How do you know when a team has toggled away from rebuild mode? The answer to that isn't always as easy to pinpoint as you might think. But one probable indicator is that when a team signs a 31-year-old catcher to a four-year, $73 million contract, that team feels like it is ready to crack the contention window.
That is what the Chicago White Sox signified on Thursday when they announced their signing of Yasmani Grandal: It is now winning time on the South Side. But make no mistake, while the acquisition of one of baseball's elite backstops might act as a kind of signal switch, the ChiSox locomotive has plenty of track to traverse before it pulls into the station.