as long as Moncada doesn’t treat him like he did during All-Star Weekend last season in San Diego.

“I hope one day we’ll be able to play against each other,” Benintendi said. “The one time I did play against him was in the Futures Game. He kind of took away a hit from me. Hopefully that’s the one and only time he can do that.”

White Sox fans are obviously hoping that’s not the case.

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