What can White Sox fans really expect from Eloy Jimenez in the early going?

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KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Opening Day is here. Eloy Jimenez is here.

The arrival of the 2019 season has brought with it the arrival of the White Sox top-ranked prospect, and everyone is very — and justifiably — excited.

"I think it shows the addition of another potential cornerstone-type player for us," general manager Rick Hahn said Thursday at Kauffman Stadium. "We saw the excitement when (Yoan) Moncada came up. We saw the excitement when (Michael) Kopech came up last year. There will be other debuts over the course of this summer and over the next year-plus that will have similar type of excitement behind them, a deserved excitement behind them.

"For what it means to White Sox fans at large, I think they see another potential core piece that they can embrace and see grow and have reason to be excited about."

And those fans are indeed excited. In addition to Jimenez representing some tangible progress in the ongoing rebuilding effort, he's just a very good baseball player getting dropped into the middle of the White Sox lineup. Every time he steps to the plate will be must-see TV on the South Side. That has been in part fueled by Jimenez himself, his extreme self confidence powering talk of winning Rookie of the Year and capturing multiple World Series championships down the road. The team is just as confident in his abilities, talking about him as one day reaching the same level as players like Manny Machado and Bryce Harper, two elite players who the White Sox couldn't put in the lineup alongside Jimenez this offseason.

And so the hype machine starts churning. Some overzealous media member even predicted Jimenez could launch 36 home runs this season. (You'll have to listen to this podcast to find out which one.)

The White Sox obviously felt good enough about Jimenez and his potential to reward him with a long-term contract before he had a major league plate appearance. But what should everyone really expect in the early going of Jimenez's big league career?

"That’s a tough one," Hahn said. "He has a world of talent, and there’s a great deal of understandable excitement about him. From where I sit, I’m more inclined to try to temper and manage those expectations because he is a 22-year-old kid and there are going to be some growing pains at the big league level. But I understand the reason throughout White Sox nation and throughout the game for a great deal of optimism and excitement of what he’s capable of doing.

"With our long-term commitment to him, we are excited not just about the first eight weeks of his career but the first eight years. That, certainly in the long term, is going to be more important than anything in terms of how he gets out of the gate immediately."

Hahn talks often about young players reaching the major leagues not being finished products, that there's more to their development than just what happened in the minor leagues, and Jimenez is no exception. That said, he's the No. 3 prospect in baseball and absolutely dominated swinging the bat in the minor leagues in 2018. How much closer to being a finished product is Jimenez compared to some of his peers to recently reach the bigs? We'll soon find out. But Hahn said it won't be unexpected to see Jimenez face his own challenges.

"He’s very polished offensive talent," Hahn said. "And we saw it a little bit early in camp when he was pressing a little bit, some of the way pitchers were attacking him was a little bit different from what he had seen before. He’s going to have to make some adjustments along the way, and if he does get off to a hot start, they are going to quickly adjust to him and then the game of cat and mouse is going to be on.

"His baseball acumen, physical tool set are both extremely high, and he’s very well equipped to make those adjustments when the time comes."

In the end, this is a player who has yet to play in a Major League Baseball game, so trying to figure out exactly how he'll do is obviously tricky. Even though the hopes are high and the expectations are high, even the White Sox still have to send him out there this season and see what he can do.

"Not having a baseline for him at the major league level, just getting him out there and let him perform," manager Rick Renteria said Thursday. "Early on, hopefully we'll be able to see what he's bringing to the table. That being said, we'll also know that everyone in the game of baseball sees this guy as a very talented young man and everybody that's on the field is going to want to do what they can to minimize the damage he can cause. He's going to have to make in-game and game-to-game adjustments.

"He's a very mature young man, I think he's going to handle it very well. We already know the skillset he brings to the table is pretty exciting. We're looking to see him improve in the defensive end, the whole aspect of the game, see where he's at."

The hope is that White Sox fans will see a middle-of-the-order bat and a centerpiece of the transition from rebuilding to perennial contention for the next eight years. Only time will tell if that's what happens. That time starts now.

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